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Haven't seen a one talking about their recent elections. GOP election deniers on the other hand.
'Prioritizing'? Load a crap. You idiots hyperbolize everything.
Name them and when they said it. The CURRENT election deniers are in the GOP House and in..........court.
Let's see, what wine pairs best with cerebellum?
Let's see, what wine pairs best with cerebellum?
Let's see, what wine pairs best with cerebellum?
'Corporate party' is a meaningless term in light of the disparities in economic performance between the two Parties documented and posted here.
GOP OWNS the recessions, poor job creation, lower GDP and lower stock market performance. Corporations did better under the Dems and SO did the middle and lower classes.
Weirdness is too big an umbrella and smacks of old man 'now back in my day.....' crap.
Weirdness has not ruined the economy, blown a pandemic response, taken away freedom of choice, incited an insurrection nor handed the country a presidential candidate with multiple indictments.
You have neither a high moral ground to stand on nor an economic record to crow about either.
No call for insurrection from any of 'em, nor any violent attempt to interfere with certification of election results either, so false equivalence call on you; 15 yards and loss of down.
SCOTUS stopped the vote count in FL and in a partisan GOP vote awarded FL and the presidency to Bush. Thank you SCOTUS for 9/11 and the Great Recession.
'Got weird'? Weirder than the conspiracy theory centric GOP? Weider than Margie and Sloebert? Weirder AND more dangerous than 'stop the steal' and the rest of the GOP authoritarian wannabe theocratic crap?
As for the 'corporate Party'? Like so much of what you assert, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny
There’s no longer a business-friendly political party
Rick Newman·Senior Columnist
Updated Mon, May 15, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-no-longer-a-business-friendly-political-party-195432346.html
For decades, the Republican Party was corporate America’s BFF.
CEOs could count on Republicans to keep taxes low and regulations light—and largely let businesses govern themselves. Businesses returned the favor by filling Republican coffers with millions of dollars in campaign donations.
That cozy relationship tensed up during the Trump administration.
In one sense, President Donald Trump behaved as a traditional Republican, by cutting business taxes and slashing regulation. But he also launched trade wars against China and other economic partners, which gummed up supply chains and raised costs for thousands of US businesses. Trump also mounted unprecedented personal attacks against companies that didn’t do his bidding or somehow failed his loyalty tests.
Trump’s selective hostility to business has now escalated into a Republican broadside against virtually any company that violates the party’s new unwritten code of cultural regression. Republican culture-warriors label this a “war on wokeness,” or pushback against excessive cultural sensitivity. But nobody really knows what wokeness means, and Republicans are using that vagueness to attack any business that threatens their grip on power, or their pathway to it.
The seminal spectacle in the GOP’s breakup with business is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s battle with the Walt Disney Co., which is one of Florida’s largest employers and its single biggest taxpayer. DeSantis went after Disney last year, when it opposed a bill he backed that would restrict what Florida schools can teach young kids about sex and gender. DeSantis could have been a normal politician and let Disney take whatever stance it felt was necessary to appease its customers, employees, and shareholders. The law passed, despite Disney’s objections, so DeSantis got what he wanted.
But DeSantis was a sore winner, and he revoked Disney’s self-governing status near its Orlando theme park. He tried to punish the company in other ways, too. Disney punched back with a legal maneuver to reclaim its municipal independence. DeSantis has vowed a fight to the death, and litigation could go on for years.
For what? Certainly not for any business-related principle. DeSantis is basically trying to use one of the world’s most famous brands as a foil in his campaign to become America’s culture-warrior-in-chief.
DeSantis picked a dumb fight with Disney that he could very well lose. Yet other Republicans seem to think the DeSantis-style war on wokeness is such a winning strategy they’re copying it. Some House Republicans are looking for ways to punish Disney beyond Florida, at the federal level. Republicans also hope to wage a “war on woke capitalism” as a part of their 2024 campaign to seize control of Congress and the White House.
Several Republican-led states, including Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, and North Dakota, have enacted rules or laws restricting state investments in money-managing firms that practice ESG investing, which means they take environmental, sustainability and governance into account when choosing which firms to do business with. That’s meant to punish Wall Street giants such as BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase that are pushing ESG as an ethical and savvy way to invest.
Then there are Republican efforts to break up or dismantle tech firms such as Facebook and Google. Montana recently banned TikTok, making it illegal to download the app as of next January. If the bill survives an inevitable legal challenge, it would fine TikTok, Google, Apple or any business that makes the app available inside Montana at a rate of $10,000 per day.
Republican aren’t taking a stand against profits, per se, or against capitalism writ large, the way the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party does. They’re attacking businesses on an ad hoc basis when it suits some other political goal.
Yet this violates the whole ethos of laissez-faire capitalism, the Republican concept of setting minimalist rules for businesses and then getting out of the way. Republicans are still more or less content to keep taxes low and regulations lean, but it now comes with a hefty price: Businesses, in return, must abide by a retrograde Republican ideology that’s out-of-touch with mainstream Americans.
It would be an overstatement to say the Democrats are seizing the opportunity to buddy up with corporate America. President Biden has trash-talked fossil-fuel companies, proposed a hike in business taxes and ratcheted up regulations. Yet Biden has also eased trade frictions with friendly nations, and it’s Biden’s Democrats who want to raise the federal borrowing limit and avoid a destabilizing threat of default. Plus Biden probably seems quite friendly to green-energy firms and many other businesses that will benefit from billions of dollars in subsidies in bills Biden has backed and signed, such as last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.
There’s no rule that says one of America’s major political parties has to represent the interests of big business. Some Americans think corporate America has had too much sway over public priorities for far too long. More distance between lobbyists and policymakers may even be appropriate. Still, regulating business should be about making the economy as productive as possible — not about scoring points or settling grievances.
The f'k it did, take more courage to refuse. I received 0💩 from people for getting the Covid vax, but then I don't have many Trumpanzees in my life.
PUBLIC health measures, you self-absorbed ass🎩. A concept well established and well accepted until you FREEDUMB shouting assholes came along along with your junk science driven conspiracy theories.
Now how DID Bill Gates get those tracking devices in the hypodermic needles, you f'ing simpleton?
Please do find the articles that confirm that unvaxxed Trumpanzees failed better against Covid than the vaxxed have.
True, but which Party has demonstrated that it is a threat to democracy by not accepting elections results not just because they lost but rather because they ginned themselves up over that bullshit 'stop the steal' crap to point of insurrection?
Which Party's SCOTUS appointees kicked the abortion question to states that they KNEW would would try to outlaw it or restrict it to the point of threatening the reproductive health of women?
Which Party is reaping what they sowed from the electoral results where abortion was on the ballot?
Which Party has a candidate who tells you he will be 'your retribution'?
And then you have abundant evidence posted here many times that The Dems are decidedly better for the economy going as far back as FDR?
Bill's tendency towards false equivalence is increasingly annoying.
That's SOP for most SEASONAL vaxxes, you science illiterate ass-clown.
Are you afraid of the jabs, you f'ing baby?👶
And yeah, sunshine was the ticket to fighting Covid.
Look at the sunbelt Covid death rates, you f'ing imbecile.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_final/COVID19.htm
but the commie party is historically racist...
NOT over the past 60 years you ahistorical nitwit. The GOP is home to the racial bigots and has been since the Southern Strategy. Look it up, dummy.
Were some people heedless of public health measures that were SOP for decades? Absof'inglutley!
Military has REQUIRED vaxxes for decades. So did they weed out some treasonous, insubordinate, Trumpanzees because communal/barracks living? Good! Seriously, how f'ing stupid to bring up the military and vaxxes.
Did many, many, more people/Republicans die from Covid because they bought into junk science anti-vaxxer bull💩 from assholes like Trump and RFK Jr.? Yep.
What You Need to Know
There are many benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.
How to be best protected: As with vaccines for other diseases, people are best protected when they stay up to date.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html
For what, making us laugh hard and often?🤣
Hey asshole, I gave you 4 links that confirm my point that anti-Covid vaxxer Trumpanzees willing, stupidly, removed themselves from the voting roles.
There are NO data showing the contrary. But thanks for the jobs program for undertakers and Darwin Awards factory employees, nitwit.
You really are the dumbest of 💩's.
Welcome to Man with Fist in Air, Running Man, Josh F'ingHawley. Are you kidding me? This gutless insurrection inciting piece of 💩 is, however, representative of the cowardly f'ks in the GOP House and free range Trumpanzees everywhere.
Does a tremendous number on the lungs. But it sounds Interesting to me.
Thanks for the Junk Science. Reality: MORE unvaxxed Trumpanzees died than vaxxed people in both Parties.
Thank you for the electoral help in '20 and again in '22.
Republicans' excess death rate spiked after COVID-19 ...
NPR
https://www.npr.org › 2023/07/25 › covid-deaths-demo...
Jul 25, 2023 — After vaccines became widely available in 2021, "the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate ...
How Many Republicans Died Because the GOP Turned ...
The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com › health › archive › 2022/12
Dec 23, 2022 — The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without ...
Missing: unvaxxed ?| Show results with: unvaxxed
After the Vaccine, Republicans Became Far More Likely to ...
Voice of San Diego
https://voiceofsandiego.org › 2023/01/30 › after-the-va...
Jan 30, 2023 — But during the second year, as Covid vaccines became widely available, Republicans in San Diego County began dying at significantly higher rates ...
Study Finds Large Gap in Excess Deaths Along Partisan Lines ...
Yale School of Public Health
https://ysph.yale.edu › news-article › study-finds-large-...
Nov 3, 2022 — A team of Yale researchers has found that Republican voters in two U.S. states had more excess deaths than Democratic voters after vaccines ...
GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Russian propaganda is 'being uttered on the House floor'
The GOP 'freedom caucus'....what a f'ing oxymoron describing as it does the GOP Taliban wannabe theocrats.
You support a bunch of Putin ball-washing, insurrection supporting, ass-clowns.
And this isn't coming from a member of the 'squad', asshole.
House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner on Sunday said several of his GOP colleagues have repeated Russian propaganda on the House floor.
GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even "being uttered on the House floor."
"We see directly coming from Russia ... communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor," Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."
"There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not," he added.
Turner's office did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for clarification about which members of Congress he was referring to.
His comments come on the heels of remarks House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul made this week about how Russian propaganda has taken root among the GOP.
McCaul, a Texas Republican, told Puck News that he thinks "Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base."
No screaming 💩!
Turner and McCaul each tied Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, to other authoritarian leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea.
"[The propaganda] makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is," Turner told CNN, adding, "President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified as such."
Can't see it Mike because too many of the House GOP members ARE a bunch of authoritarians themselves.
McCaul described explaining to colleagues that the threat of Russian propaganda is similar to threats made by other U.S. adversaries.
"I have to explain to them what’s at stake, why Ukraine is in our national security interest," he said. "By the way, you don’t like Communist China? Well, guess what? They’re aligned [with Russia], along with the ayatollah [of Iran]. So when you explain it that way, they kind of start understanding it."
Kind of? Don't make me 🤣.
The committee chairs' remarks about Russian propaganda came as they spoke about the need for Congress to approve more military aid to Ukraine.
Of course it wasn't voluntary, but then there were no antivaxxer morons back in the day.
'Sir, no sir, personal freedom!' wouldn't have been well received.
Of course you don't believe me. But you do believe/fall for and spread unsubstantiated crap/conspiracy theories from moronic sources.
You fragile righty snowflakes have to construct alt-realities constructed of what you NEED to believe to get through the day. To the tune of 'it's a hard knocks life', for Trumpanzees it's a weak ass life.
Throw in Chicken Little too. The Covid jabs are killing you! The Covid jabs are killing you!
Too bad there's not a jab to boost IQ. Those who need it least will still get it. Trumpanzees? 'It'll make you stupid!'
Animation showing planned Key Bridge explosive demolition unveiled
By CHRISTINE CONDON | chcondon@baltsun.com
PUBLISHED: May 8, 2024 at 4:05 p.m. | UPDATED: May 9, 2024 at 6:10 a.m.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/05/08/key-bridge-demolition-explosion-animation/?itm_source=parsely-api
Francis Scott Key Bridge cleanup officials shared a video animation Wednesday depicting how crews plan to deploy small explosive devices to clear a large steel truss resting on the bow of the Dali container ship in the Patapsco River.
Remember this?
Lee Elia Chicago Cubs manager infamous tirade on April 29,1983
Today in Cubs history: Lee Elia’s famous postgame rant
This was... something, that’s for sure.
By Al Yellon@bleedcubbieblue Apr 29, 2023, 11:30am CDT
Al Yellon
To truly understand Cubs manager Lee Elia’s historic rant in early 1983, it’s important to put things in context.
1983 was the second year of Tribune Co. ownership of the Cubs. They had come off horrendous years in the last years of the Wrigley regime in 1980 (64-98, .395) and 1981 (38-65, .369 and if not for the strike, that team would surely have broken the franchise record for losses). That’s when Tribune and general manager Dallas Green took over. Green made significant moves and the team improved somewhat in 1982 to a 73-89 (.451) mark that included a 33-24 record after August 1, the second-best record in the National League in that span.
So there was some optimism heading into the ‘83 season, but those Cubs got off to an awful start. They lost their first six games and were 5-13 going into a game April 29 at Wrigley Field against the Dodgers.
The details of the 4-3 loss to the Dodgers that day don’t really matter, except for the way L.A. scored the winning run. The Cubs had blown a 3-1 lead and Lee Smith entered with the game tied 3-3 in the eighth. He threw a wild pitch to the first batter he faced with a runner on third, allowing the lead, and eventually winning, run to score.
Just 9,391 people paid to see that game, and some of the few that hung around afterward started heckling Cubs players as they trudged across left field to the clubhouse, which was still located in the left-field corner (it wouldn’t be moved to behind the dugout until the following year). In the Tribune recap of the game, Robert Markus wrote:
[Keith] Moreland had to be restrained from climbing onto the dugout roof to get at three fans who were taunting the Cubs as they walked off the field.
“I saw it,” said [general manager Dallas] Green. “They were drunk. There were three guys with their hands full of beer, and Keith tried to get over the dugout.”
After that was when Elia let loose with this tirade in the clubhouse. I realize it’s Saturday, but... if you’re at work, this is definitely NSFW.
We have the late Chicago radio reporter Les Grobstein to thank for that recording — he was reporting from the Cubs clubhouse that afternoon and dutifully recorded all of Elia’s tirade. If you don’t want to play the video, there’s a full transcript here via Chris Jaffe at Hardball Times, published 10 years ago on the rant’s 30th anniversary.
After that 85 percent — 15 percent remark, someone made up buttons reading “I’m a working Cub Fan.” That’s what you see pictured at the top of this post. The button is mine — I still have it. I was, and still am, a “working Cub fan.”
The Tribune’s Markus reported that Green said Elia’s job was “in jeopardy” after the clubhouse tirade, but in the end Green didn’t dismiss Elia after the rant. The embattled Cubs manager did wind up getting fired later that year, for a different reason — after Braves rookie Gerald Perry had come into Wrigley and led Atlanta to a three-game sweep by going 4-for-9 with a home run and six RBI, Elia was quoted as saying he had “never heard” of Perry.
That was the last straw for Green, who replaced Elia with Charlie Fox for the rest of the season. The Cubs finished two games worse than they had in 1982, at 71-91. Little did we know what we had waiting for us just one year later, the N.L. East title in 1984.
In June 1987, Elia was interviewed by Jerome Holtzman, then a Tribune writer, when he returned to Wrigley Field as the Phillies’ third-base coach:
‘’It sounded like I was cursing the entire Cub kingdom,’’ Elia explained Monday. ‘’But that`s not true. I was only talking about those fans who were harassing Moreland and Bowa.’’
The tirade sure sounded like “cursing the entire Cub kingdom” to me. Elia did get a second chance to manage, taking over the Phillies literally the day after Holtzman spoke to him in Chicago, after the Cubs took the first two games of a three-game set against Philadelphia at Wrigley Field. He managed in Philadelphia until the final week of 1988, when he was fired with a 60-92 record. Elia served as a Yankees coach in 1989 and managed in the Phillies system from 1990-92 before retiring from baseball.
Incidentally, Elia also played briefly for the Cubs, 15 games as a utility infielder in 1968. The following April he was traded to the Yankees for Nate Oliver.
He’s still living, aged 85, with his family in Florida. I wish him well — he was a good baseball man and deserves to be remembered for more than just his clubhouse rant, which happened 40 years ago today, Friday, April 29, 1983.
Biden on Trump: He 'didn't build a damn thing'
Source: Politico
05/08/2024 02:02 PM EDT
President Joe Biden on Wednesday cast a major new investment in battleground Wisconsin as emblematic of the nation’s economic comeback.
But the main thrust of his address wasn’t so much to boast about the current climate as it was an attempt to contrast it with his predecessor’s record. Time and again, Biden took aim at former President Donald Trump, casting him as someone who talked but didn’t deliver.
Even the setting of the speech itself was meant to deliver the point: Biden was highlighting a new Microsoft data center that would be built on grounds where then-President Trump announced that Foxconn would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels.
That plant was never built, even after the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer received millions in subsidies and bulldozed homes and farms to build the factory.
“He promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn. He came with your senator, Ron Johnson, with a golden shovel and didn’t build a damn thing,” Biden said. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/08/biden-trump-2024-elections-00156853
Biden on Trump: He 'didn't build a damn thing'
Source: Politico
05/08/2024 02:02 PM EDT
President Joe Biden on Wednesday cast a major new investment in battleground Wisconsin as emblematic of the nation’s economic comeback.
But the main thrust of his address wasn’t so much to boast about the current climate as it was an attempt to contrast it with his predecessor’s record. Time and again, Biden took aim at former President Donald Trump, casting him as someone who talked but didn’t deliver.
Even the setting of the speech itself was meant to deliver the point: Biden was highlighting a new Microsoft data center that would be built on grounds where then-President Trump announced that Foxconn would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels.
That plant was never built, even after the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer received millions in subsidies and bulldozed homes and farms to build the factory.
“He promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn. He came with your senator, Ron Johnson, with a golden shovel and didn’t build a damn thing,” Biden said. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/08/biden-trump-2024-elections-00156853
Jared Moskowitz trolls MTG
How it started, how it’s going pic.twitter.com/vSo5FSbQ4q
— Jared Moskowitz (@JaredEMoskowitz) May 8, 2024
Jared Moskowitz trolls MTG
How it started, how it’s going pic.twitter.com/vSo5FSbQ4q
— Jared Moskowitz (@JaredEMoskowitz) May 8, 2024
Technically, 500K on his watch. But absolutely, he poisoned his supporters' wells with his junk science riffs and, most importantly, his stone cold silence on the vaxxes for a full year after they were introduced, thus adding to the Covid death toll.
You would THINK he'd have said 'look at what MY Warp speed has provided! Take 'em MAGA nation, gonna need your votes in a few years'. Nope, like his supporters he was and remains a gutless piece of 💩
Remember, you're talking to a TrumpTard!
Oh yeah, that's the ticket. Forehead smack here.
7, why ain't I dead you junk science peddling nitwit? I'm amazed how gutless you anti-vaxxer assholes are. I lined up for a polio vax when I was a little kid, 12 vaxxes over 8 weeks in USMC boot camp and subsequently, flu vaxxes, pneumonia vaxxes, Covid vaxxes, RSV vax and the Shingles vax.
Seriously, WTF are you pussies afraid of? If you were right about any of the panicky shit you peddle about Covid vaxxes there would verifiably be enough dead among those taking them. FAUX News would be all over it. They ain't.
The f'k it was ALL based on that. Read it again, move your lips as you do, you semiliterate f'ing Trumpanzee
And in addition to this you assholes support an insurrection inciting Putin ass-kisser which make you as treasonous as he is.
Absof'inglutley, nitwit
Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help.
A Russian asset? No. An American president who was perfectly fine with an unfriendly authoritarian regime illegally interfering in a U.S. presidential election to assist him by stealing political documents from his opponent? Who talked about “America first” but happily sided with an anti-American strongman when it served his interests and his ego? Absolutely. Whatever the Durham report ultimately says about the FBI investigation, it won’t change those fundamental facts.
That SEEMS like an issue to run on.😏
Choice is the one issue that has been tested electorally, to the dismay of the GOP.
It's silly for you to claim it's the ONLY issue the Dems will emphasize. The job creation from the two big bills passed will be increasingly visible as the construction season progresses.
And of course the issue of integrity will be emphasized as Trump wends his way through the justice system and Biden does not.
FISA warrants had nothing to do with any of the following.....
Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help.
A Russian asset? No. An American president who was perfectly fine with an unfriendly authoritarian regime illegally interfering in a U.S. presidential election to assist him by stealing political documents from his opponent? Who talked about “America first” but happily sided with an anti-American strongman when it served his interests and his ego? Absolutely. Whatever the Durham report ultimately says about the FBI investigation, it won’t change those fundamental facts.
What the article did mention outweighs by far what you've mentioned,
So does this:
Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help.
A Russian asset? No. An American president who was perfectly fine with an unfriendly authoritarian regime illegally interfering in a U.S. presidential election to assist him by stealing political documents from his opponent? Who talked about “America first” but happily sided with an anti-American strongman when it served his interests and his ego? Absolutely. Whatever the Durham report ultimately says about the FBI investigation, it won’t change those fundamental facts.
No, ‘Russiagate’ Wasn’t the Hoax That Team Trump Claims It Was
Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help.
A Russian asset? No. An American president who was perfectly fine with an unfriendly authoritarian regime illegally interfering in a U.S. presidential election to assist him by stealing political documents from his opponent? Who talked about “America first” but happily sided with an anti-American strongman when it served his interests and his ego? Absolutely. Whatever the Durham report ultimately says about the FBI investigation, it won’t change those fundamental facts.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-russiagate-wasnt-hoax-team-trump-claims-it-was
OCTOBER 25, 2022 •
By Cathy Young
RE
This article appeared in The Bulwark on October 25, 2022.
The acquittal last week of think tank analyst Igor Danchenko is a fitting final chapter in the “Russiagate” saga, as John Durham’s three-?year-?old probe judders to a halt. Durham, formerly the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by William Barr, Donald Trump’s attorney general, to look into possible misconduct by personnel from the FBI and CIA, various federal officials, and Democratic operatives with regard to allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russian agents in the 2016 presidential campaign. In October 2020, Barr elevated Durham’s investigation to special counsel status, ensuring that it would continue no matter the outcome of the 2020 election.
Both Barr and Durham were fairly explicit about the fact that they saw the Trump-?Russia investigation, which culminated in the Mueller report, as inappropriate, based on “the thinnest of suspicions,” and politically motivated. Thus, the Durham inquiry had an unmistakable subtext of seeking to vindicate the Trumpian narrative of a “Russia hoax” and a “witch hunt” of which Trump and some of his associates were innocent targets. Inasmuch as it set out to do that, the Durham probe—which is apparently all over except for a final report that will presumably be produced in the next few months—is a bust.
Trump and his supporters have claimed that Durham has still uncovered a vast amount of FBI dirty laundry. There is no question that the probe exposed problems in the FBI’s work. To some extent, the Trump-?Russia saga has been an exercise in seeing how the sausage gets made—spotlighting, in particular, the fact that surveillance warrants are often obtained on questionable bases and that intelligence-?gathering is often an expedition down a rabbit hole in which it can be extremely difficult to tell whether the information you’re finding is solid, worthless, or out-?and-?out fake and deliberately planted to mislead. The Danchenko case, full of John Le Carré-?like twists, is one such rabbit hole.
Danchenko, one of the sources for the “Steele dossier” compiled by retired British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was accused of lying about his own sources and covering up a Democratic plot to feed him junk info smearing Trump. When the analyst, an expatriate Russian citizen currently living in Virginia, was indicted on five counts of lying to federal investigators about a year ago, even some left-?of-?center publications such as New York magazine suggested that the case not only dealt a “death blow” to the Steele dossier (which alleged very extensive contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russian intelligence, as well as Russian blackmail based on a supposed salacious video of Trump) but compromised the Trump-?Russia investigation itself.
Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help.
Now, Danchenko has been acquitted. Granted, Durham had to clear a high bar: to show that Danchenko not only knowingly lied to the FBI but that his deceptions materially affected the Trump-Russia investigation. Moreover, the dismissal of one of the five false-statement charges against Danchenko was arguably based on semantic hair-splitting (he denied “talking” to Democratic public relations guy Charles Dolan about the Steele dossier; in fact, the two had discussed the dossier in emails).
Nonetheless, it seems clear that the trial unfolded in a way highly unfavorable to Durham’s case; the central claim that Danchenko had made up his contacts with Belarusian-American businessman and Trump campaign associate Sergei Millian was not only unproven but contradicted by some of the evidence. And while initial coverage of Danchenko’s arrest depicted him as an unreliable and opportunistic paid informant, two FBI agents who testified for the prosecution strongly defended the value of Danchenko’s information—leaving Durham in the awkward position of trying to discredit his own witnesses.
(A juicy side note: Danchenko’s first moment in the spotlight happened in 2006 when, as a research assistant at the Brookings Institution, he coauthored a study concluding that the dissertation Vladimir Putin supposedly wrote in the 1990s to get a graduate degree in economics was heavily plagiarized.)
The Danchenko trial was the third case brought by Durham over the course of his special counsel probe. Of the previous two cases, the first ended in a guilty plea by former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for altering an email used to renew a wiretap warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. (Clinesmith inserted several words stating that Page was not a CIA source; in fact, he was, though Clinesmith has insisted he didn’t know it at the time.)
The second ended in the acquittal of cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussman, an attorney for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Sussman was accused of falsely stating that he was not working on behalf of any client or organization when he approached the FBI to report possibly suspicious contact between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Russian bank with Kremlin ties. He has always claimed that he was acting on his own behalf and reporting his own concerns.
One guilty plea on a minor charge (with no jail time) over the course of three years is pretty slim pickings, and the evidence of a “hoax” or a “witch-hunt” still isn’t there.
Of course, this hasn’t stopped some in the “Russia hoax” chorus from claiming victory. Writing after the Danchenko verdict, Washington Examiner columnist Elizabeth Stauffer asserted that the Danchenko trial “delivered more evidence of the Democratic Party’s concerted effort to destroy former President Donald Trump,” evidently because the FBI offered Danchenko $1 million if he could corroborate the allegations in the dossier. (Obviously, there could be no other reason than a Democratic vendetta to look for evidence corroborating allegations that a major party candidate for president was compromised by the Kremlin.)
While Stauffer claims that “Danchenko was clearly an important part of this scheme,” she also says that according to the Department of Justice inspector general report, “Danchenko told the FBI the stories in the Steele dossier had been made up in a bar.” But first, the IG report quotes Danchenko as saying that some of the information was picked up in conversation “with friends over beers,” not “made up”; and secondly, why would he downplay the credibility of this information if he were part of an anti-Trump Deep State conspiracy? But never mind that: Having concluded that the trial further proves the conspiracy, Stauffer moves to her next Q.E.D.: this conspiracy, apparently, also proves that it’s not paranoid to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
***
There is no question that after the 2016 election, a number of people devastated by Trump’s win eagerly jumped on what we might call a “Trump is Putin’s bitch” narrative that was at best unproven and at worst drastically overhyped. The Steele dossier with its scandalous tale of a “pee tape” supposedly used by Russian security services to blackmail Trump—who, so the story went, hired Russian hookers while staying at a Moscow hotel and got them to urinate on the bed previously occupied by Barack and Michelle Obama—played a major role in such wishful thinking.
There was plenty of other hype. Kooky conspiracy theorists—like British journalist Louise Mensch, who claimed Trump was knowingly working for the Kremlin—sometimes got platformed by respectable publications. (Full disclosure: I briefly wrote for Mensch at the short-lived website Heat Street.) Serious commentators, such as Jonathan Chait in New York magazine and Max Boot in the Washington Post, also flirted with the idea of Trump as a literal Russian agent.
Not only TV talking heads but former intelligence officials and some Democratic politicians, notably Rep. Adam Schiff of California, oversold Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and promised major indictments at or near the very top of the Trump administration; again and again, a new “turning point” was said to signal “the beginning of the end” for Trump. Some “bombshells” ended up being quickly debunked and retracted, such as the ABC News “scoop” that Trump had directed Michael Flynn, his onetime national security advisor, to contact Russian officials during the campaign, not after the election.
(For the record, I cautioned against Trump/Russia hysteria in 2017 and 2018; among other things, I criticized sloppy, credulous, and biased media coverage of the dossier story and objected to facile assumptions that deliberate “collusion” was the only possible explanation for Trump’s appalling bromance with Putin.)
Disturbingly, Trump-Russia hype also morphed into myths that undermined faith in election integrity on the Democratic side. Several Economist/YouGov polls conducted from 2017 to 2019 found that as many as two-thirds of Democrats believed it was “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected.”
Before the publication of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019, many Trump supporters preemptively attacked Mueller in the expectation that the report would be damning for Trump. Yet while the report did compile a considerable list of instances of obstruction of justice by Trump, it found no evidence that either Trump or his campaign actively conspired with Russian agents to influence the election. Trump supporters gleefully celebrated the crumbling of Russiagate and the supposed humiliation of Trump’s critics.
They were joined by left-wing contrarians such as journalist Matt Taibbi, who claimed that Russiagate coverage had been a major fail for mainstream journalism and a vindication for the skeptics. (While some of Taibbi’s critique was fair and on-target, he indiscriminately conflated outlandish Mensch-style conspiracy theories, sloppy “bombshell” reporting, commentary that was always presented as opinion, and factual reporting on the Trump/Russia investigation; he also left out instances in which mainstream media including Vox, the New York Times and the Washington Post shot down or pushed back against exaggerated Russiagate claims and conspiracy theories.)
Yet the idea that the Mueller report exposed Russiagate as a “hoax” rests on a false binary: either Trump and/or his associates actively conspired with Russia, or Trump has been the victim of a “Russia, Russia, Russia” witch hunt. But there is also another scenario: that Trump ran as a Russia-friendly candidate, Russia interfered in the election to help Trump (as the Mueller report very clearly states), and Trump and his cronies were fine with that. And that scenario is not a hoax or a concoction of the Steele dossier.
While the dossier is now widely regarded as discredited—and certainly represents a cautionary tale for both journalism and intelligence—it is worth remembering that both the FBI and the media were looking into the Trump-Russia connection before the dossier made its appearance. Even staunch Trump ally Devin Nunes conceded, in a 2018 memo highly critical of the FBI investigation, that the inquiry was triggered by junior Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos’s boasts about contacts with Russian operatives. Steele’s inquiry into Trump’s Russian connections, which began in earnest in June 2016, proceeded in parallel to the FBI investigation, which opened officially in late July 2016; while Steele had some contacts with FBI agents early on, his reports were not submitted to the FBI team in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation until September 19.
The same goes for the press: Members of the news media were given leaked versions of Steele’s work in mid-to-late September 2019, but articles exploring the Trump-Russia romance had started appearing in the Washington Post , Slate, and other publications well before that, in June and July. Based on what? Lots of things: Trump’s praise for Putin, the Kremlin-controlled Russian media’s Trump lovefest, the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers by Russian agents, Trump’s financial connections to Russia, and the presence of, as Franklin Foer put in in Slate, “advisers and operatives” in Trump’s inner circle “who have long careers advancing the interests of the Kremlin.” Add to this the fact that the one foreign policy-related change Trump’s team wanted in the Republican party platform was the removal of the call for arming Ukraine.
Then, on July 27, Trump responded to questions about the DNC hack by inviting Russia (“if you’re listening . . .”) to find Clinton’s missing emails. Even if, as his supporters claim, he was making a tacky joke and not actually signaling the Kremlin, this was a presidential candidate responding to reports that his opponent had been targeted for cyberattacks by an adversarial foreign power by jokingly cheering for the hackers.
The bottom line is that, as Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in his own 2019 probe—to Durham’s and Barr’s displeasure—the FBI investigation was amply justified. True, it ultimately found no evidence of acts that rose to the level of criminal conspiracy, and neither did the Mueller probe. But let’s not forget what did happen: Russian agents did conspire to influence the election, undermine Clinton and help Trump, and Trump as well as people close to him eagerly welcomed the help. (We didn’t need the FBI or Mueller to tell us that Trump was thrilled by the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked documents from the DNC and the Clinton campaign: he said so openly and more than once.)
What’s more, some people in the Trump campaign actively worked to take advantage of Russian meddling. Mueller’s indictment of Roger Stone states that after the first WikiLeaks dump, Stone and other “senior Trump campaign officials” made moves to find out what other compromising material WikiLeaks had. The charges against Stone, on which he was ultimately convicted, had to do with obstructing the investigation; but the only reason he couldn’t be charged with conspiracy for his attempts to establish contact with WikiLeaks is that WikiLeaks is not officially classified as a Russian asset.
***
Whether Russian interference ultimately did help elect Trump is something that can never be definitively established. No, Russia did not interfere in the sense of tampering with voting tallies. But Trump won several key states by extremely small margins, and surely some of those results could have been tipped by the WikiLeaks disclosures, falsely spun as “the DNC fixed the primaries to rob Bernie Sanders and hand the nomination to Hillary” and often timed in such a way as to neutralize Trump scandals.
Obviously, this does not mean that Americans didn’t really elect Trump, nor does it absolve Clinton of running a bad campaign: A good candidate would have been ahead of Trump by a wide enough margin that WikiLeaks would not have made a difference. But given what we know, I don’t see how anyone can confidently say that Kremlin shenanigans weren’t among the many factors that contributed to Trump’s victory.
Let’s not forget, either, how Trump behaved after his victory—notably, the revelation in May 2017 that he bragged about firing FBI director James Comey in a White House chat with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, calling Comey “a real nut job” and saying that the pressure he had faced over the Russia story was now “taken off.” Is there any scenario in which such behavior by the president of the United States would not raise disturbing questions?
This doesn’t mean Trump was a “Putin puppet” in the White House. On some issues, notably to do with Russia’s role as a supplier of oil and gas to Europe, Trump took a Russia-unfriendly position, imposing sanctions on firms helping with the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in late 2019 and even warning that it would turn Germany into a “hostage.” (It probably helped that he also saw Russian energy dominance as bad for business where the United States was concerned.)
His administration included a number of Russia hawks, from National Security Advisor John Bolton to high-level official Fiona Hill. On the other hand, some Trump-era hawkish Russia policy likely happened in spite of, not because of, Trump: The Trump White House repeatedly tried to weaken and spike Russia sanctions, despite a bipartisan congressional consensus favoring them. Trump was reportedly strong-armed into approving the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine (a step he and his fans later cited as evidence of his willingness to stand up to Russia). He called for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 when he attended the G7 summit in Quebec in June 2018. And a month later at the Helsinki summit, he openly endorsed Putin’s election interference denials and badmouthed the Mueller probe.
A Russian asset? No. An American president who was perfectly fine with an unfriendly authoritarian regime illegally interfering in a U.S. presidential election to assist him by stealing political documents from his opponent? Who talked about “America first” but happily sided with an anti-American strongman when it served his interests and his ego? Absolutely. Whatever the Durham report ultimately says about the FBI investigation, it won’t change those fundamental facts.
Funny, no mention here.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/ashley-biden-white-house/index.html
Who is the 'exclusive source'? Would you accept such a vague reference from the non-Trumpanzees who post here?
And you are like a man without a brain, unable to read for comprehension and incapable of posting anything coherent much less persuasive. Does your mommy acknowledge your legitimacy or is she too ashamed?
We Are Very Sorry To Hear About RFK Jr.'s Brain Worm And Mercury Poisoning
Holy god, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan's sailors.
By Charles P. Pierce PUBLISHED: MAY 08, 2024 11:44 AM EDT
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a60732296/rfk-jr-parasite-worm-brain/
candidate rfk jr holds cesar chavez day event as he pushes latino outreach in his presidential bid
Mario Tama//Getty Images
The New York Times took a deep dive on Tuesday into the medical history of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose raison d'etre as a presidential candidate is primarily based on crazy-assed Do Your Own Research vaccine denialism and the fact that the two major candidates are older than he is and, therefore, not up to the job, cognitively. Judging from the Times story, RFKJ needs to find himself some new raisons d'etre tout suite.
Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said.
While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head. The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.
Well, that sounds awful.
For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared.
About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues. “I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested. He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.
Brainworms? Poisoned fish? Holy Lord, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan's sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?
It's easy to assume that the latter condition has played a serious role in his entire public life. His effort to clean up the country's rivers concentrated heavily on the threat posed by mercury byproducts from coal-fired power plants. And, of course, his vaccine denialism began as a crusade against the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thiomersal, which was in fact removed from use by the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy attached himself to the phantom threat of the preservative as a causal agent for autism, which discredited his warnings about mercury in vaccines generally.
His medical history is now a legitimate topic for political discussion because he chose to engage in long-distance diagnoses of the president. Every one of his verbal stumbles and every moment of public forgetfulness is going to be counted against his fitness for office because that's the field on which he's chosen to compete. Personally now, I think he should stop with the YouTube calisthenics and the TikTok iron-pumping and accept the fact that he's not that much younger than the president is.
No, they weren't. Compiling evidence sufficient to secure indictments is a tedious process. You morons need to believe that your Orange Hitler isn't being treated fairly in SPITE of all the legal maneuvers his lawyers and friendly judges are employing to delay the trials. NOT the actions an innocent defendant needs.