U.S. Politics: Gunnin' From The Long Arm of the Law

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Jared Kushner’s business dealings have drawn the attention of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a report CNN made Monday.

Mueller’s probe, which includes “any matters that arose or directly may arise” from his inquiry into Russian election meddling, previously focused on Kushner’s contacts with Russia. However, the CNN report says the special counsel’s team has been asking as of late about Kushner’s interactions with Chinese and Qatari investors during the presidential transition, when he was soliciting financial support for 666 Fifth Avenue. The Manhattan property, which Kushner Companies purchased in 2007, is more than $1.4 billion in debt. However, CNN reported that neither Mueller nor his team had reached out to Kushner Companies for interviews or information.

 

Robert Mueller Is Interested in Jared Kushner’s Contacts With Foreign Investors

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/mueller-investigation-expands-to-jared-kushners-contact-with-foreign-investors.html

[Jace, Extat]

Jack Kingston blaming George Soros for the upcoming Student rallies.

[Yukle]

38 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Robert Mueller Is Interested in Jared Kushner’s Contacts With Foreign Investors

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/mueller-investigation-expands-to-jared-kushners-contact-with-foreign-investors.html

I think everyone is.

I really wish there was somebody in the IRS who was happy to take the fall and leak Trump's returns. Or someone who was willing to pay for the legal fees of somebody who does. Or someone who is happy to pay for the relocation to a safe haven for someone who does.

Whatever it takes. Trump is hiding them, therefore we need to see them. Might as well take Kushner's, too.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Jack Kingston blaming George Soros for the upcoming Student rallies.

I was watching Jack Kingston the other night answering the question, why hasn't the president given instructions to the various security agencies to counteract the Russian meddling, after the head of the FBI testified he had not received any instructions from Trump. And why hasn't he said or tweeted anything against the Russians.

Kingston said, because unlike other presidents he doesn't telegraph what he's going to do, but you just wait and see, soon you'll find out what he's been doing, oh yah! He's been doing so much! You just don't know!

This seems to be the new Republican talking point. Some other guy who's a regular on CNN kept saying 'it doesn't matter what he says, it's what he does that matters'.

I guess Trump has rounded up all the 400 pound guys out of their New Jersey bedrooms and has them working in the WH basement, ready to unleash an attack on the Russians.

[LongRider]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

This seems to be the new Republican talking point. Some other guy who's a regular on CNN kept saying 'it doesn't matter what he says, it's what he does that matters'.

Ahhh, I see.  He golfs just to distract us from what he's really doing.   

 

or something, yeah, that's it

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

@Tywin et al. If I wanted you to know I had all the monies, you'd be dead.

Lies! Fake News! SAD!

[Kalbear]

12 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Hey, an interesting thought, caught like a butterfly of..whatever.  What you're talking about is proportionality vs. district "compact-ness" - or respecting county lines.  That's the entire point of Wasserman's 538 project - there'll be be tradeoffs.  Bet me and you could agree on the tradeoffs right quick.  Not sure about the voters.

I'm actually not. I'm talking about MMPR. Draw the districts however you choose. Elect them as normal. Then figure out the total percentages for each party, and pick an equal amount of representatives from party lists (of their choosing) such that it rebalances the percentages to be as close to what the 'real' percentage would have been. 

This is the way New Zealand does it, and it works splendidly in both giving smaller parties more representation, giving multiparties votes, and giving everyone a fairly close value of actual representation - while preserving whatever random districts you want. The districts become entirely irrelevant at that point as far as that goes. Even better, it actually gives parties real transactional power - and that makes parties stronger, and that makes stupid things happen a bit less often.

[Fragile Bird]

Ooooooooh, interesting indictment announcement!

A lawyer for a very blue chip New York law firm, Skadden, Arps, has a court appearance this afternoon where he's expected to plead guilty to lying to the FBI. The charge relates to one, ONE! email he failed to produce.

Quote

Alex Van Der Zwaan was charged Feb. 16 in federal court in Washington with lying to investigators about conversations related to a report he helped prepare on the trial of a Ukrainian politician, Yulia Tymoshenko. Van Der Zwaan was charged with a criminal information, which typically precedes a guilty plea.

 

Van Der Zwaan, identified on his LinkedIn page as an associate in the London office of Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom, was questioned regarding the firm’s work in 2012 on behalf of the Ukraine Ministry of Justice. He allegedly lied to investigators about his last communications with Richard Gates, who was indicted in October with ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort over their consulting work in Ukraine.

 

The lawyer also allegedly lied about his talks with someone else, referred to by the government as "Person A.” Van Der Zwaan deleted and failed to produce emails sought by the special counsel and a law firm, prosecutors said.

eta: The Skadden firm says they fired him last year. I assume that was after he told them he was being investigated and/or charged.

[Zorral]

5 hours ago, Shryke said:

This is literally the bad reasoning I'm talking about. The faults are still all there and just because this one version of the system has lasted longer then the others doesn't mean it's somehow avoided the inherent flaws. Things can limp along a long time before their faults bring them down.

 

This address nothing I said.

And not thinking about gerrymandering is foolish as hell. The US's issues with suppressing people's ability to be represented by their government is a huge problem, both for the stability and legitimacy of the government and for the ability to solve any other problem you might imagine cause to solve those issues you need to win.

  All along this system has been constructed for the wealthy elite to keep supreme control over those who are not the wealthy power elite -- to protect PROPERTY RIGHTS, not human rights.  This is as true in the colonial era as it has been ever since.  It's written into the constitution via the right to own slaves -- which of course, the framers were far too delicate and pearl clutching to use the actual term of the property there they were speaking of -- "other persons" -- with that loop hole of 'criminals and prisoners' having no rights including right of wages for work performed > Jim Crow, the present privatized incarceration industry.

Slavery and white supremacy and the vast resources and lands of a continent -- were the safety valves to deal with pressure points > genocide and stealing from the Natives.  But we've run out the vast resources, at least in ways that allow their exploitation without hurting the middle-classes, who do protest this going on in their backyards and recreational areas.

It hasn't worked well at all.  Read the accounts of the Gilded Age, the the constant boom and bust economy (to which we've been returned thanx to the Reagan and the the rethugs who worship him) that creates utter misery for most people.  Read the accounts of the progressive, reformist work that Eleanor Roosevelt and her coteries of wealthy, energetic educated club women did -- and which finally, they managed to get to FDR -- under the gun of desperation -- to follow after his Depression election -- and even then, African Americans and women were left out of it.

It hasn't worked as a political system.  It has worked as an economic system based on exploitation and vast lands and resources in which to do it -- and keep wages depressed.

This is what is so puzzling about the current Rethuggery re immigration, legal or illegal.  When the Civil Rights era got various reforms passed and got rid of segregation in pay and everything else, suddenly the US opened the country to immigration again, and turned a blind eye to undocumented immigration.  (This was also what happened after the end of slavery -- bring in the Chinese!)  This is how to keep the price of labor down. 

But now it's about getting rid of all these people -- who contribute, they really do -- enormously to this economy.  Which maybe means the rethugs and those who own them are all betting on robot labor right now -- which brings the end of human labor woes.

 Though who is going to buy anything, without money, one wonders how this will work out.  OTOH it doesn't take much at all to imagine a world in which everything is made and done for the obscenely wealthy, at least if one has an imagination that is shaped to some degree at least by Science Fiction.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Shryke said:

Obama did.

IDK if that’s true. Obama is more articulate and is a better orator, but Trump is great at playing to people’s emotions, especially their negative ones. If truth doesn’t matter, that’s a powerful weapon.

[mormont]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

IDK if that’s true. Obama is more articulate and is a better orator, but Trump is great at playing to people’s emotions, especially their negative ones. 

I don't know.

Trump has never successfully sold his story to as many people as Obama did his. His approval is both less widespread in the population at large, and more limited to particular groups within that population. Trump is less handicapped by things like telling the truth, but still less effective an orator than Obama IMO. 

[Ice Queen]

41 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ooooooooh, interesting indictment announcement!

A lawyer for a very blue chip New York law firm, Skadden, Arps, has a court appearance this afternoon where he's expected to plead guilty to lying to the FBI. The charge relates to one, ONE! email he failed to produce.

eta: The Skadden firm says they fired him last year. I assume that was after he told them he was being investigated and/or charged.

Van der Zwaan is the son in law of Russian oligarch German Khan, who has ties to Alfa Bank. (That's the bank that the servers in Trump Tower were pinging, but as far as I know, nothing ever came of that.) Now, van der Zwaan made a trip to Ukraine with Manafort (who has to be Person A) in an effort to show that Yanukovych's jailing of his rival Yulia Tymoshenko wasn't politically motivated. 

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Jack Kingston blaming George Soros for the upcoming Student rallies.

Holy shit, Jace, you have to put this shit in context. I just saw the segment repeated on CNN.

For those of you who have not seen it, Kingston pooh-pooh'd the rallies the students are organizing by saying 'it's so easy for these students to be hijacked by left wing groups'. He said 'who can believe 17 year olds can organize rallies like this'.

What a turd.

[LongRider]

44 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ooooooooh, interesting indictment announcement!

A lawyer for a very blue chip New York law firm, Skadden, Arps, has a court appearance this afternoon where he's expected to plead guilty to lying to the FBI. The charge relates to one, ONE! email he failed to produce.

Well this is interesting;

Quote

The son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan has been charged with making false statements to the FBI as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election....snip....Van Der Zwaan is also married to Eva Khan, the daughter of Russian oligarch German Khan, who last year sued the media outlet BuzzFeed for libel for publishing the "Trump Dossier."

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/mueller-unveils-new-charges-in-russia-probe-60576

[LongRider]

jfc

Quote

A North Carolina man with a felony conviction for indecent liberties with a child was one-half of the poster couple for a new "Trump Dating" website.

News outlets reported Monday that visitors to the dating site geared toward supporters of the president were greeted with the faces of Jodi and William Barrett Riddleberger, conservative activists involved in the Tea Party-inspired political action committee, Conservatives for Guilford County. The couple's exact role with the site is unclear.

State records show Riddleberger was convicted in 1995 on the charge stemming from filming sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was then 25.

 

[Fragile Bird]

6 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Van der Zwaan is the son in law of Russian oligarch German Khan, who has ties to Alfa Bank. (That's the bank that the servers in Trump Tower were pinging, but as far as I know, nothing ever came of that.) Now, van der Zwaan made a trip to Ukraine with Manafort (who has to be Person A) in an effort to show that Yanukovych's jailing of his rival Yulia Tymoshenko wasn't politically motivated. 

Geez, what Russian mother names her son 'German'? 

I see Khan sued Buzzfeed for publishing Christopher Steele's dossier. And told the press he saw the Godfather movies as a manual for life. You can't make up this shit.

It's becoming more and more clear why Manafort has been the focus of Mueller's investigation. We all remember the story about the RNC changing the language in their platform about Russian and the Ukraine. Maybe a pattern of tit for tat is appearing.

[Ice Queen]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Geez, what Russian mother names her son 'German'? 

I see Khan sued Buzzfeed for publishing Christopher Steele's dossier. And told the press he saw the Godfather movies as a manual for life. You can't make up this shit.

It's becoming more and more clear why Manafort has been the focus of Mueller's investigation. We all remember the story about the RNC changing the language in their platform about Russian and the Ukraine. Maybe a pattern of tit for tat is appearing.

Agreed. There is also the question of why Manafort offered to work for Trump FOR FREE. He was in serious trouble with Deripaska at the time, and I'm guessing that in an effort to reduce the amount of money he owed, he offered Deripaska (who has his mouth in Putin's ear) real-time information. Deripaska ended up suing Manafort, but I think that is still pending. He owes a ton of cash that he misspent or pocketed. 

And...Manafort handpicked Pence for VP. Why? 

Manfort has blood on his hands. His daughter had the right of it. 

[Jo498]

35 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Geez, what Russian mother names her son 'German'?

A Ukrainian Jewish mother. Hint: it is not pronounced like in English. (It could be a Russian version of the German name Herman(n). Russian has no H and they replace it with either G or KH. Or it could be something else, probably even less related to Germans/y)

[TrueMetis]

5 hours ago, Yukle said:

America's head of state and head of government are the same person: the president.

In Australia the head of state is the Queen (or governor-general in practice) and the head of government is the head of parliament, called the Prime Minister. This is also how Canada works.

In India the Prime Minister is head of government (and parliament) while the President is head of state.

It's common for nations to spread power between more than one person.

See I wouldn't call the PM head of parliament. The PM has some of the powers I would attribute to what would be the head of parliament, but the others are spread between the speakers and the GG.

Then, I had never actual heard the term "head of parliament" before seeing it here so maybe there's a specific meaning that makes the PM head of parliament even though his actual power over it isn't really that high.

[Ice Queen]

15 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

A Ukrainian Jewish mother. Hint: it is not pronounced like in English. (It could be a Russian version of the German name Herman(n). Russian has no H and they replace it with either G or KH. Or it could be something else, probably even less related to Germans/y)

What about Khan? Obvious Star Trek jokes aside, of course!