The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[W. Niederhut]

11 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Be careful what you wish for Bob and William.

Those nutty neo Nazis we backed in Ukraine are about to light tinder to a conflagration they will lose in spades.

If that happens, Joe will have no one to blame but himself.  He was Obama's man on this one.  Will Hunter be sent in again to make 80 K a month to clean up the debris that is left of Ukraine?

 

I agree that it's a tinderbox.

My point is that Putin's Russian Federation, itself, is essentially a fascist police state.  We should have no illusions.

I have experienced this personally, as a long-time member of the old ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.)

What is happening now in the Russian Federation and parts of Eastern Europe is reminiscent of Western Europe in the 1930s-- a devolution from liberal democracy to fascism.

And Putin has openly scoffed at the viability of liberal democracy on the planet, while poisoning Navalny and sending him to the Gulag.

The other deplorable side of the coin is our misguided, imperialistic U.S. Project for a New American Century since 2001.  

Is there a viable diplomatic solution to the conflict between U.S./NATO imperialism and Russian hegemony?

[Andrew Prutsok]

Isn't the Navalny character an actual poopoo (as opossed to essentially being one) who probably deserves what he gets?

[James DiEugenio]

7 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Trumpy, Trump, Trumpism to its logical conclusion:

Trump-loving Virginia candidate attacks her own party and tells followers not to trust its vote counts

by Brad Reed April 15, 2021

https://www.rawstory.com/amanda-chase-2652591837/

“Chase, a Republican candidate for Virginia governor who in the past has been forced to work from inside a plexiglass box over her refusal to obey the state legislature's mask rules, told her followers that the Virginia GOP will not deliver the "proper" results of its own upcoming gubernatorial convention, where she's pitted against six other Republican candidates.

"DO NOT TRUST THE PARTY TO DELIVER ACCURATE RESULTS!" reads the email, which was posted on Twitter by The Virginia Mercury's Graham Moomaw. "Who should you go to for the proper results? Me and my campaign!"

Chase also said her followers would know that the election was fixed if one of her rivals defeated her.”

 

Thank you former Guy Mr. MAGA Man.

 

Steve Thomas

Steve, that is really a good catch.  This is what Trump has done to his own party.

[W. Niederhut]

      Well, I'm shocked, shocked to hear that there was collusion going on between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin in 2016.   🤥

The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence - The Washington Post

Edited April 15, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

      Well, I'm shocked, shocked to hear that there was collusion going on between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin in 2016.   🤥

The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence - The Washington Post

WaPo, like the NYT most of the time wants me to subscribe.  All I can read is the title and "So much for the 'Russia hoax' hoax".  So the "hoax" wasn't a hoax after all?  A bit more than a nothing burger?  Maybe 3 big mac's with cheese, like he served the National Champ's? 

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

WaPo, like the NYT most of the time wants me to subscribe.  All I can read is the title and "So much for the 'Russia hoax' hoax".  So the "hoax" wasn't a hoax after all?  A bit more than a nothing burger?  Maybe 3 big mac's with cheese, like he served the National Champ's? 

Here's the text, Ron.  This WaPo article was written by Phillip Bump.

The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence - The Washington Post

April 15, 2021

From the first moments that the report on Russian interference in the 2016 election compiled by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team became public two years ago, it was obvious where it contained gaps. The report itself documented the places where questions were unhappily left unanswered, a function of reticence from relevant parties or of encrypted communications or, at times, of witnesses being unavailable for interview.

In that latter group was a man named Konstantin Kilimnik.

Kilimnik, who was indicted by Mueller’s team, sat at the center of one of the more obvious places where the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump might have intersected with Russia’s efforts to get Trump elected. Kilimnik had worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for years before Manafort joined the campaign effort despite (or perhaps because of) his sketchy connections to Russia. One of Manafort’s primary clients in the years before his volunteering to work for Trump without pay was a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Their mutual colleague Rick Gates told various people that he believed Kilimnik was a “spy,” according to Mueller’s report, but that didn’t keep the three from sharing information during the campaign — while both Gates and Manafort worked directly for Trump.

On Aug. 2, 2016, with Manafort running the Trump campaign and Gates serving as his deputy, the three met at a cigar club in midtown Manhattan. Beforehand, Manafort had asked Gates to print out campaign polling data, information that Manafort apparently gave Kilimnik that evening.

Mueller’s report describes the meeting:

“They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states. Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.”

At another point, the report goes into more detail about that ongoing exchange of information.

“Manafort instructed Rick Gates, his deputy on the Campaign and a longtime employee, to provide Kilimnik with updates on the Trump Campaign — including internal polling data, although Manafort claims not to recall that specific instruction. Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska. Gates periodically sent such polling data to Kilimnik during the campaign.”

The “Deripaska” referred to is Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a former client of Manafort’s whom the campaign chairman had been eager to impress with his position on the campaign. (Hours after the Aug. 2 meeting, a plane belonging to Deripaska landed in New Jersey; his team denies any link to the meeting.

This was as close as Mueller got to demonstrating a connection between Trump’s campaign and the Russian effort to aid his candidacy, an effort that included both a bid to influence public opinion using social media and the release of data stolen from the Democratic Party and a senior staffer for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent. It left unanswered two questions: How close was Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and what did he do with the polling information he’d received?

The Mueller report acknowledged both uncertainties, writing that “Because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the [special counsel’s team] could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it.”

Last year, one of those questions was answered. A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee identified Kilimnik explicitly as an agent of the Russian government: “Kilimnik,” it read, “is a Russian intelligence officer.”

At another point, the report brushes up against the second question.

“The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” it read. The GRU is the intelligence arm of the Russian military and has been identified as the group that stole the information from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman that was later released by WikiLeaks. The implication, then, is that there was not only a connection between Kilimnik and Russia broadly but specifically to the team directly involved in the interference effort.

On April 15, President Biden announced sanctions and the expulsion of Russian officials as consequences for Russia’s interference in the 2020 election. (The Washington Post)

On Thursday, the Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions against the Russian government linked to its apparent hack of U.S. government networks. But the news release also included a statement clearly answering our second question above.

“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the statement read.

“Kilimnik has also sought to assist designated former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. At Yanukovych’s direction, Kilimnik sought to institute a plan that would return Yanukovych to power in Ukraine,” it read.

Yanukovych was a member of the pro-Russian party for which Manafort had worked, the Party of Regions.

That one sentence, though, appears to finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence. It goes like this, according to the aggregated information compiled by various parts of the government:

• Trump hires
• Manafort to run his campaign. Manafort then orders
• Gates, his deputy, to provide polling and strategy information to
• Kilimnik, their longtime colleague and, according to the Senate committee, a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik then shares that information with
• Russian intelligence agents.

It’s important to note that there is 1) no evidence at this point that Trump knew about the sharing of that information or 2) that Russia did much with the information it obtained. There were targeted ads from Russian actors during the campaign, but there remains no good evidence that those ads were targeted with insider information (much less well-targeted in general) nor that they had much of an effect.

What is instead revealed is that the government’s concern about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia — links that extended to other members of Trump’s team — was in this case probably warranted. Manafort’s presence in the campaign prompted head-scratching from the outset, given his ties to various international ne’er-do-wells. He had been on the radar of federal intelligence agencies for years. It’s not surprising, then, that this link should be demonstrated. It just took awhile for the line to be drawn as clearly as it was Thursday morning.

Among the reasons that Mueller’s team couldn’t draw that line clearly in the first place was that Manafort misled investigators (spurring false-statement charges) and otherwise refused to offer a detailed assessment of his time on the campaign.

Two days before Christmas last year, Trump, by then a lame duck, granted Manafort a pardon.

[Bob Ness]

On 4/14/2021 at 9:49 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Be careful what you wish for Bob and William.

Those nutty neo Nazis we backed in Ukraine are about to light tinder to a conflagration they will lose in spades.

If that happens, Joe will have no one to blame but himself.  He was Obama's man on this one.  Will Hunter be sent in again to make 80 K a month to clean up the debris that is left of Ukraine?

 

Just exactly who is lighting the box Jim?? You still insisting that the Crimea invasion was all a black flag op?? Give me a break.

Your pal Putin has shown exactly what he is and anyone who is still defending him is probably still defending Trump too.

Hunter? Really? Why do you think it's unusual for him to be on the board of a company? It's common. Ask William Shatter about how much he got for Priceline.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Bob Ness

[Jeff Carter]

10 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

Just exactly who is lighting the box Jim?? You still insisting that the Crimea invasion was all a black flag op?? Give me a break.

Your pal Putin has shown exactly what he is and anyone who is still defending him is probably still defending Trump too.

Bob, the Cold War ended in 1991. Even if some apparatchiks in the State Dept and NATO hdq feel compelled to start it all up again, the rest of us don't have to go along. Chill out.

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Prosecutors secure first guilty plea in Capitol riot cases (aol.com)

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Justice Department sues Trump ally Roger Stone, alleging millions in unpaid taxes (nbcnews.com)

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Last Witness to President Abraham Lincoln Assassination I've Got A Secret - YouTube

 

Viewer comments: magine had he lived just 7 years longer, he'd have lived through JFK's assassination as well. That would've been insane.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

Justice Department sues Trump ally Roger Stone, alleging millions in unpaid taxes (nbcnews.com)

 

chance-card-vintage-monopoly-go-directly-to-jail-design-turnpike.jpg (600×428) (fineartamerica.com)

[Bob Ness]

14 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob, the Cold War ended in 1991. Even if some apparatchiks in the State Dept and NATO hdq feel compelled to start it all up again, the rest of us don't have to go along. Chill out.

What are you talking about? Are you serious Jeff? Novichok anyone? There's more FSB/SVR/GRU in the states now than there ever were KGB etc during the cold war.

When a "democratically elected" leader of a country seizes control over the military, judicial, intelligence and law enforcement agencies of their country what do YOU call that Jeff? Fascists maybe?

Your uninterrupted, slavish devotion to Putin and the Russian Federation without questioning any of their actions or policies is ridiculous. Bot-like. I've never defended the shenanigans the US has engaged in to the extent you do the Russ-Fed.

[Steve Thomas]

America First Caucus Policy Platform

pages 1 - 7

 

https://punchbowl.news/wp-content/uploads/America-First-Caucus-Policy-Platform-FINAL-2.pdf

 

If you ever wanted to know what xenophobia means, read this document.

 

Steve Thomas

[W. Niederhut]

6 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

America First Caucus Policy Platform

pages 1 - 7

 

https://punchbowl.news/wp-content/uploads/America-First-Caucus-Policy-Platform-FINAL-2.pdf

 

If you ever wanted to know what xenophobia means, read this document.

 

Steve Thomas

More evidence that the Trump GOP is a fascist party predicated mainly on white identity politics.  Us vs. Them.

They can't very well get elected on the basis of their real agenda-- cutting taxes for billionaires and de-regulating corporate polluters and profiteers.