U.S. Politics: The Ideas of Mueller

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

What? With no trial and no debate? That's fucking crazy. We duly elected those judges and they have no right to do that without OUR say so just because they're throwing a two year old hissy fit.

Technically the trial and debate is in the Senate.  The impeachment process described is analogous to the impeachment process at the federal level - majority in the House to impeach and 2/3 in the Senate to convict after a "trial."

2 hours ago, Week said:

Essentially, can they reverse the decision or is this a punitive measure?

As others have said, it'd be wholly punitive.  If the legislature could reverse the court's decisions through impeachment, that's some really shitty constitutional design.

Anyway, who knows if they're actually gonna convict.  I don't follow state politics - studying national politics for a living is depressing enough - but my assumption is they're not really going to remove 4/7 of the Supreme Court, if only because it'd kill their reelection prospects.  Either way, let's not jump to conclusions. 

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Nix suspended as CEO of Cambridge Analytica -- but the whole damn shebang is still open for business, so, so what?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/20/cambridge-analytica-suspends-ceo-alexander-nix

What's as least as interesting as anything else in these exposés, is the utter contempt Cambridge Analytica has for the people who hire them, equal to contempt in which they hold the targets they're aimed at -- politicians are all stupid, they say and utterly tech ignorant. CA can do anything and nobody knows and nobody can figure it out, much less hold them responsible.

Yet, Hillary Clinton and her people figured it out, but she was called 'sour grapes' and 'crooked Hillary' who was stealing the election. From her book (which I bought and read):

 

To the point about Nix being suspended, seems like he's been suspended from a shell company, not SCL, which he's CEO of.

And then this...

 

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Actually, public nomenclature has generally shifted towards 'black'. I've actually never met a black dude who wanted to be called an African American. I did know one chick though, she would say Afro American. Which was fucking hilarious, she'd slip that shit into conversation and you could see peoples' heads kinda jerk when they were like 'what the fuck?'

But I digress. Not attacking, not snarking, not being an internet person. Just passing it on.

See body of the text that includes lower case 'blacks and jews' as they -- white people -- would say back in the Roosevelt days, yanno?  On nothing but politically correct and forefend to offend anyone -- except when they do -- it's "blacks, African Americans, people of color, poor blacks, high achieving African Americans" and all like that.  While uptown it isn't unusual for men particularly, of certain groups to refer to themselves as "African" whether or not they have any relatives who live in Africa.  I dunno, referring to some musicians as 'black' in New Orleans -- or in Haiti or the DR -- will be considered a mortal insult (which remains true within the DR community on the other side of uptown), whereas Donald Harrison does use African American.   

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

See body of the text that includes lower case 'blacks and jews' as they -- white people -- would say back in the Roosevelt days, yanno?  On nothing but politically correct and forefend to offend anyone -- except when they do -- it's "blacks, African Americans, people of color, poor blacks, high achieving African Americans" and all like that.  While uptown it isn't unusual for men particularly, of certain groups to refer to themselves as "African" whether or not they have any relatives who live in Africa.  I dunno, referring to some musicians as 'black' in New Orleans -- or in Haiti or the DR -- will be considered a mortal insult (which remains true within the DR community on the other side of uptown), whereas Donald Harrison does use African American.   

Huh, fair. I guess I've become insulated in my West Coast privilege as to the latter note.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

58 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Ralph Peters, retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News contributor quit Tuesday. Here is his letter to his colleagues.

 

It’s good that he finally came around, but I must question his abilities as an intelligence officer if it took him a decade to figure out what Fox is. I did appreciate the knife twist at the end though.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Actually, public nomenclature has generally shifted towards 'black'. I've actually never met a black dude who wanted to be called an African American. I did know one chick though, she would say Afro American. Which was fucking hilarious, she'd slip that shit into conversation and you could see peoples' heads kinda jerk when they were like 'what the fuck?'

But I digress. Not attacking, not snarking, not being an internet person. Just passing it on.

I’ve got a buddy who I worked on a few campaigns with who refers to himself as a “formerly disabled bi-curious Afro-Columbian cis gender male” when people ask him about his ethnicity.

He’s a blast at parties….

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’ve got a buddy who I worked on a few campaigns with who refers to himself as a “formerly disabled bi-curious Afro-Columbian cis gender male” when people ask him about his ethnicity.

He’s a blast at parties….

God I love my black brothers and sisters. As one of my best friends ever once said "Well I guess when you grow up in a culture of subjugation and discrimination based on the color of your skin you develop a certain disdain for labels."

That's a direct quote that I have written in my journal because it was one of the first txt messages I ever received on the LG Chocolate.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Did this story get any coverage when it broke? I know I would have remembered reading this:

Quote

Among Donald Trump’s debts—the source of some of his most intractable conflicts of interest—is a mystery loan that Trump has not publicly explained. And this means that the president could have a secret creditor to whom he owes tens of millions of dollars.

According to Trump’s financial disclosure records and various news reports, Trump is carrying hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. These transactions could provide his creditors with leverage over the new commander-in-chief. Moreover, it would be difficult for Trump to refinance or modify the terms of his various loans without raising suspicion that he is receiving favorable treatment because of his position. (Imagine a bank gives him a good rate. Would this suggest it might receive preferential treatment from the US government Trump heads?) Because Trump has refused to release his tax returns, it’s impossible for the public to know exactly how much he owes and to whom. And Trump never kept his campaign promise to reveal all his creditors and obligations.

The financial disclosure form he filed last year did note more than a dozen loans totaling at least $713 million. But the full amount could be more. And buried in the paperwork is a puzzling debt that ethics experts say could suggest that Trump has a major creditor he has not publicly identified.

According to the disclosure, in 2012, Trump borrowed more than $50 million from a company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. (The true value of the loan could be much higher; the form requires Trump only to state the range of the loan’s value, and he selected the top range, “over $50,000,000.”) Elsewhere in the same document, Trump notes that he owns this LLC. That is, he made the loan to himself. There’s nothing necessarily unusual about that.

Here’s where the situation gets odd. With Trump owning the Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC—and the LLC being owed $50 million or more by Trump—this company should be listed on Trump’s disclosure as worth at least that much, unless it has debt offsetting this amount. Yet on Trump’s latest disclosure form, Chicago Unit Acquisition is not listed at all. The disclosure rules say that any asset worth more than $1,000 must be noted. So this is the mystery: Why is this Trump-owned firm that holds a $50 million-plus note from Trump not worth anything?

Buried in the paperwork is a puzzling debt that ethics experts say could mean Trump has a major creditor he has not publicly revealed.

The answer could be that Chicago Unit Acquisition has its own debts that cancel out its value, says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who specializes in government and corporate ethics. In other words, Trump’s LLC could owe $50 million and possibly much more to one or more creditors that have not been disclosed to the public. Though the president essentially could be on the hook to some entity or some person for over $50 million, the financial disclosure rules do not require Trump to list the loans and liabilities of companies he owns. (He only has to reveal his personal loans.)

“I think the American people are at risk because we don’t know know with whom Donald Trump is entangled financially,” Clark says. “If I owe a lot of money to someone, I will probably want to do what I can to keep that person or institution happy. We don’t know the terms of this debt and we don’t know whether Donald Trump will be tempted to look out for his own financial interest in addressing the concerns of his creditor, whoever that is.”

A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that Trump pays a minimum of $4.4 million a year in interest in connection with his loan from Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. His disclosure form states he pays the prime interest rate plus 5 percent for this loan. (Consequently, Chicago Unit Acquisition would have at least that much in annual revenue, though none is reported.) And the Journal report deepened the mystery. It noted that it had paid two research firms to search for paperwork connected to this loan, but both came up empty-handed.

In a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Trump briefly addressed the loan. He said that he had purchased the debt, via Chicago Unit Acquisition, from a group of banks he had previously borrowed from. Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, would not discuss with the Times why Trump had not simply retired the debt and instead was continuing to pay interest on it. “I am not sure it’s appropriate for us to discuss our sort of internal financial reasoning behind transactions in the press,” Greenblatt told the Times. “It’s really personal corporate trade secrets, if you will. Neither newsworthy or frankly anybody’s business.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/does-trump-have-mystery-creditor/

TL;DR: Trump is using a company he owns to possibly (ha!) repay creditors in excess of $50m and he's doing it in this manner to keep them hidden.

Ya know, not like a problem at all for the President to be doing.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did this story get any coverage when it broke? I know I would have remembered reading this:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/does-trump-have-mystery-creditor/

TL;DR: Trump is using a company he owns to possibly (ha!) repay creditors in excess of $50m and he's doing it in this manner to keep them hidden.

Ya know, not like a problem at all for the President to be doing.  

I think Trump is milking the Federal Government for all the money he can.  I think that's why he wanted the Presidency.  It is a money generating scheme to keep his "businesses" afloat a bit longer.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did this story get any coverage when it broke? I know I would have remembered reading this:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/does-trump-have-mystery-creditor/

TL;DR: Trump is using a company he owns to possibly (ha!) repay creditors in excess of $50m and he's doing it in this manner to keep them hidden.

Ya know, not like a problem at all for the President to be doing.  

No, I don't think it did. Might have gotten coverage on Maddow but I don't watch her enough to know. Other than that, haven't seen it anywhere else. I think I posted it here though and we glossed over it since there was no "answer".

[Rippounet]

17 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I think Trump is milking the Federal Government for all the money he can.  I think that's why he wanted the Presidency.  It is a money generating scheme to keep his "businesses" afloat a bit longer.

Nah, I'm still with the people who think he didn't really want it. His original plan was to raise the value of his personal brand to make money.
Of course, now that he's in the WH he's doing everything he can to profit from it. But I don't think this was the original plan.

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

Nah, I'm still with the people who think he didn't really want it. His original plan was to raise the value of his personal brand to make money.
Of course, now that he's in the WH he's doing everything he can to profit from it. But I don't think this was the original plan.

Agreed. My man 50 laid it out pretty plainly on the Colbert show.

[all swedes are racist]

ah yes, the guy who said “obama tried to romance putin but got date raped”

oops, that’s to the peters news @Mexal posted earlier

[DMC]

So both Graham and Flake suggested today impeachment is on the table if Trump fires Mueller:

Quote

First, when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday morning if firing Mueller would be an impeachable offense, Graham responded, “Probably so, if he did it without cause.”

“I think what the president will have done is stopped an investigation in[to] whether or not his campaign colluded with the Russians, what effect the Russians had on the 2016 campaign. I can’t see it being anything other than a corrupt purpose,” Graham added. “To stop investigation without cause, I think, would be a constitutional crisis.”

Later in the day, the Washington Post’s Robert Costa asked Flake a similar question, and the Arizona senator responded, “To fire Mueller without cause, I don’t know if there is any other remedy left to the legislative branch.”

Flake went on: “If [Trump] fires [Mueller] without cause, how different is that from what Nixon did with the Saturday Night Massacre? He left before impeachment came, but that was the remedy then and that would be the remedy now.”

So, taking them at their word, only taking back the House and 16 votes to go!  ...Otherwise known as a third of the GOP caucus.  Oh, and Flake's vote doesn't really count since he'll be retired by the time the Dems could take back the House.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Nah, I'm still with the people who think he didn't really want it.

I tend to agree.  Since I mentioned Fredo and the Trumps yesterday, I think the former's most famous scene just about sums up Trump's impetus to run:

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Nah, I'm still with the people who think he didn't really want it. His original plan was to raise the value of his personal brand to make money.
Of course, now that he's in the WH he's doing everything he can to profit from it. But I don't think this was the original plan.

He may not have “really” wanted the Presidency but he’s going to milk it as long as he can.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, unpaid comintern said:

ah yes, the guy who said “obama tried to romance putin but got date raped”

oops, that’s to the peters news @Mexal posted earlier

For sure. Peters is his own special brand of meh. But what he did is admirable and I wish more Fox News contributors would.

[Mexal]

Just normal diplomacy...

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Bolton, who visited the White House last week, would also be the latest Trump official with ties to GOP megadonor Robert Mercer, a key supporter of Trump’s presidential bid and investor in Cambridge Analytica who is also the largest donor to Bolton’s super PAC.

“All of this makes clear that the Supreme Court was wrong in Citizens United when it unleashed big money in our elections with the promise it would be independent of candidates and office holders,” said Paul Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause.

Bolton’s super PAC was among the first political committees to report paying Cambridge Analytica, the voter profiling company in which Mercer is an investor.

 

John Bolton’s Cambridge Analytica Connection
The embattled data firm earned more than $1.1 million from Bolton’s super PAC.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/john-boltons-cambridge-analytica-connection.html

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

And since Democrats aren’t about to support another tax cut for the rich — zero supported the last one — they’re stuck for this term.

Or are they? The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reports that Kudlow is interested in applying an inflation index to the capital gains tax. “Some believe Potus could do it as exec order,” he told Rubin via email.

The policy Kudlow is describing would reduce the amount of taxable income paid by people who receive income from capital gains (mostly, by selling stock). As it stands, right now, if you bought $1,000 worth of stock, and sold it ten years later for $1,500, you would pay tax on the $500 you gained.

 

Trump Economist Wants to Give Rich People Another Tax Break, Without a Vote in Congress

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/kudlow-wants-new-tax-cut-for-rich-without-vote-in-congress.html

[all swedes are racist]

lol welp http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/379439-holocaust-denier-wins-gop-nomination-in-heavily-democratic-seat?amp&__twitter_impression=true