Octopus Overlords

Kurth wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:53 am Fair enough. You clearly feel you’re in a good position to render judgment on Melania Trump. I just don’t feel the same.

tgb wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 10:48 am So it turn out that in the end, Fuckhead & Cohen were just running a grift.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:00 am

Kurth wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:53 am Fair enough. You clearly feel you’re in a good position to render judgment on Melania Trump. I just don’t feel the same.

I feel bad that she's munching down a giant shit sandwich but not that bad. It's a sandwich of her own making and no one is forcing her to keep eating it.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:00 am

Kurth wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:53 am Fair enough. You clearly feel you’re in a good position to render judgment on Melania Trump. I just don’t feel the same.

I feel bad that she's munching down a giant shit sandwich but not that bad. It's a sandwich of her own making and no one is forcing her to keep eating it.

[P]rotesters at the Women’s March carried signs that said, FREE MELANIA. A fashion fixture who’s known the Trump clan for decades shared with me his fantasy: “My dream is that Michelle Obama will convince her to leave him, and she’ll become this great feminist icon. She will walk into the middle of everything and say, ‘He’s crazy. This is nuts. I don’t know what I was doing!’ ”

Unagi wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:48 am It's that she is in a position to help defeat the devil, that people are a little annoyed that she made and continues to keep her deal with the devil.
You don't get that?

Her taking on Cyber Bullying as "her thing" probably just makes the above feel even worse to a lot of people.

Fireball wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:57 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:48 am It's that she is in a position to help defeat the devil, that people are a little annoyed that she made and continues to keep her deal with the devil.
You don't get that?

Her taking on Cyber Bullying as "her thing" probably just makes the above feel even worse to a lot of people.

Perhaps she picked this issue in order to highlight just how awful Trump is? No one can discuss her initiatives without bringing up her husband's behavior. It seems to me that there's no love lost between the two of them, so I could believe that she's just trolling him with this.

South Korea’s Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd (KAI) (047810.KS) said on Wednesday it had paid $150,000 for consulting services on accounting matters to a firm set up by U.S. President Donald Trump’s private lawyer Michael Cohen.

The arrangement came as the company, backed by state-owned Export-Import Bank of Korea, is competing to sell trainer jets to the U.S. Air Force in an auction that could be worth up to $16 billion.

Kurth wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:41 am Seems to me like she made a deal with the devil, and now it’s having unexpected and unwanted consequences.

Kurth wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 11:41 am Just not sure what the point is of hating on her and disparaging her. Especially when there are those so much more deserving of that scorn.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 12:53 pm Oh hey look, another amazing coincidence regarding Cohen and money:

South Korea’s Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd (KAI) (047810.KS) said on Wednesday it had paid $150,000 for consulting services on accounting matters to a firm set up by U.S. President Donald Trump’s private lawyer Michael Cohen.

The arrangement came as the company, backed by state-owned Export-Import Bank of Korea, is competing to sell trainer jets to the U.S. Air Force in an auction that could be worth up to $16 billion.

Someone grab me my fainting couch.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 12:54 pm Obama did it, too.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:14 pm I think, should her story ever be told, that a lot of people are going to find they underestimated the kind of power that kind of victimizer can have over his victims.

And we already know he's the kind of person who gets his way through intimidation and power.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:14 pm I think, should her story ever be told, that a lot of people are going to find they underestimated the kind of power that kind of victimizer can have over his victims.

And we already know he's the kind of person who gets his way through intimidation and power.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:38 pm We don't know exactly how she feels about Donald (though public signs suggest that she's not entirely thrilled). She could probably be doing more to stop the whole trainwreck, though it's not primarily her doing, and she would presumably pay some kind of a significant cost for doing so. The exact degree of her blameworthiness, while not zero, depends a lot on those details that we don't know.

geezer wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:47 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:38 pm We don't know exactly how she feels about Donald (though public signs suggest that she's not entirely thrilled). She could probably be doing more to stop the whole trainwreck, though it's not primarily her doing, and she would presumably pay some kind of a significant cost for doing so. The exact degree of her blameworthiness, while not zero, depends a lot on those details that we don't know.

Friend of a friend knows her well, likes her a bunch, and assuming what I'm told is accurate, you've got it pretty right, with the caveat being that the "significant cost" isn't necessarily her concern except that she's protective of her kid and wants what's best for him. On the whole, I'm fairly sympathetic toward her based on what little I know.

geezer wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:47 pm she's protective of her kid and wants what's best for him.

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:05 pm
Except Barron. He has a chance to escape it all if he just tells himself over and over again, "He's not really my father...he's not really my father".

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:14 pm I think, should her story ever be told, that a lot of people are going to find they underestimated the kind of power that kind of victimizer can have over his victims.

And we already know he's the kind of person who gets his way through intimidation and power.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:38 pm This might be what Kurth is getting at, but Melania's just not that interesting to talk through to me. We know she's complicit in the whole mess to at least some degree. We don't know exactly how she feels about Donald (though public signs suggest that she's not entirely thrilled). She could probably be doing more to stop the whole trainwreck, though it's not primarily her doing, and she would presumably pay some kind of a significant cost for doing so. The exact degree of her blameworthiness, while not zero, depends a lot on those details that we don't know.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:38 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:38 pm This might be what Kurth is getting at, but Melania's just not that interesting to talk through to me. We know she's complicit in the whole mess to at least some degree. We don't know exactly how she feels about Donald (though public signs suggest that she's not entirely thrilled). She could probably be doing more to stop the whole trainwreck, though it's not primarily her doing, and she would presumably pay some kind of a significant cost for doing so. The exact degree of her blameworthiness, while not zero, depends a lot on those details that we don't know.

I think there is some confusion here. Maybe for hepcat it's different, but I don't blame her for Drumpf's presidency. That's absurd. She almost certainly has near zero ability to influence him. It wouldn't surprise me if she couldn't convince him to drink a glass of orange juice at breakfast.

My criticisms of her are based on her own choices. I wouldn't feel any different if she had gone through the same courtship with Zuckerberg instead. She deserves criticism because she's a gold digger who looked for and found a sugar daddy. Not because of who her husband is.

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:28 pm So I am hearing a couple of the transactions in Avenatti's "possible fraudulent and illegal financial transactions" list are transaction of Michael Cohens that are not the one who was raided by the FBI.

Should be interesting to see the investigation into where he obtained such financial records of people totally uninvolved in this mess.

Here is one, but I am pretty sure there is another one as well.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.pr ... -1.6073490

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:57 pm

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:28 pm So I am hearing a couple of the transactions in Avenatti's "possible fraudulent and illegal financial transactions" list are transaction of Michael Cohens that are not the one who was raided by the FBI.

Should be interesting to see the investigation into where he obtained such financial records of people totally uninvolved in this mess.

Here is one, but I am pretty sure there is another one as well.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.pr ... -1.6073490

Sure. I don't think any of us are relying on Avenatti to save us from drumpf, although I will admit that every time he's a fly in the ointment for drumpf, I am gleeful. Get back to me when Mueller is making these kinds of mistakes.

Who do you think should begin the investigation? What jurisdiction would this fall under?

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:29 pm Makes sense as it is a violation of banking privacy laws.

Sepiche wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:39 pm

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:29 pm Makes sense as it is a violation of banking privacy laws.

So is your contention that it was illegal for him to accept and release leaked documents? Asking for a friend.

A day after revelations about money flows into an account set up by President Donald Trump’s longtime attorney, the U.S. Treasury’s internal watchdog is reviewing whether confidential banking information was improperly leaked.

“We are conducting an inquiry into possible improper dissemination of Bank Secrecy Act information,” said Rich Delmar, a spokesman for the Treasury’s inspector general, adding that the review is “predicated on information that was in the New York Times article earlier this week.”

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions are required to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury. Unauthorized disclosure of these so-called suspicious-activity reports is a criminal offense.

In televised remarks Tuesday, Avenatti said that First Republic Bank had filed three SARs to the U.S. Treasury related to the Cohen account. The Treasury had declined Avenatti’s request to release those documents, Avenatti told MSNBC.

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:05 pm

geezer wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:47 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:38 pm We don't know exactly how she feels about Donald (though public signs suggest that she's not entirely thrilled). She could probably be doing more to stop the whole trainwreck, though it's not primarily her doing, and she would presumably pay some kind of a significant cost for doing so. The exact degree of her blameworthiness, while not zero, depends a lot on those details that we don't know.

Friend of a friend knows her well, likes her a bunch, and assuming what I'm told is accurate, you've got it pretty right, with the caveat being that the "significant cost" isn't necessarily her concern except that she's protective of her kid and wants what's best for him. On the whole, I'm fairly sympathetic toward her based on what little I know.

I have heard the doting on the kid stuff before. She doesn't use a nanny and actually does her own kid rearing. Egads!

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:33 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 2:14 pm I think, should her story ever be told, that a lot of people are going to find they underestimated the kind of power that kind of victimizer can have over his victims.

And we already know he's the kind of person who gets his way through intimidation and power.

This is fucking stupid. She dated him for 7 freakin' years before deciding that marriage was a good idea. She dated him while he was still married to another trophy wife. He had already divorced 1 trophy wife, who was available if Melania had any misgivings about what she was getting herself into. Drumpf was looking for someone to be seen and not heard, and she agreed to it, right from the start. If you let someone treat you like shit because you want to live on fifth avenue, are you really a victim?

Geezus fuckin' kay-rist. She knew exactly what she was doing and what it would cost her and she did it anyway. That's not on drumpf. That's on her. She was not lulled into a false sense of worth and love and then suddenly turned on in private when there were no witnesses. She was constantly objectified and humiliated right from the beginning. In public. Right from the beginning. Drumpf has not changed how he treats her from the moment he was introduced to her to now.

At best you could argue that she has some sort of mental disorder where she likes to be treated like shit.

"Oh, she's a poor victim, traumatized into remaining with her abuser." Give me a fuckin' break. There are real victims out there. Please don't conflate this gold digging opportunist with them. That belittles and demeans people who are actually worthy of your sympathy and support.

Honest to fuck. I posted one article, because it was the first one I found and the first few paragraphs covered exactly what I had already written. There are a million others. READ. Get informed. We don't have to speculate whether she is or isn't an abused spouse. She clearly is. Where we differ is whether she consciously chose to be abused in exchange for being taken care of financially. And let's be serious, she wasn't an orphan begging for scraps on the street. There are other options besides whoring yourself to an abusive "billionaire" to escape the "horrors" of your life.

I'm pissed off because this is an objective fact. That doesn't mean she's not human, or that there aren't nuances to her or her relationship to her spouse, but that doesn't change the basic fundamental aspects of her relationship to him. In this time of fake news and alt-facts, I'm tired of having to lead a horse to water AND hold his head to it.

I'm pissed because people would rather speculate on what might be happening behind the scenes, when there are reams of information they can process and actually decide for themselves. But no, let's just imagine scenarios where she is an unfortunate victim with no responsibility for how she arrived there and then poo-poo those who criticize her life choices because in your fevered imagination she's not what she obviously is, and thus the criticism is unfair.

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:56 pm

Sepiche wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:39 pm

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 4:29 pm Makes sense as it is a violation of banking privacy laws.

So is your contention that it was illegal for him to accept and release leaked documents? Asking for a friend.

A day after revelations about money flows into an account set up by President Donald Trump’s longtime attorney, the U.S. Treasury’s internal watchdog is reviewing whether confidential banking information was improperly leaked.

“We are conducting an inquiry into possible improper dissemination of Bank Secrecy Act information,” said Rich Delmar, a spokesman for the Treasury’s inspector general, adding that the review is “predicated on information that was in the New York Times article earlier this week.”

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions are required to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury. Unauthorized disclosure of these so-called suspicious-activity reports is a criminal offense.

In televised remarks Tuesday, Avenatti said that First Republic Bank had filed three SARs to the U.S. Treasury related to the Cohen account. The Treasury had declined Avenatti’s request to release those documents, Avenatti told MSNBC.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... rly-leaked

Sounds like it to me. Pretty ballsy to request the Treasury Department release something and then disclose the info on TV when they decide not to.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:54 pm If Kurth wants to feel sadness at how unhappy a life Melania has made for herself, he can have at it. I had to push back because he's the one who suggested that I didn't know what I was talking about, when by his own admission, he knew nothing about Melania or her relationship with Drumpf, whereas I have unfortunately read about Drumpf and Ivana and then Drumpf and Melania for decades (I'm not very familiar with his first relationship, admittedly).

Rip wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 3:05 pm I have heard the doting on the kid stuff before. She doesn't use a nanny and actually does her own kid rearing. Egads!

Zaxxon wrote: ↑Wed May 09, 2018 6:41 pm For my part, I don't claim to have enough info to judge her based on the specifics or history of her relationship with The Donald. It's enough to judge her based on the objective fact that she's married to the biggest bully in the world yet claims anti-bullying as a signature issue.

I'd have had similar disparaging remarks had Skyler White made a public campaign against meth dealing.