StrangeSox

Donald Trump Jr literally tweeted out proof that they at least attempted to collude with Russians to influence the election. Today a story on manafort came out that he offered to brief one of putting close allies on the inner details of the campaign. His idiot son in law tried to set up a communications channel that the intelligence community wouldn't be aware of through the Russian embassy. That stuff is all wapo nyt wsj etc reporting, not Reddit conspiracy nonsense.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 04:49 PM) I think it's worth noting how strategic the leaks have been. It wasn't leaked that Manafort was under surveillance since 2014 until yesterday when, at the same time, it was leaked that indictments are coming for him. They also leaked that there was a FISA warrant, so anything taped is actually admissible in court. This sure looks like a person who is running an investigation trying to make it publicly known that they have his conversations on tape so that the people on the other side of those conversations knows they are implicated in a counterintelligence operation and can face charges if they do not cooperate. That wasn't leaked at all until yesterday. I do think though that Donald Trump was told back in February, and that may have contributed to the "Obama wiretapped me!" claim on twitter. Entirely plausible that they did intercept some of his communications...legally, with a FISA warrant, and anything Donald Trump said in those conversations would be similarly admissible in court. They've also highlighted their growing financial crimes expertise and their cooperation with NY AG Schneiderman. This is potentially important because the President's pardon powers only apply to federal crimes.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 04:48 PM) "his entire campaign" is a bit of a stretch. Ok, just ignore my occasional use of hyperbole and address the issue. His campaign manager is at the center of this. His own son tweeted out proof that he, Manafort and Kushner willingly and eagerly met with Russians promising information on Clinton. If it's shown that one or more senior members of his campaign were definitely in bed with foreign agents and conspired with them to influence our elections, does it matter if Trump did not personally know? Wouldn't that just reward "won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest" plausible deniability while his subordinates carried everything out?

FWIW I think Fox News' ratings have dropped year-over-year while MSNBC's and CNN's have increased. Fox might still be number one, but who cares, all cable news is garbage.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 04:39 PM) Thing is no one that I've read/heard actually thinks Trump did any of this personally. And given the massive leaks that came out of his admn from even before he took office, i'd honestly be very shocked if any evidence came out that he did. Does it matter if Trump didn't do it personally if his entire campaign apparatus was working with a foreign power to undermine our elections and get him into office? That still would challenge the whole legitimacy of the election. To answer K's question, I don't think Congress will do anything beyond expressing "grave concerns," and his base will flatly refuse to believe any of it.

Manafort offered to give Russian billionaire ‘private briefings’ on 2016 campaign https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/man...475e_story.html Mueller casts broad net in requesting extensive records from Trump White House

I've got some exciting news for you about Bernie Sanders, friend! (millions of more people have coverage under ACA, and the tens of millions who already had coverage have much better protections)

No, Tebow was 100% McDaniels. http://grantland.com/the-triangle/josh-mcd...all-todd-haley/

100% power loss in PR

at least it's honest. gotta blow up health care despite having many, many reasons not to because we campaigned on this for years.

Speaking of phishing schemes, Equifax's twitter account is sending out links to phishing sites. **DO NOT GO TO THE WEBSITE SHOWN, IT IS A FAKE PHISHING WEBSITE** as of this posting, the tweet was still up

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 11:25 AM) Again, any president in the past 15 years saying that military strikes are on the table is talking about the destruction of the regime in NK, and implicit in that is the whole country will be affected/destroyed. "Genocide" is a nice bit of editorializing btw. What do you imagine "total destruction" of a country results in if not genocide? And again, you're missing a pretty important distinction between 'acknowledging the the US has a powerful military' and threatening that it will become necessary to commit genocide.

Russians Appear to Use Facebook to Push Pro-Trump ‘Flash Mobs’ in Florida

No one had said that genocide of North Korea will become necessary, period.

The message is something new, though. It's been obvious since the 50's that the US possessed the capability to totally destroy North Korea. Pointing that out isn't the problem, here. The message that we may have "no choice" but to commit massive genocide is. That's not jumping to some sort of extreme. It's what the President of the United States said to the United Nations yesterday. There was no reason to believe past presidents would actually launch a preemptive nuclear attack on North Korea, and they clearly laid out the case why that would be bad. The annual military exercises with SK are a show of force and a way to make a military threat without promising genocide. Trump is doing the exact opposite and is trying to make the case that genocide will become necessary. There's also something different between saying that military attacks are possible (though a very bad idea) and promising "total destruction" of a country. Do not gloss over what that statement means. That means many millions of people dead.

Trump's pre-hyping this announcement means he's definitely going to scrap the deal, giving Iran every incentive to spin their nuclear program back up. edit: and every other country no reason to trust our diplomacy and international agreements since there's always the chance we elect another idiot reality TV conman who will torpedo everything out of spite and stupidity

'We have the capability to do this, but it would be bad for reasons X and Y' versus 'We will have no choice but to commit genocide and kick off yet another major refugee crisis' Those are actually two very different things. Pretending that things are never actually different and that both sides are actually always equally bad/wrong is part of the reason why our politics is so broken. Obama (and Bush and Clinton before him) did not issue a threat that said we would have no choice but to commit genocide; Trump did. This wasn't a threat to take out Kim, or to destroy their nuclear capabilities or something like that, as bad as those options may be. It was a threat to "totally destroy" the country.

We basically only use our (entry level Nikon) DSLR on vacations/trips, but we can get way better shots with it in those situations than we could get from a camera phone. Especially for good close-ups of wildlife, or action shots of birds. You need that long focal length and you'll never get that on a camera phone. For organizing, phone photos aren't really, but we just create separate folders for each trip and have a similar backup system to what jenks described. We also go through and upload most of them to shutterfly, again organized by album.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 09:19 AM) I think you're going a little overboard here. Yes, Trump is more direct and threatening about it, but it's not like that hasn't been said before by a US President. Obama used those very words (edit: albeit not in front of the UN assembly), and I think dating back to Clinton the threat of military force has always been put out there. That said, this picture summed up the whole speech to me. Acknowledging the possibility and existence of military force and threatening to "totally destroy" a country of 25 million people, in addition to whatever damage SK and Japan would face plus the humanitarian crisis it'd kick off as refugees flooded into SK and China, is different from what any past President has said. Don't buy into the bulls*** quote-mining that the WH is engaging in on what Obama said. The rest of the quote and the context of the speech as well as Trump's previous statements makes it clearly different. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix...y-even-for-him/ And f*** John Kelly and his "shamed head hanging." He's 100% complicit in this.

they might want to take a look at who the driver would be in that analogy given that one party keeps openly and loudly talking about deliberately sabotaging the health care markets. I like Inhofe's argument that cutting billions of dollars in funding will just somehow magically be made better via block granting it to the states, as if that somehow regenerates billions of dollars. Pure ideology [or bad faith bulls*** and he's more than happy to kill thousands of Americans a year and bankrupt many more].

GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does.

Probably Ghaddafi or some other dictator like that. But the coverage of Trump's threat to genocide an entire nation of people is phrased with "tough words" and "strong message."

Jimmy Kimmel on Sen. Cassidy lying right to his face about health care. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jimmy-...th-care-n802896

Maria is bearing down in Puerto Rico right now, intense winds in San Juan

Greg, the words you think were nice to fight back with was a threat of genocide. A threat to kill 25 million people. The President of the United States went to the United Nations for the first time and threatened to wipe out an entire country. Think about that next time before you praise someone for 'talking tough'