At last we agree, Phos! It is indeed good to get rid of all those Republicans.

I don't know anything about these people but one thing seems obvious to me: If they all leave when times get tough, they were not there "for the country" in the first place

I usually work on the assumption that no politicians are there "for the country".

Happy to be proved wrong

You lack nuance

My nuance broke and I never got around to fixing it

Yeah, well. optimism will probably be my death one day
which is fine by me

Former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) on Tuesday night suggested a “politically corrupt team” of Justice Department officials drove him out of office on tax evasion office, and are now driving the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

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That is the problem with attacking the credibility of the justice system, you open the door to all sorts of shady characters trying to profit from it

Perhaps DT's accusers of deviance weren't just pissing in the wind...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...y-shearer-memo

Pity it is not Friday

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So being rich is a good reason to be sanctioned? Nothing to do with any activities that support Russia against the US?

Remind me again, which country has the world's largest intelligence agencies?

Whole thing is beyond belief!

Which one has?

I've lost track completely. Who is accusing whom about collaborating with the Russians? And did they get Trump in .... Clinton out ...... who asked them to do which ever?

And once that is sorted: What did the Russians gain from all this?

Thanks. Just a confused foreigner (=non-American)

Uninhibited glee. I imagine Putin is dancing little jigs around his coffee table at the thought of so many American government employees tying themselves up in knots!

What did the Russians gain?

• Well they have more or less paralysed the US Govt. for a year, just one major piece of legislation passed in Trump's first year despite GOP majority in both Houses and a GOP President.
  
• The White House administration has been spending far too much time on collusion instead of running the country.
  
• US foreign policy is unclear and often leads to Trump contradicting the Secretary of State.

• They have created a huge gap between Trump, his intelligence agencies and the DOJ

From what is publicly known it seems unlikely there will be case of collusion with Russia against Trump, ironically more likely that there could be a case of obstruction of Justice and/or money laundering.
It is possible his whole business empire is only surviving on loans from a German bank that may be Russian backed; this could be why Trump said investigating his bank accounts was a red line.

There is still an open question about the possibility the Russians have material to blackmail Trump.

I doubt Clinton colluded with the Russians in order to lose the Presidential election?

That is a bit unfortunate, shortly before Trump delivers his State of the Union speech all the US stock markets are crashing down; Dow Jones was down 400 points today, 500 over 2 days.

I am sure it will climb back up tomorow .

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So what you're saying .... did I just write that? .... okay, I'll phrase it my way:

Did I understand this correctly: Most likely nobody actually called in the Russians but the moment Trump went for presidency they (the Russians) had every interest for him to win as they already had some power over him, which would come in handy if he were president?

All assumptions but are these the assumptions?

Well phrased; anyway that is the theory but like all theories needs to be proved or discarded.

OFAC publishes the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List, which lists people, organizations and vessels with whom United States citizens and permanent residents are prohibited from doing business.

Sergei Naryshkin is on the SDN list.
The Russian embassy tweeted earlier today that Sergey Naryshkin, the director of Russia's foreign intelligence, had been in the United States "for consultations with ... counterparts on the struggle against terrorism."

So who did Sergei meet with?

Source

as for example
<<TAMILS REHABILITATION ORGANIZATION
Emmenbrucke 6021, Switzerland; Tribschenstri, 51, Lucerne 6005, Switzerland;>>

The Department of Treasury stated that "T.R.O. passed off its operations as charitable, when in fact it was raising money for a designated terrorist group responsible for heinous acts of terrorism ... in the United States, T.R.O. has raised funds on behalf of the LTTE through a network of individual representatives. According to sources within the organization, T.R.O. is the preferred conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri Lanka"

Presidential style State of the Union speech by Trump yesterday, no startling new insights as were hinted at beforehand, no off topic explosions, most of his speech was about his accomplishments in the last year.

Expected topics covered were immigration, infrastructure, North Korea, he seems to believe he has fixed Obamacare
there was not much on the hoped for bipartisanship and unifying the country and thankfully nothing on the Russia probe or NAFTA.

In typical Trump fashion
Meanwhile
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels told Jimmy Kimmell on TV Tuesday night that she did not know where a statement with her purported signature denying an affair with President Trump came from.

A “name-and-shame” list of Russian oligarchs who made their money corruptly from their ties with Vladimir Putin was compiled by the US government agencies but then cancelled last week by a senior administration official, according to a Russia expert who was consulted on the list.

It was replaced by an all-inclusive list of rich Russians apparently copied straight from the Forbes magazine’s ranking of wealthy Russians, together with the names of some top Kremlin officials.

Source

"You could not make this stuff up"

Just finished Fire and Fury, I'm now of the opinion there was no Russian collusion, to paraphrase President Bannon 'how can they collude with the Russians when they aren't organised enough to collude with the state department'


Hilarious that the orange clown is now firmly in Muellers sights for obstruction of justice for an investigation into something that probably didn't happen. Positively, well, clownlike. The mans day is composed of golf and screwing up.