TheKitttenGuard Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 I really do not care about Trump's sexual kinks. I do care about the steady reports of how many conflicts he does have with his business. That this was not discuss with any depth during the campagin was a major failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mudguard Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 1 minute ago, Kalbear said: The contacts are not unnamed, they're simply not listed as names in the report. The report is not supposed to have supporting evidence; it is a summary that can be used to tell others without compomising information sources. It is not a news article. The FBI is still looking into parts of it - the Manafort investigation is still ongoing, or else Comey wouldn't claim that he doesn't want to comment on it. Some of the other things, like Page taking a share of a business, should also be easy to prove or disprove. And if things are disproven, it should easily fall apart. That doesn't make it true, but it should be easy enough to disprove. Again, while the claims might be hard to verify, the basic facts listed in the document should not be. All of the other questions are reasonable things to ask that should make it easy to determine whether or not it is legitimate or obviously made up, but ultimately unless you see a tape I suspect you won't ever believe it. Democrats haven't had access to this report in any hardcopy way that could be distributed. If they had, I guarantee you it...would have leaked. The report was prepared as opposition research for an opponent of Trump. It would make sense to ask for supporting evidence rather than a collection of unsubstantiated claims if you actually wanted to use any of this against Trump during the election. It's very convenient for the author that he can't reveal any of his sources. Makes it way easier to just make shit up. Reid claimed he read the report before he made his claim during the election that the FBI was sitting on explosive information. The buzzfeed article claims that a MotherJones reporter also had access months ago. I'm surprised that the report wasn't leaked earlier. Quote The documents have circulated for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them. Mother Jones writer David Corn referred to the documents in a late October column. Harry Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson tweeted Tuesday that the former Senate Democratic leader had seen the documents before writing a public letter to FBI Director James Comey about Trump’s ties to Russia. And CNN reported Tuesday that Arizona Republican John McCain gave a “full copy” of the memos to Comey on Dec. 9, but that the FBI already had copies of many of the memos. Another interesting part of the Buzzfeed article: Quote The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians. CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Obama and Trump. Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors. The report misspells the name of one company, “Alpha Group,” throughout. It is Alfa Group. The report says the settlement of Barvikha, outside Moscow, is “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates.” It is not reserved for anyone, and it is also populated by the very wealthy. Probably got well paid for all this work. Who exactly commissioned the report? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mudguard Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 2 minutes ago, Mexal said: If the intelligence agencies weren't worried about the intel, they wouldn't have told the President and PEOTUS about it recently. It's clearly still being investigated given the timing of the briefing. I don't know if it's true but I wouldn't dismiss it. It looks to me like this was included in the briefing just to inform Trump that this information was floating around, not that any of the information was credible or that they were still looking into it. Wake me up when there's actually some verified information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Pepper Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 6 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said: I really do not care about Trump's sexual kinks. I do care about the steady reports of how many conflicts he does have with his business. That this was not discuss with any depth during the campagin was a major failure. Yeah, same. As long as his sexual partners are consenting adults, I don't give a fuck what he does in the bedroom. It's a funny Twitter hashtag (holy shit the lulz in that hastag!), but it's yet another fucking stupid useless story diverting attention from the real shit. The sad thing is that conservatives are more likely to have problems with this than with him being a sexual assaulter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 11 minutes ago, Mudguard said: The report was prepared as opposition research for an opponent of Trump. It would make sense to ask for supporting evidence rather than a collection of unsubstantiated claims if you actually wanted to use any of this against Trump during the election. It's very convenient for the author that he can't reveal any of his sources. Makes it way easier to just make shit up. That's true, and certainly possible. Another possibility is that it's correct. 11 minutes ago, Mudguard said: Reid claimed he read the report before he made his claim during the election that the FBI was sitting on explosive information. The buzzfeed article claims that a MotherJones reporter also had access months ago. I'm surprised that the report wasn't leaked earlier. I'm pretty surprised too. My suspicion is that the news groups were worried about litigation, and Democrats were basically told 'don't do this' by Obama. 11 minutes ago, Mudguard said: Another interesting part of the Buzzfeed article: Probably got well paid for all this work. Who exactly commissioned the report? I'm going to guess Cruz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gertrude Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 The Golden Shower show was performed specifically to defile the room Pres Obama liked to stay in Russia, so that's a net positive for his supporters and may even win him some fans. I have no doubt he will give us something to sink our teeth into once he has to start taking responsibility for his position, but this feels like distraction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 From the Buzzfeed article Quote Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government. Now this bugs me, the 'make up your own mind' thing. What my mind really wants to know if this info has any merit or not. Does it have any truth to it? How much? Is all of it false, part of it false or did all just come from some chan4 troll? I want to know what is real about this, not just make up my mind. My mind thinks the GS's is funny gossip, as the concept of rich men either paying for sex or having their business partners arrange a tryst is so common that it possibly could have happened. But so what. It's the rest I want to know about, not just decide that it's true because I really dislike Trump, or dismiss it out of hand because I refuse to believe it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Obviously we don't know for sure if this stuff is true or not yet, but why wouldn't Trump have something like this lurking? Is he a careful politician or has he ever been? Obama's speech was so great tonight. I am so sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LugaJetboyGirl Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 1 minute ago, Triskan said: Obama's speech was so great tonight. I am so sad. Everyone on FB is going on about how crying-apalooza they are right now. Must have been a pretty awesome speech. And yes, I am not surprised about the Trump thing at all. This is the guy who covers all his mistakes by suing people and making them go away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manhole Eunuchsbane Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 This really looks like Trump's version of Hillary's email "scandal". Much ado about nothing. Apparently, Harry Reid's office had this for months. John McCain had it for months. Seems to me if there was any meat on this bone, it would've already come to light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altherion Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 1 minute ago, Triskan said: Obviously we don't know for sure if this stuff is true or not yet, but why wouldn't Trump have something like this lurking? Is he a careful politician or has he ever been? No. However, if there was any credibility to this at all, it would have been used during the campaign. Given that the mainstream media doesn't want to touch this (CNN's article outright says that they've read the entire 35 pages, but won't comment because they can't prove anything), there does not appear to be anything there beyond allegations from intelligence officers. As I've said before, any competent intelligence agency should be capable of creating propaganda around a given individual -- this is part of their job. People like Trump or his aides travel a lot so it is not difficult to find a day when they are in the same city as some Russians, then research the hotel they stayed at and construct stories. Until there is proof, Trump & Co. can simply call this fake news and there's a high probability that it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
all swedes are racist Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Oh, it's almost certainly bullshit, and only serves as a distraction to keep people from realizing Mike Pence is actually the Zodiac Killer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Altherion - So it was just the liberal media? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altherion Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 11 minutes ago, Triskan said: Altherion - So it was just the liberal media? I'm not sure what you mean here. The mainstream part of the "liberal media" has restricted themselves to saying that there exist some vague allegations and isn't touching the actual allegations with a ten foot pole. Even the Huffington Post (which is somewhat more liberal and somewhat less mainstream) refuses to commit to them. This appears to be propagated by some mix of intelligence agencies and rumor/tabloid outlets. One of the sources in the Huffington Post article points this out: Quote Trump has been criticizing the intelligence community’s work on Russian interference in last year’s election. “My take is that this is the IC trolling Trump,” one former top intel official who works on Russia issues speculated. “Because Trump stupidly picked a fight with the IC, they’re just releasing stuff to generate bad headlines.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 12 minutes ago, Mudguard said: I think it's reasonable to assume that providing more people with health care coverage, particularly people with pre-existing conditions that were previously denied insurance, will lead to increased health care consumption and expenditures. In the grand scheme of things, the increase is probably relatively small, since an increase of say 10 million people getting healthcare out of 300 million people total is a relatively small percentage overall. It's reasonable to assume it if you assume no cost containment measures weren't put into place. Which they were. How effective they are or will be probably remains to be seen. One of the big ones was reforming Medicare Payments, which potentially has important spillovers in the rest of the healthcare industry. Also, the demand impact is likely to be perhaps smaller than some people think, as some people won't have to resort to using expensive emergency services when they are desperate. 12 minutes ago, Mudguard said: When people state that health care growth rates are lower now that the historically high period of the late 60's to the early 80's, that doesn't mean much to me. The growth rate was very large in the late 60's to early 70's due to the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid, and was high in the mid 70's to early eighties due to high economy wide inflation combined with multiple recessions. The current growth rate in health care expenditures, with or without the ACA, would be less than these historical highs. Okay, fine. Exclude everything before 1983. Looking at your paper that you cited it seems the average growth in medical expenditures from about 1983 - 2007, in 2009 Dollars, was about 5.1%. From 2008 to 2013 it looks like its about 2.4%. Now obviously some of that, maybe even all, is do to the fall in GDP growth. We'll see. The problem, I have, is that conservatives have been running around talking about rampant healthcare cost increases, as if they have a solid case, which they don't. It's not that I think the ACA is perfect. I don't. I think some fixes are going to be made. But, before this whole thing got started, conservatives were generally happy with our healthcare system, even though we were paying more for it, probably getting less, and not giving everyone a basic level of insurance. From this, it seems: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SHA That many of our European peers are averaging around 10% or 11% in terms of Health Care Spending/GDP and are doing just well as us in the healthcare department. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snake Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 7 minutes ago, Altherion said: I'm not sure what you mean here. The mainstream part of the "liberal media" has restricted themselves to saying that there exist some vague allegations and isn't touching the actual allegations with a ten foot pole. Even the Huffington Post (which is somewhat more liberal and somewhat less mainstream) refuses to commit to them. This appears to be propagated by some mix of intelligence agencies and rumor/tabloid outlets. One of the sources in the Huffington Post article points this out: I don't think the Donald is going to just take this though. I think there will become a serious rift between the WH and the IC. I'm curious as to what power the WH has over the CIA , the FBI and such. Can they just overhaul those agencies without congressional or senate approval? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 2 minutes ago, snake said: I don't think the Donald is going to just take this though. I think there will become a serious rift between the WH and the IC. I'm curious as to what power the WH has over the CIA , the FBI and such. Can they just overhaul those agencies without congressional or senate approval? Basically yes and no. Depends on the type of overhaul. If he's changing the organizational system, sure. If he's requesting budget changes, no. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snake Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 2 minutes ago, Kalbear said: Basically yes and no. Depends on the type of overhaul. If he's changing the organizational system, sure. If he's requesting budget changes, no. What I'm wondering is does his administration have the ability to start firing people if they want? To downsize so to speak? And could he set up another agency with powers to investigate those already in place or would he need approval for that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 He can hire and fire pretty well at will, especially now that the GOP has changed some of the rules of tenure and pension rights. I don't believe that POTUS can fire individual FBI or CIA agents, but they can basically request that the director does the firing. That said, it'd be well outside the norms to do so. He can't set up another agency without congressional support. He can set up task forces, but that would also require interagency support, which IIRC also requires congressional oversight and support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snake Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 As petty and as vindictive as Trump can get I expect in the first year of his administrations that heads are gonna role. Not angry tweets but some substantive measure, especially against the CIA. Hell, if I were the British government I'd be nervous. Gonna be interesting to watch the power struggle and see who wins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.