Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 1:42 pm I hope his bounty pays off, so to speak, but if this has any effect at all it is likely to be counter-productive, as Trump would love to have enemies like Larry Flynt.

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 1:24 pm You're just upset that they wanted you to prove the financial ability to pay the $50 reward for a decent Monte Cristo sandwich.

hepcat wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:35 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 1:24 pm You're just upset that they wanted you to prove the financial ability to pay the $50 reward for a decent Monte Cristo sandwich.

Bennigans. Damn it. Now I want to go to Bennigans.

hepcat wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:46 pm I'm Monte Cristo crazy, but am I 59 minutes of Chicago traffic Monte Cristo crazy?

I honestly thought they closed all the Bennigans in this part of Illinois. I wonder why they kept that one.

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy revealed in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that Power was “emphatic” on the point that someone else in the Obama administration made the unmasking requests that have been attributed to her.

Fox News recently reported that Power made approximately 260 unmasking requests — a rate of one per business day — in her final year in office, including up through the end of Obama’s term.

Unmasking has become an issue because someone inside the Obama administration unmasked the identities of Trump associates identified in classified intelligence reports collected by the intelligence community during surveillance of foreign targets. Some of those details were illegally leaked to the media.

Power has been scrutinized of late because of the high number of unmasking requests linked to her.

But Gowdy, a member of the Intelligence committee, said that Power “was pretty emphatic” last week in disputing that she made 260 unmasking requests.

“She would say those requests to unmask may have been attributed to her, but they greatly exceed by an exponential factor the requests she actually made,” Gowdy told Fox’s Bret Baier.

“Her perspective, her testimony is, ‘they may be under my name, but I did not make those requests.'”

El Guapo wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:49 am (3) Why is Trump raising this now? Also tweeted about Comey and Clinton relatively out of the blue (for us, anyway) the other day. Of course, Reince Priebus became the first inner Trump administration person to be interviewed by the Mueller team the other day.

El Guapo wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:49 am (2) The accusation that the FBI may have 'paid for' the Steele Dossier is kind of an interesting one. It's not completely insane, insofar as leading up to the election IIRC there were reports that the FBI was considering bringing Steele in and possibly hiring him as a consultant / temporary investigator of sort. But part of the reason for that is that Steele himself is a pretty respected and credible guy, and so that the Steele Dossier (at least as a collection of investigatory leads) is way more credible than most people think.

(3) Why is Trump raising this now? Also tweeted about Comey and Clinton relatively out of the blue (for us, anyway) the other day. Of course, Reince Priebus became the first inner Trump administration person to be interviewed by the Mueller team the other day.

Also a reminder that we have a looming constitutional / rule of law crisis coming, possibly before the end of the year, when the Mueller team sooner or later goes public in some form with what they have, and Trump responds accordingly (or Trump tries to remove Mueller somehow before then).

Holman wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:43 am And now we have the POTUS suggesting that the FBI might have forged documents to incriminate him...

link

malchior wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:45 am

El Guapo wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 10:49 am (2) The accusation that the FBI may have 'paid for' the Steele Dossier is kind of an interesting one. It's not completely insane, insofar as leading up to the election IIRC there were reports that the FBI was considering bringing Steele in and possibly hiring him as a consultant / temporary investigator of sort. But part of the reason for that is that Steele himself is a pretty respected and credible guy, and so that the Steele Dossier (at least as a collection of investigatory leads) is way more credible than most people think.

My favorite part is that the dossier was literally raw humint data. They are to be treated as rumors. So they can't be discredited. They can be proved false but that is something totally different. It only further indicates Trump has no fucking idea what he is talking about.

(3) Why is Trump raising this now? Also tweeted about Comey and Clinton relatively out of the blue (for us, anyway) the other day. Of course, Reince Priebus became the first inner Trump administration person to be interviewed by the Mueller team the other day.

I love the idea that he is squirming knowing the noose is tightening but I wonder if he even has that level of self-awareness.

Also a reminder that we have a looming constitutional / rule of law crisis coming, possibly before the end of the year, when the Mueller team sooner or later goes public in some form with what they have, and Trump responds accordingly (or Trump tries to remove Mueller somehow before then).

Yep - we are going to have a very real problem come end of year/beginning of next year. Especially if he starts pardoning tons of folks.

A lawyer for the Department of Justice disagreed, saying a violation only happens if an actual act is done in exchange for a payment.

malchior wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:03 pm The emoluments lawsuits are fun to watch but I expect the judiciary to wimp out on them.

Edit: Also I don't know if I could blame them for wimping out.

Edit2: Just saw that the Justice Department is trying to bring the McDonnell appeal rationale into the case according to this story.

A lawyer for the Department of Justice disagreed, saying a violation only happens if an actual act is done in exchange for a payment.

Thanks SCOTUS for watering down corruption. Smoking gun evidence is an unreasonably high bar for corruption.

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:28 pm

malchior wrote: Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:03 pm The emoluments lawsuits are fun to watch but I expect the judiciary to wimp out on them.

Edit: Also I don't know if I could blame them for wimping out.

Edit2: Just saw that the Justice Department is trying to bring the McDonnell appeal rationale into the case according to this story.

A lawyer for the Department of Justice disagreed, saying a violation only happens if an actual act is done in exchange for a payment.

Thanks SCOTUS for watering down corruption. Smoking gun evidence is an unreasonably high bar for corruption.

Can we get them on doing the RICO?

Rip wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 4:46 pm https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/922955410327425027

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/922962880206647297

Holman wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:23 pm

Rip wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 4:46 pm https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/922955410327425027

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/922962880206647297

Yes, Hannity et al are hyping this like it means... something?

The Steele dossier was begun as oppo research by one of Trump's GOP primary challengers: it was an attempt to check out various rumors and suspected Russian ties that were already being talked about. When that challenger dropped out, the Democrats picked it up. This is not news, as it has been reported on all along, the earliest story being in October 2016.

Trump seems to think that the fact that the the Dems partly funded this oppo research means that the Russia investigation is Dem propaganda. That would hold water if the dossier were anything but an independent look into very serious allegations that are being investigated elsewhere, obviously independently of the dossier itself.

It isn't the dossier that caused Trump associates to be intercepted in communications with Russian agents, or Russia to hack the DNC, or Trump associates to meet repeatedly and secretly with Russians, or the Trump campaign and Russian propaganda to be weirdly in sync all along, or Manafort and Flynn to be in the Kremlin's pocket, or Trump and his cronies to be neck-deep in oligarch money laundering, or Trump to promise to lift sanctions on Russia, or any of a dozen other completely guilty and treasonous looking arrangements. And of course the dossier never caused Trump to do everything he could to obstruct the investigation into Russian election interference.

Sometimes oppo research just turns out to be accurate. That definitely seems to be the case here, as numerous allegations that happen to be in the dossier have been corroborated elsewhere, and none have yet been disproven.

we all know the game here, or at least we should. The Republicans’ point is not to make a compelling, persuasive argument. It’s to create as much confusion as possible. It doesn’t matter whether any of it makes sense.

From this point forward, whenever anything having to do with Trump’s connections to Russia and Robert Mueller’s investigation is raised, Republicans will shout, “What about the Russian dossier Clinton paid for! They all lied about it! She was the one colluding with the Russians! That’s the real scandal!”

Pyperkub wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:24 pm Wapo deconstructs:

we all know the game here, or at least we should. The Republicans’ point is not to make a compelling, persuasive argument. It’s to create as much confusion as possible. It doesn’t matter whether any of it makes sense.

From this point forward, whenever anything having to do with Trump’s connections to Russia and Robert Mueller’s investigation is raised, Republicans will shout, “What about the Russian dossier Clinton paid for! They all lied about it! She was the one colluding with the Russians! That’s the real scandal!”

Hello Rip.

Captain Caveman wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:20 pm The fevered cacophony of anti-Clinton Russia stories currently dominating right-wing media make me suspect that some very bad developments may be coming soon concerning the Trump investigation. Gotta muddy that water as much as possible before another big shoe drops.

Captain Caveman wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:30 pm I was just referring to the obsessive coverage of the "Clinton Uranium" and dossier stories. I hadn't heard much lately specifically targeting Mueller but that's interesting if true. Fingers crossed that he's got the goods.

Captain Caveman wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:30 pm I was just referring to the obsessive coverage of the "Clinton Uranium" and dossier stories. I hadn't heard much lately specifically targeting Mueller but that's interesting if true. Fingers crossed that he's got the goods.

Captain Caveman wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:54 pm By Thanksgiving? That seems really optimistic. But who the heck knows where things stand right now with the investigation.