I've only been saying the Mueller investigation leads to the uncovering of a massive money laundering operation for 18+ months now. As has been stated MANY times, Trump couldn't get an American Bank to touch him after he went belly-up in Atlantic City. Yet he kept financing projects and maintaining cash flow. The why, how, and who of that tells the whole tale. The guy is a first-class financial criminal. I mean shit, the NY Times article basically reveals that much. Since starting my new job and learning more about finances in general, I am even more convinced of this than I was before. Mueller wouldn't have started out looking for his finances. But since a HUGE portion of it inevitably lead to Russia, that is likely where the investigation started heading.
So what are we talking about when we say money laundering?? Specifically, it is the practice of moving money obtained in illegal ways through legitimate businesses so it can't be traced to it's source. I believe this is what Trump's real estate properties essentially became in the last 10+ years before he became President. A Russian mobster or oligarch would not be able to move their money into the United States through any bank that is following the law. But they absolutely could do so by funneling that money through real estate transactions that make no sense when looked at on the surface. In return for providing this service, Trump's empire stays afloat as he is guaranteed loans from foreign banks that no domestic bank would give him based on his bankruptcy track record.
I mean, it's all out there as plain as day. He's a tax cheat, he's an ADMITTED defrauder of customers based on his settlement in the Trump University case. He has a decades long history of flat-out refusing to pay construction contractors, not because of dissatisfaction, but as a business strategy. His behavior toward his dying father and where his money was going to go was straight-up elder abuse. He is making money off foreign officials staying in his properties while he is in office. His daughter and son-in-law are inking loans with Arab countries and patent deals with China mere days or weeks after those officials walk out of White House meetings. His ability to keep financing a world-wide real estate empire with no funding from domestic sources makes no sense unless he had entered into quid pro quo relationships with some of the worst characters on Earth. God knows how many under the table pay-offs to mistresses there are floating out there. He has been revealed to have instructed his lawyer to commit campaign finance violations in regards to one of them. To this day, he flat-out refuses to show the American people, who he WORKS for, his tax returns, which every other modern Presidential candidate has gladly provided without question or issue. He is the biggest, walking conflict of interest in American history. Forget everything else about him if you choose to. The guy is a thief and a crook. Just based on publicly known information about him he should be in jail for the rest of his life. There is probably not any turning back from allowing someone so nakedly and brazenly corrupt to attain the office of the Presidency. He doesn't even hide it, he FLAUNTS it because it serves to inoculate him because the sheer volume of it is so vast and deep, the media and public can't keep up.
I honestly don't see how this level of sabotage of an election could possibly be legal. If a private citizen did this, wouldn't they go to prison?
Kemp leads by only 70,000 votes. It's estimated he purged at least 350,000 from the rolls, possibly up to 750,000. When you add to THAT fact the clear practice of purposefully creating long lines in heavily African-American precincts, you end up with an election result that is impossible to take seriously. Stacey Abrams should never concede this race just on sheer principle alone.
In Florida, the margins continue to get even tighter, approaching hand recount territory. I swear to god, if the choice in Florida was between vanilla ice cream and a kick to the head, the results would come back 50/50.
You keep bringing up this process of voter roll purging, but it is a routine part of maintining voter roll databases. Literally every state does it. So the charge of just purging voter rolls is like charging a man with changing the oil in his car.
Is there actual evidence he is purging voting citizens intentionally to influence the election? That is a serious charge and if he is doing it he should be in jail for it.
I agree here. besides that one guy who threatened to come back with a gun, you'd think people would be able to find groups of people who showed up on election day and told they were not allowed to vote and raise a stink about that.
I've heard people getting frustrated and leaving after encountering long lines which is their choice to leave (priorities) but unacceptable with wait times but I haven't heard of too many accounts of people being denied to cast a ballot because they were no longer registered after they thought they were.
Yeah, and it's always overwhelmingly black people who have to make the "choice" to leave because they have had polling locations closed in their neighborhood or their machines literally not being supplied power cords, or half the machines that could have been used to alleviate the long lines sitting dormant in a closet. All taking place AFTER the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, which was, of course, the whole point of the ruling. To make it harder for black people to vote. Which is as American as apple pie.
Or is it only the black people we hear about? Just throwing that out there. The increased awareness might be a one way street...
Edit: it's kind of hard for me to believe that the polling stations in the major cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic Party run would allow this kind of suppression.
Jumping back a bit in topic here, but Kavanaugh's accuser from Avenatti effectively recanted most meaningful elements of her story as @Mathsorcerer brought up. The criminal behavior she claimed she saw him engage in she walked back and said she wasn't sure. Then there is the whole history of multiple false allegations of sexual misconduct thing she has a history of, but that's not relevant to her recent flip flop.
But really, who cares? There never was, not from the moment the accusations started until this very moment, a single piece of verifiable evidence that any of these events that were hyped by the democrat media to exhaustion ever took place.
As I said then and maintain now, I will believe what the democrat media desperately wants me to believe about how Kavanaugh was part of a gang rape ring when they can provide one iota of proof a reasonable person could look at and believe.
Until such proof exists it looks less like a story of gang rape and more a story of smearing an innocent person because the midterms were coming up and they gotta hype up that base with false narratives of republicans letting gang rapists on the Supreme Court.
"Julie Swetnick, the Kavanaugh accuser represented by sensationalist lawyer Michael Avenatti, changed parts of her story during an interview with NBC News that aired on Monday, appearing to walk back some of her most explosive claims about the Supreme Court nominee.
NBC News’ Kate Snow noted that the network could not verify any of Swetnick’s salacious claims before she highlighted how Swetnick’s claims during the interview varied from her written declaration. Swetnick had claimed that she “became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh, and others to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties” she attended.
Snow noted that in the NBC News interview, Swetnick claimed that she saw them near the punch but did not actually see them “spike” the punch with alcohol.
NBC News also noted that Swetnick appeared to change her initial statement about Kavanaugh being involved in gang rapes. Swetnick initially claimed: “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys. I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”
However, in the interview with NBC News, Swetnick said they did not stand in lines but “huddled by doors,” and that she “didn’t understand what it could possibly be.”
Swetnick’s credibility has come into question amid recent reports concerning multiple unsubstantiated sexual misconduct claims she’s made against employers, one of which has accused her of lying about her education and workplace experience. In the interview, she dismissed a Politico report detailing claims by her ex-boyfriend, who filed a restraining order against her in 2001 after he said she threatened him and his family."
To put this midterm in perspective, at this time during the Obama admins midterms, they lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.
During Bush's first midterm he just gained seats, but given that it was shortly after 9/11 that's probably why.
Bush lost 31 House seats and 6 Senate seats during his second midterm.
Bill Clinton lost 8 Senate seats, 54 House seats during his first midterm.
So far, Trump lost 30 House seats and gained 2 Senate seats.
I'd call his performance solidly above average.
As in all things, the raw numbers dont really tell the tale. To provide context:
2018 Midterms:
(Note - numbers here dont really add up, I think some websites count open seats differently than held seats)
D 193 to D 227 R 235 to R 201
House popular vote: 7.5% D
House popular vote is still being counted, expected to be around 7.5%, maybe 8, maybe 7. We'll say 7.5%
Obama's first midterm:
D 256 to D 193 R 179 to R 242
Popular house vote: 6.8% R
What does this tell us? Democrats had more seats in 2010 than the GOP did in 2018. They lost more of those seats (63 to 34) despite having a smaller margin of victory (6.8% vs 7.5%). Because the democrats had more seats, it means they had more vulnerable seats and correspondingly, lost more.
Senate breaks the mold a bit, as I believe it's only happened 3 times in history that the midterm election of a president has had the house move in one direction and the senate in another direction. This is also (somewhat) explained by the map that the Democrats had to defend. The Democrats were defending more senate seats at one time than they had ever defended in the history of the party(!!). Correspondingly, there more opportunities to pick off seats. Add the natural conservative bias in the institution of the senate, and it's not particularly shocking as a result.
It's also worth pointing out that the Republican redistricting gerrymander in 2010 resulted in a house map that is incredibly difficult to overcome. It was expected to take a victory by 5 or points in the national house vote to simply break even.
All in all, I'd be worried if I were Trump - Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania swung HARD back towards the democrats this midterm. 2020 goes through those states, and Trump's approval rating was under water in each one.
I've only been saying the Mueller investigation leads to the uncovering of a massive money laundering operation for 18+ months now. As has been stated MANY times, Trump couldn't get an American Bank to touch him after he went belly-up in Atlantic City. Yet he kept financing projects and maintaining cash flow. The why, how, and who of that tells the whole tale. The guy is a first-class financial criminal. I mean shit, the NY Times article basically reveals that much. Since starting my new job and learning more about finances in general, I am even more convinced of this than I was before. Mueller wouldn't have started out looking for his finances. But since a HUGE portion of it inevitably lead to Russia, that is likely where the investigation started heading.
So what are we talking about when we say money laundering?? Specifically, it is the practice of moving money obtained in illegal ways through legitimate businesses so it can't be traced to it's source. I believe this is what Trump's real estate properties essentially became in the last 10+ years before he became President. A Russian mobster or oligarch would not be able to move their money into the United States through any bank that is following the law. But they absolutely could do so by funneling that money through real estate transactions that make no sense when looked at on the surface. In return for providing this service, Trump's empire stays afloat as he is guaranteed loans from foreign banks that no domestic bank would give him based on his bankruptcy track record.
I mean, it's all out there as plain as day. He's a tax cheat, he's an ADMITTED defrauder of customers based on his settlement in the Trump University case. He has a decades long history of flat-out refusing to pay construction contractors, not because of dissatisfaction, but as a business strategy. His behavior toward his dying father and where his money was going to go was straight-up elder abuse. He is making money off foreign officials staying in his properties while he is in office. His daughter and son-in-law are inking loans with Arab countries and patent deals with China mere days or weeks after those officials walk out of White House meetings. His ability to keep financing a world-wide real estate empire with no funding from domestic sources makes no sense unless he had entered into quid pro quo relationships with some of the worst characters on Earth. God knows how many under the table pay-offs to mistresses there are floating out there. He has been revealed to have instructed his lawyer to commit campaign finance violations in regards to one of them. To this day, he flat-out refuses to show the American people, who he WORKS for, his tax returns, which every other modern Presidential candidate has gladly provided without question or issue. He is the biggest, walking conflict of interest in American history. Forget everything else about him if you choose to. The guy is a thief and a crook. Just based on publicly known information about him he should be in jail for the rest of his life. There is probably not any turning back from allowing someone so nakedly and brazenly corrupt to attain the office of the Presidency. He doesn't even hide it, he FLAUNTS it because it serves to inoculate him because the sheer volume of it is so vast and deep, the media and public can't keep up.
I kind of agree with you to a point. I'd pretty much rather have Trump as president than Pence though. Just saying. I don't trust Pence's judgement. He might be the type to do things just because 'God told me to'. At least we know Trump's motives. My parents would love to fight a 'Holy War' against Islam and I think Pence is more along those lines. Scary thought to ponder...
I honestly don't see how this level of sabotage of an election could possibly be legal. If a private citizen did this, wouldn't they go to prison?
Kemp leads by only 70,000 votes. It's estimated he purged at least 350,000 from the rolls, possibly up to 750,000. When you add to THAT fact the clear practice of purposefully creating long lines in heavily African-American precincts, you end up with an election result that is impossible to take seriously. Stacey Abrams should never concede this race just on sheer principle alone.
In Florida, the margins continue to get even tighter, approaching hand recount territory. I swear to god, if the choice in Florida was between vanilla ice cream and a kick to the head, the results would come back 50/50.
You keep bringing up this process of voter roll purging, but it is a routine part of maintining voter roll databases. Literally every state does it. So the charge of just purging voter rolls is like charging a man with changing the oil in his car.
Is there actual evidence he is purging voting citizens intentionally to influence the election? That is a serious charge and if he is doing it he should be in jail for it.
I agree here. besides that one guy who threatened to come back with a gun, you'd think people would be able to find groups of people who showed up on election day and told they were not allowed to vote and raise a stink about that.
I've heard people getting frustrated and leaving after encountering long lines which is their choice to leave (priorities) but unacceptable with wait times but I haven't heard of too many accounts of people being denied to cast a ballot because they were no longer registered after they thought they were.
Yeah, and it's always overwhelmingly black people who have to make the "choice" to leave because they have had polling locations closed in their neighborhood or their machines literally not being supplied power cords, or half the machines that could have been used to alleviate the long lines sitting dormant in a closet. All taking place AFTER the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, which was, of course, the whole point of the ruling. To make it harder for black people to vote. Which is as American as apple pie.
Or is it only the black people we hear about? Just throwing that out there. The increased awareness might be a one way street...
I mean, we here can only speak from personal experience. In 2016 I waited in line for 10 minutes and my polling place was a minute from my apartment. In 2008 and 2012 I didn't wait at all. There is no such thing as a voter line in rural America. The point is, our election system is broken. We can't trust electronic machines, we can't trust the officials who run them, we can't really trust that they won't one day be straight up hacked by a foreign government. Every State has different voting rules, thus no one actually has the same rights. Someone in Vermont has completely different voting rights than someone in Georgia, just as someone in Georgia has different rights than someone in Montana. It's 50 individual systems, which would be fine if they were only being used for state-wide races, but they are (of course) also used for federal ones. It's a complete clusterf**k. It's pathetic, honestly. We need uniform voting rules in this country. If I have to spend one more election cycle spending weeks upon weeks wondering just what the hell is going on in Florida and whatever they call a voting system down there, I think I'm going to scream.
All of Trump's unethical dealings are surely in business. The Trump/Russia conspiracy this investigation itself is based on is nonsense and there is still nothing on that front after two years, but I entirely agree that something should be done to curb his worst impulses in that regard.
I honestly don't see how this level of sabotage of an election could possibly be legal. If a private citizen did this, wouldn't they go to prison?
Kemp leads by only 70,000 votes. It's estimated he purged at least 350,000 from the rolls, possibly up to 750,000. When you add to THAT fact the clear practice of purposefully creating long lines in heavily African-American precincts, you end up with an election result that is impossible to take seriously. Stacey Abrams should never concede this race just on sheer principle alone.
In Florida, the margins continue to get even tighter, approaching hand recount territory. I swear to god, if the choice in Florida was between vanilla ice cream and a kick to the head, the results would come back 50/50.
You keep bringing up this process of voter roll purging, but it is a routine part of maintining voter roll databases. Literally every state does it. So the charge of just purging voter rolls is like charging a man with changing the oil in his car.
Is there actual evidence he is purging voting citizens intentionally to influence the election? That is a serious charge and if he is doing it he should be in jail for it.
I agree here. besides that one guy who threatened to come back with a gun, you'd think people would be able to find groups of people who showed up on election day and told they were not allowed to vote and raise a stink about that.
I've heard people getting frustrated and leaving after encountering long lines which is their choice to leave (priorities) but unacceptable with wait times but I haven't heard of too many accounts of people being denied to cast a ballot because they were no longer registered after they thought they were.
Yeah, and it's always overwhelmingly black people who have to make the "choice" to leave because they have had polling locations closed in their neighborhood or their machines literally not being supplied power cords, or half the machines that could have been used to alleviate the long lines sitting dormant in a closet. All taking place AFTER the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, which was, of course, the whole point of the ruling. To make it harder for black people to vote. Which is as American as apple pie.
Or is it only the black people we hear about? Just throwing that out there. The increased awareness might be a one way street...
I mean, we here can only speak from personal experience. In 2016 I waited in line for 10 minutes and my polling place was a minute from my apartment. In 2008 and 2012 I didn't wait at all. There is no such thing as a voter line in rural America. The point is, our election system is broken. We can't trust electronic machines, we can't trust the officials who run them, we can't really trust that they won't one day be straight up hacked by a foreign government. Every State has different voting rules, thus no one actually has the same rights. Someone in Vermont has completely different voting rights than someone in Georgia, just as someone in Georgia has different rights than someone in Montana. It's 50 individual systems, which would be fine if they were only being used for state-wide races, but they are (of course) also used for federal ones. It's a complete clusterf**k. It's pathetic, honestly. We need uniform voting rules in this country. If I have to spend one more election cycle spending weeks upon weeks wondering just what the hell is going on in Florida and whatever they call a voting system down there, I think I'm going to scream.
The cities need to do a better job organizing the voter polling stations. It can't be THAT hard to do if they really care about it. I'm not in a rural district but it's about as far away from Detroit as possible to still be considered suburban. I waited 15 minutes and that's only because some dufus filled out his ballot wrong and I had to wait for them to invalidate his old one and issue a new one.
Edit: Unless I'm wrong, each district is supposed to have the same amount of people, correct? I don't see why there should be such a discrepancy in waiting times except for incompetence or deliberate suppression. If it's suppression in urban areas that seems like just another form of incompetence. Rural areas should be easier to suppress because of less oversight unless I'm missing something here...
The fact that Trump could get away with having his business dealings and government matters intermingle at all while he is President is unprecedented, but what's more unprecedented is the fact of how little people seem to be concerned about it. I remember Cheyney's connection to Halliburton being a far bigger deal, even though he had severed all ties to that company by the time he entered office as Vice President. I wonder whether it's because of the odd media climate we're in where it simply never came up over delusional screeches of fascist and Nazi and Russian bots, or because people simply associate Trump so strongly with his business, and it has his family name associated with it so folks just feel less outraged when he keeps it in the family, I don't know.
The fact that Trump could get away with having his business dealings and government matters intermingle at all while he is President is unprecedented, but what's more unprecedented is the fact of how little people seem to be concerned about it. I remember Cheyney's connection to Halliburton being a far bigger deal, even though he had severed all ties to that company by the time he entered office as Vice President. I wonder whether it's because of the odd media climate we're in where it simply never came up over delusional screeches of fascist and Nazi and Russian bots, or because people simply associate Trump so strongly with his business, and it has his family name associated with it so folks just feel less outraged when he keeps it in the family, I don't know.
I think it's because it's so transparent. It's weird. Because Trump is fucking us right out in the open it's kind of refreshing. No more back door fucking it's bend over and see what politics really is!
The fact that Trump could get away with having his business dealings and government matters intermingle at all while he is President is unprecedented, but what's more unprecedented is the fact of how little people seem to be concerned about it. I remember Cheyney's connection to Halliburton being a far bigger deal, even though he had severed all ties to that company by the time he entered office as Vice President. I wonder whether it's because of the odd media climate we're in where it simply never came up over delusional screeches of fascist and Nazi and Russian bots, or because people simply associate Trump so strongly with his business, and it has his family name associated with it so folks just feel less outraged when he keeps it in the family, I don't know.
I don't know either. Cheney's situation with Halliburton WAS a big deal, because even though he had divested from the company while he was in office, he was clearly steering Iraq War contracts to them that resulted in billions of dollars. While it was always assumed he would be handsomely rewarded after he was out of office for doing so, it couldn't be proven because he had at least bothered to take the step of walking away from any official capacity while he was holding the office of the Vice Presidency. If you ask me to pick, I'd still say Bush/Cheney are worse than Trump by a significant margin on MANY fronts, but that is only because I was right in the thick of following that disaster for the entire 8 years. I despise how Trump's over the top corruption is rehabilitating them.
As for Trump?? He's a cartoon character. People associate him with successful business because he was the poster child for that "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"/"Wall Street" mentality of the 1980s, and then he was beamed into everyone's home as some sort of fake business titan on "The Apprentice" for years in a reality TV show, when the actual results of his business record show very little but an uncanny ability to manipulate the media and brand his image. The rest of it nothing but sleaze and incompetence. How one goes bankrupt running a casino in Atlantic City is one of the most puzzling questions known to man. Running a casino in that location is like being issued a license to print money.
@WarChiefZeke: I think the reason he can get away with so many things (pick an example, or pick a category of examples) is simple: there is so, so much to talk about when it comes to Trump, and so much to complain about, that only the most colorful scandals attract attention. In terms of policy, the Stormy Daniels non-disclosure agreement isn't remotely as important as Trump's business dealings. But Stormy Daniels stays in the news much longer because her story is more interesting than money matters.
I think the media could cover more of these important issues at the expense of the flashier scandals, but even then, I don't think there's enough time for journalists to cover every problem with the Trump presidency. There's just too much that's wrong with our political climate today to fully discuss all of it.
It doesn't help that TV news stations have devolved into entertainment-based media because their profits depend on ratings, and not on the importance of their journalism. Print sources and online articles deal with a lot of substantive issues and are backed by solid research, but for daytime TV, much of the content is designed primarily to be attention-grabbing. That particular problem long predates Trump.
The fact that Trump could get away with having his business dealings and government matters intermingle at all while he is President is unprecedented, but what's more unprecedented is the fact of how little people seem to be concerned about it. I remember Cheyney's connection to Halliburton being a far bigger deal, even though he had severed all ties to that company by the time he entered office as Vice President. I wonder whether it's because of the odd media climate we're in where it simply never came up over delusional screeches of fascist and Nazi and Russian bots, or because people simply associate Trump so strongly with his business, and it has his family name associated with it so folks just feel less outraged when he keeps it in the family, I don't know.
I think it's because it's so transparent. It's weird. Because Trump is fucking us right out in the open it's kind of refreshing. No more back door fucking it's bend over and see what politics really is!
No one would use this logic in any other scenario. If some guy just straight-up told you he was sleeping with your wife to your face rather than trying to keep it a secret, no one would give him brownie points for doing so. And I maintain there is a HUGE difference between profiting off the Presidency after you are out of office and doing so while you are actively holding it. The first can't possibly be prevented, the later should be at all costs.
All of Trump's unethical dealings are surely in business. The Trump/Russia conspiracy this investigation itself is based on is nonsense and there is still nothing on that front after two years, but I entirely agree that something should be done to curb his worst impulses in that regard.
That was the whole point of detaching one's business into a blind trust while you're in office. So all this conflict of interest DOES NOT HAPPEN.
Now who knows what's Trump-Russia business dealing is "legitimate", and which is illegal.
The fact that Trump could get away with having his business dealings and government matters intermingle at all while he is President is unprecedented, but what's more unprecedented is the fact of how little people seem to be concerned about it. I remember Cheyney's connection to Halliburton being a far bigger deal, even though he had severed all ties to that company by the time he entered office as Vice President. I wonder whether it's because of the odd media climate we're in where it simply never came up over delusional screeches of fascist and Nazi and Russian bots, or because people simply associate Trump so strongly with his business, and it has his family name associated with it so folks just feel less outraged when he keeps it in the family, I don't know.
You...totally missed all the screaming at Trump that he needed to cut his business ties and put them into a blind trust leading up to the election?
@WarChiefZeke: I think the reason he can get away with so many things (pick an example, or pick a category of examples) is simple: there is so, so much to talk about when it comes to Trump, and so much to complain about, that only the most colorful scandals attract attention. In terms of policy, the Stormy Daniels non-disclosure agreement isn't remotely as important as Trump's business dealings. But Stormy Daniels stays in the news much longer because her story is more interesting than money matters.
I think the media could cover more of these important issues at the expense of the flashier scandals, but even then, I don't think there's enough time for journalists to cover every problem with the Trump presidency. There's just too much that's wrong with our political climate today to fully discuss all of it.
It doesn't help that TV news stations have devolved into entertainment-based media because their profits depend on ratings, and not on the importance of their journalism. Print sources and online articles deal with a lot of substantive issues and are backed by solid research, but for daytime TV, much of the content is designed primarily to be attention-grabbing. That particular problem long predates Trump.
I honestly don't regret voting for the asshole though. If nothing else he's shaking things up. I didn't vote for Gretchen Whitmer for Governor here in Michigan but I heard her talk on WJR this afternoon after work and it was very refreshing hearing what she had to say. She basically said that she was going to try to fix our roads problem but said it would involve all of us sacrificing in the form of higher taxes, not just 'the rich will pay for everything' BS that Democrats usually spout. It's that kind of refreshing honesty that I could find myself voting for...
@WarChiefZeke: I think the reason he can get away with so many things (pick an example, or pick a category of examples) is simple: there is so, so much to talk about when it comes to Trump, and so much to complain about, that only the most colorful scandals attract attention. In terms of policy, the Stormy Daniels non-disclosure agreement isn't remotely as important as Trump's business dealings. But Stormy Daniels stays in the news much longer because her story is more interesting than money matters.
I think the media could cover more of these important issues at the expense of the flashier scandals, but even then, I don't think there's enough time for journalists to cover every problem with the Trump presidency. There's just too much that's wrong with our political climate today to fully discuss all of it.
It doesn't help that TV news stations have devolved into entertainment-based media because their profits depend on ratings, and not on the importance of their journalism. Print sources and online articles deal with a lot of substantive issues and are backed by solid research, but for daytime TV, much of the content is designed primarily to be attention-grabbing. That particular problem long predates Trump.
I honestly don't regret voting for the asshole though. If nothing else he's shaking things up. I didn't vote for Gretchen Whitmer for Governor here in Michigan but I heard her talk on WJR this afternoon after work and it was very refreshing hearing what she had to say. She basically said that she was going to try to fix our roads problem but said it would involve all of us sacrificing in the form of higher taxes, not just 'the rich will pay for everything' BS that Democrats usually spout. It's that kind of refreshing honesty that I could find myself voting for...
The only thing he's shaking up is whatever norms were holding the political system together and preventing it from falling apart at the seams. The only thing he has bucked Republican orthodoxy on is his tariffs. Everything else is just cranked to 11 Republican 101 that was outsourced to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell while he runs a daily reality show out of the White House.
@WarChiefZeke: I think the reason he can get away with so many things (pick an example, or pick a category of examples) is simple: there is so, so much to talk about when it comes to Trump, and so much to complain about, that only the most colorful scandals attract attention. In terms of policy, the Stormy Daniels non-disclosure agreement isn't remotely as important as Trump's business dealings. But Stormy Daniels stays in the news much longer because her story is more interesting than money matters.
I think the media could cover more of these important issues at the expense of the flashier scandals, but even then, I don't think there's enough time for journalists to cover every problem with the Trump presidency. There's just too much that's wrong with our political climate today to fully discuss all of it.
It doesn't help that TV news stations have devolved into entertainment-based media because their profits depend on ratings, and not on the importance of their journalism. Print sources and online articles deal with a lot of substantive issues and are backed by solid research, but for daytime TV, much of the content is designed primarily to be attention-grabbing. That particular problem long predates Trump.
I honestly don't regret voting for the asshole though. If nothing else he's shaking things up. I didn't vote for Gretchen Whitmer for Governor here in Michigan but I heard her talk on WJR this afternoon after work and it was very refreshing hearing what she had to say. She basically said that she was going to try to fix our roads problem but said it would involve all of us sacrificing in the form of higher taxes, not just 'the rich will pay for everything' BS that Democrats usually spout. It's that kind of refreshing honesty that I could find myself voting for...
The only thing he's shaking up is whatever norms were holding the political system together and preventing it from falling apart at the seams. The only thing he has bucked Republican orthodoxy on is his tariffs. Everything else is just cranked to 11 Republican 101 that was outsourced to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
It won't be permanent damage. Trust me. I have more faith in our system maybe, but I also have a long term view that many people don't share.
I honestly don't regret voting for the asshole though.
Saudi Arabia money in "charity" foundations and war or Ivanka getting some sweet buisness deals from China? No contest if ya ask me.
Not that it is a contest. All corruption should be rooted out.
I won't argue with you because we're on the same side of the coin most of the time. Can we last two more years with this moron? Time will tell. He might be the lesser of two evils right now is my point. I trust Trump to be Trump. Pence is a wildcard I'm not sure I want to see played...
If high numbers are all there is to go on I would say the state should be called on to justify those numbers, an audit if you will, but I wouldn't immediately assume criminality without more context or evidence, especially given deltago's point that there really hasn't been a single person who has come out and said they were denied voting, which says to me that these may indeed be legitimate purges.
"The loudest of those complaints came from Georgia, where issues of race, ballot access and election fairness have fueled an acrimonious governor’s contest between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams, a former state lawmaker, would be the nation’s first black female governor, while Kemp, the secretary of state, who oversees elections, has faced accusations of trying to suppress the minority vote.
In one downtown Atlanta precinct, voters waited three hours to cast ballots after local election officials initially sent only three voting machines to serve more than 3,000 registered voters. In suburban Gwinnett County, the wait surpassed four hours as election officials opened the polls only to discover that their voting machines were not working at all, voters said.
Both locations serve predominantly African American voters, feeding worries among some voters that specific groups were being disenfranchised amid signs of record turnout for a midterm election." ---
On October 9, the Associated Press reported that 53,000 voter registrations, 70 percent of them from black applicants, were being held by Kemp’s office for failing to clear an “exact match” process that compares registration information to Social Security and state driver records. If the information does not match — often due to trivial inconsistencies like a misspelled name, a middle name not being fully written out, or a missing hyphen — an application is held for additional screening and the applicant is supposed to be notified and given a period to correct their information. Kemp didn't notify people.
------------So------------
The vote difference between the two is supposedly 63K votes.
Voting purges, exact match shenanigans, "whoops lost the ballots" type games stole the election from Stacey Abram.
Kemp only resigned as Secretary of State once he felt sure she could not challenge him to a runoff election. He's a piece of shit.
Jumping back a bit in topic here, but Kavanaugh's accuser from Avenatti effectively recanted most meaningful elements of her story as @Mathsorcerer brought up. The criminal behavior she claimed she saw him engage in she walked back and said she wasn't sure. Then there is the whole history of multiple false allegations of sexual misconduct thing she has a history of, but that's not relevant to her recent flip flop.
But really, who cares? There never was, not from the moment the accusations started until this very moment, a single piece of verifiable evidence that any of these events that were hyped by the democrat media to exhaustion ever took place.
As I said then and maintain now, I will believe what the democrat media desperately wants me to believe about how Kavanaugh was part of a gang rape ring when they can provide one iota of proof a reasonable person could look at and believe.
Until such proof exists it looks less like a story of gang rape and more a story of smearing an innocent person because the midterms were coming up and they gotta hype up that base with false narratives of republicans letting gang rapists on the Supreme Court.
"Julie Swetnick, the Kavanaugh accuser represented by sensationalist lawyer Michael Avenatti, changed parts of her story during an interview with NBC News that aired on Monday, appearing to walk back some of her most explosive claims about the Supreme Court nominee.
NBC News’ Kate Snow noted that the network could not verify any of Swetnick’s salacious claims before she highlighted how Swetnick’s claims during the interview varied from her written declaration. Swetnick had claimed that she “became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh, and others to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties” she attended.
Snow noted that in the NBC News interview, Swetnick claimed that she saw them near the punch but did not actually see them “spike” the punch with alcohol.
NBC News also noted that Swetnick appeared to change her initial statement about Kavanaugh being involved in gang rapes. Swetnick initially claimed: “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys. I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”
However, in the interview with NBC News, Swetnick said they did not stand in lines but “huddled by doors,” and that she “didn’t understand what it could possibly be.”
Swetnick’s credibility has come into question amid recent reports concerning multiple unsubstantiated sexual misconduct claims she’s made against employers, one of which has accused her of lying about her education and workplace experience. In the interview, she dismissed a Politico report detailing claims by her ex-boyfriend, who filed a restraining order against her in 2001 after he said she threatened him and his family."
Well, let's see. When Kavanaugh's name was announced on the shorllist, that was when Dr Christine Blasey ford contacted her congresswoman and said, "you should be aware of this that he did in the past, he doesn't deserve to get nominated for a seat. She mentioned this to her husband long before his name was announced that Kavanaugh raped her, and she mentioned it in therapy back in 2012.
Fine, deny Julie Swetnick's claim. But that says nothing about the claims of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the second Kavanaugh accuser. Neither recanted their testimony. Until you deal with both of their stories, I will continue to believe that Kavanaugh was guilty of what Dr. Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez said he did.
No comments from @jjstraka34, @smeagolheart, or @semiticgod about my Gretchen Whitmer post? I admit I might vote for her next time if she follows up on her promises. That should give you all hope for the future if you ask me. I can only speak for myself of course, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my viewpoints.
Edit: Sorry, should have mentioned @LadyRhian also in this post...
All of Trump's unethical dealings are surely in business. The Trump/Russia conspiracy this investigation itself is based on is nonsense and there is still nothing on that front after two years, but I entirely agree that something should be done to curb his worst impulses in that regard.
It's been silent for two years, because Mueller doesn't leak. It doesn't mean there is nothing. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the legal saying goes. Unproven does not mean innocent.
All of Trump's unethical dealings are surely in business. The Trump/Russia conspiracy this investigation itself is based on is nonsense and there is still nothing on that front after two years, but I entirely agree that something should be done to curb his worst impulses in that regard.
It's been silent for two years, because Mueller doesn't leak. It doesn't mean there is nothing. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the legal saying goes. Unproven does not mean innocent.
However, unless he's proven guilty, which is unlikely with these allegations being so old, he has to be assumed to be innocent. That's how our system works.
Personally, I wish Kavanaugh had never been an option. Kavanaugh is part of the 'swamp' that Trump was supposedly opposed to. I didn't like him from the start. Unfortunately, Trump tried to placate the Republican Party with his nomination and it became a partisan fight with predictable results.
There were plenty of other people that could have been chosen and I wish Trump had picked any of them instead. That's a major reason I'm pissed off at him now!
Edit: Sorry @LadyRhian, in re-reading the post I see you were referring to Trump's guilt not Kavanaugh's. My comments are only referring to Kavanaugh.
For the purposes of a criminal trial, we must assume someone is innocent unless proven otherwise. But for the sake of a government appointment, I think the degree of certainty needs to be a bit higher than "reasonable doubt."
If some guy in my neighborhood got accused of being a pedophile, I wouldn't support a lynch mob, but I also wouldn't let my kids stay at his house until I was sure the accusation was false. Reasonable doubt alone would not be sufficient for me to be confident in my children's safety.
The highest court in the land is worth that kind of caution.
For the purposes of a criminal trial, we must assume someone is innocent unless proven otherwise. But for the sake of a government appointment, I think the degree of certainty needs to be a bit higher than "reasonable doubt."
If some guy in my neighborhood got accused of being a pedophile, I wouldn't support a lynch mob, but I also wouldn't let my kids stay at his house until I was sure the accusation was false.
Even if the allegations were over 30 years old and there weren't any since then? I have to say I'd agree with you as far as my daughter is concerned, but I'm not sure it'd be 'fair'. The better part of discretion would say 'not my daughter' whether the allegation was true or not. That's the gist of why this is so bogus. Kavanaugh should never have been nominated. Draining the swamp was one of Trump's campaign promises for God's sake!
All of Trump's unethical dealings are surely in business. The Trump/Russia conspiracy this investigation itself is based on is nonsense and there is still nothing on that front after two years, but I entirely agree that something should be done to curb his worst impulses in that regard.
It's been silent for two years, because Mueller doesn't leak. It doesn't mean there is nothing. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the legal saying goes. Unproven does not mean innocent.
However, unless he's proven guilty, which is unlikely with these allegations being so old, he has to be assumed to be innocent. That's how our system works.
Personally, I wish Kavanaugh had never been an option. Kavanaugh is part of the 'swamp' that Trump was supposedly opposed to. I didn't like him from the start. Unfortunately, Trump tried to placate the Republican Party with his nomination and it became a partisan fight with predictable results.
There were plenty of other people that could have been chosen and I wish Trump had picked any of them instead. That's a major reason I'm pissed off at him now!
Edit: Sorry @LadyRhian, in re-reading the post I see you were referring to Trump's guilt not Kavanaugh's. My comments are only referring to Kavanaugh.
That's fine.
And, this just came up on Facebook:
Keystone XL pipeline blocked by federal judge in Montana, throwing project’s future into doubt
The future of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has been thrown into doubt after a federal judge in Montana blocked its construction, saying the Trump administration approved it after an incomplete analysis.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on Thursday ruled that the U.S. State Department didn’t look closely enough at factors such as the project’s viability in the face of lower oil prices, new modelling of possible oil spills and ways to mitigate them, or at the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, The Great Falls Tribune reported.
Ugh, reading up about the appointment of Whitaker and related clauses of law got me to Mulvaney again because it's the most similiar most recent situation.
Asking for a budget of $0. Asking for your own agency to be disbanded, giving raises to your lackeys you appointed, demanding that you won't talk to anyone unless they pay you, freezing all work, basically ordering your agency to do NOTHING, only coming to work a few hours a couple days per week...and more.
Ugh, reading up about the appointment of Whitaker and related clauses of law got me to Mulvaney again because it's the most similiar most recent situation.
Asking for a budget of $0. Asking for your own agency to be disbanded, giving raises to your lackeys you appointed, demanding that you won't talk to anyone unless they pay you, freezing all work, basically ordering your agency to do NOTHING, only coming to work a few hours a couple days per week...and more.
This is not being an officer in good faith.
That's why he was picked along with his opinion that Mueller shouldn't investigate Trump.
He wasn't picked because he was good at his job, or a defender of the Constitution. He is corrupt and morally bankrupt. He's a Trump man.
No comments from @jjstraka34, @smeagolheart, or @semiticgod about my Gretchen Whitmer post? I admit I might vote for her next time if she follows up on her promises. That should give you all hope for the future if you ask me. I can only speak for myself of course, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my viewpoints.
Edit: Sorry, should have mentioned @LadyRhian also in this post...
Comments
So what are we talking about when we say money laundering?? Specifically, it is the practice of moving money obtained in illegal ways through legitimate businesses so it can't be traced to it's source. I believe this is what Trump's real estate properties essentially became in the last 10+ years before he became President. A Russian mobster or oligarch would not be able to move their money into the United States through any bank that is following the law. But they absolutely could do so by funneling that money through real estate transactions that make no sense when looked at on the surface. In return for providing this service, Trump's empire stays afloat as he is guaranteed loans from foreign banks that no domestic bank would give him based on his bankruptcy track record.
I mean, it's all out there as plain as day. He's a tax cheat, he's an ADMITTED defrauder of customers based on his settlement in the Trump University case. He has a decades long history of flat-out refusing to pay construction contractors, not because of dissatisfaction, but as a business strategy. His behavior toward his dying father and where his money was going to go was straight-up elder abuse. He is making money off foreign officials staying in his properties while he is in office. His daughter and son-in-law are inking loans with Arab countries and patent deals with China mere days or weeks after those officials walk out of White House meetings. His ability to keep financing a world-wide real estate empire with no funding from domestic sources makes no sense unless he had entered into quid pro quo relationships with some of the worst characters on Earth. God knows how many under the table pay-offs to mistresses there are floating out there. He has been revealed to have instructed his lawyer to commit campaign finance violations in regards to one of them. To this day, he flat-out refuses to show the American people, who he WORKS for, his tax returns, which every other modern Presidential candidate has gladly provided without question or issue. He is the biggest, walking conflict of interest in American history. Forget everything else about him if you choose to. The guy is a thief and a crook. Just based on publicly known information about him he should be in jail for the rest of his life. There is probably not any turning back from allowing someone so nakedly and brazenly corrupt to attain the office of the Presidency. He doesn't even hide it, he FLAUNTS it because it serves to inoculate him because the sheer volume of it is so vast and deep, the media and public can't keep up.
Edit: it's kind of hard for me to believe that the polling stations in the major cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic Party run would allow this kind of suppression.
But really, who cares? There never was, not from the moment the accusations started until this very moment, a single piece of verifiable evidence that any of these events that were hyped by the democrat media to exhaustion ever took place.
As I said then and maintain now, I will believe what the democrat media desperately wants me to believe about how Kavanaugh was part of a gang rape ring when they can provide one iota of proof a reasonable person could look at and believe.
Until such proof exists it looks less like a story of gang rape and more a story of smearing an innocent person because the midterms were coming up and they gotta hype up that base with false narratives of republicans letting gang rapists on the Supreme Court.
"Julie Swetnick, the Kavanaugh accuser represented by sensationalist lawyer Michael Avenatti, changed parts of her story during an interview with NBC News that aired on Monday, appearing to walk back some of her most explosive claims about the Supreme Court nominee.
NBC News’ Kate Snow noted that the network could not verify any of Swetnick’s salacious claims before she highlighted how Swetnick’s claims during the interview varied from her written declaration.
Swetnick had claimed that she “became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh, and others to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties” she attended.
Snow noted that in the NBC News interview, Swetnick claimed that she saw them near the punch but did not actually see them “spike” the punch with alcohol.
NBC News also noted that Swetnick appeared to change her initial statement about Kavanaugh being involved in gang rapes. Swetnick initially claimed: “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys. I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”
However, in the interview with NBC News, Swetnick said they did not stand in lines but “huddled by doors,” and that she “didn’t understand what it could possibly be.”
Swetnick’s credibility has come into question amid recent reports concerning multiple unsubstantiated sexual misconduct claims she’s made against employers, one of which has accused her of lying about her education and workplace experience. In the interview, she dismissed a Politico report detailing claims by her ex-boyfriend, who filed a restraining order against her in 2001 after he said she threatened him and his family."
https://www.dailywire.com/news/36562/watch-kavanaugh-accuser-swetnick-walks-back-some-ryan-saavedra
2018 Midterms:
(Note - numbers here dont really add up, I think some websites count open seats differently than held seats)
D 193 to D 227
R 235 to R 201
House popular vote: 7.5% D
House popular vote is still being counted, expected to be around 7.5%, maybe 8, maybe 7. We'll say 7.5%
Obama's first midterm:
D 256 to D 193
R 179 to R 242
Popular house vote: 6.8% R
What does this tell us? Democrats had more seats in 2010 than the GOP did in 2018. They lost more of those seats (63 to 34) despite having a smaller margin of victory (6.8% vs 7.5%). Because the democrats had more seats, it means they had more vulnerable seats and correspondingly, lost more.
Senate breaks the mold a bit, as I believe it's only happened 3 times in history that the midterm election of a president has had the house move in one direction and the senate in another direction. This is also (somewhat) explained by the map that the Democrats had to defend. The Democrats were defending more senate seats at one time than they had ever defended in the history of the party(!!). Correspondingly, there more opportunities to pick off seats. Add the natural conservative bias in the institution of the senate, and it's not particularly shocking as a result.
It's also worth pointing out that the Republican redistricting gerrymander in 2010 resulted in a house map that is incredibly difficult to overcome. It was expected to take a victory by 5 or points in the national house vote to simply break even.
All in all, I'd be worried if I were Trump - Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania swung HARD back towards the democrats this midterm. 2020 goes through those states, and Trump's approval rating was under water in each one.
I mean, we here can only speak from personal experience. In 2016 I waited in line for 10 minutes and my polling place was a minute from my apartment. In 2008 and 2012 I didn't wait at all. There is no such thing as a voter line in rural America. The point is, our election system is broken. We can't trust electronic machines, we can't trust the officials who run them, we can't really trust that they won't one day be straight up hacked by a foreign government. Every State has different voting rules, thus no one actually has the same rights. Someone in Vermont has completely different voting rights than someone in Georgia, just as someone in Georgia has different rights than someone in Montana. It's 50 individual systems, which would be fine if they were only being used for state-wide races, but they are (of course) also used for federal ones. It's a complete clusterf**k. It's pathetic, honestly. We need uniform voting rules in this country. If I have to spend one more election cycle spending weeks upon weeks wondering just what the hell is going on in Florida and whatever they call a voting system down there, I think I'm going to scream.
Edit: Unless I'm wrong, each district is supposed to have the same amount of people, correct? I don't see why there should be such a discrepancy in waiting times except for incompetence or deliberate suppression. If it's suppression in urban areas that seems like just another form of incompetence. Rural areas should be easier to suppress because of less oversight unless I'm missing something here...
As for Trump?? He's a cartoon character. People associate him with successful business because he was the poster child for that "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"/"Wall Street" mentality of the 1980s, and then he was beamed into everyone's home as some sort of fake business titan on "The Apprentice" for years in a reality TV show, when the actual results of his business record show very little but an uncanny ability to manipulate the media and brand his image. The rest of it nothing but sleaze and incompetence. How one goes bankrupt running a casino in Atlantic City is one of the most puzzling questions known to man. Running a casino in that location is like being issued a license to print money.
I think the media could cover more of these important issues at the expense of the flashier scandals, but even then, I don't think there's enough time for journalists to cover every problem with the Trump presidency. There's just too much that's wrong with our political climate today to fully discuss all of it.
It doesn't help that TV news stations have devolved into entertainment-based media because their profits depend on ratings, and not on the importance of their journalism. Print sources and online articles deal with a lot of substantive issues and are backed by solid research, but for daytime TV, much of the content is designed primarily to be attention-grabbing. That particular problem long predates Trump.
No one would use this logic in any other scenario. If some guy just straight-up told you he was sleeping with your wife to your face rather than trying to keep it a secret, no one would give him brownie points for doing so. And I maintain there is a HUGE difference between profiting off the Presidency after you are out of office and doing so while you are actively holding it. The first can't possibly be prevented, the later should be at all costs.
Now who knows what's Trump-Russia business dealing is "legitimate", and which is illegal.
It's Trump's fault, either way. You...totally missed all the screaming at Trump that he needed to cut his business ties and put them into a blind trust leading up to the election?
It was there.
The only thing he's shaking up is whatever norms were holding the political system together and preventing it from falling apart at the seams. The only thing he has bucked Republican orthodoxy on is his tariffs. Everything else is just cranked to 11 Republican 101 that was outsourced to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell while he runs a daily reality show out of the White House.
Not that it is a contest. All corruption should be rooted out.
Broken machines, rejected ballots and long lines: voting problems emerge as Americans go to the polls.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/broken-machines-rejected-ballots-and-long-lines-voting-problems-emerge-as-americans-go-to-the-polls/2018/11/06/ffd11e52-dfa8-11e8-b3f0-62607289efee_story.html?utm_term=.32d1942dceb8
"The loudest of those complaints came from Georgia, where issues of race, ballot access and election fairness have fueled an acrimonious governor’s contest between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams, a former state lawmaker, would be the nation’s first black female governor, while Kemp, the secretary of state, who oversees elections, has faced accusations of trying to suppress the minority vote.
In one downtown Atlanta precinct, voters waited three hours to cast ballots after local election officials initially sent only three voting machines to serve more than 3,000 registered voters. In suburban Gwinnett County, the wait surpassed four hours as election officials opened the polls only to discover that their voting machines were not working at all, voters said.
Both locations serve predominantly African American voters, feeding worries among some voters that specific groups were being disenfranchised amid signs of record turnout for a midterm election."
---
Gwinnett Co., GA voters wait for hours after workers "accidentally" forget power cords for the voting machines
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/gwinnett-co-voters-wait-for-hours-after-workers-forget-power-cords-for-the-voting-machines/85-611764666
---
On October 9, the Associated Press reported that 53,000 voter registrations, 70 percent of them from black applicants, were being held by Kemp’s office for failing to clear an “exact match” process that compares registration information to Social Security and state driver records. If the information does not match — often due to trivial inconsistencies like a misspelled name, a middle name not being fully written out, or a missing hyphen — an application is held for additional screening and the applicant is supposed to be notified and given a period to correct their information. Kemp didn't notify people.
------------So------------
The vote difference between the two is supposedly 63K votes.
Voting purges, exact match shenanigans, "whoops lost the ballots" type games stole the election from Stacey Abram.
Kemp only resigned as Secretary of State once he felt sure she could not challenge him to a runoff election. He's a piece of shit.
Fine, deny Julie Swetnick's claim. But that says nothing about the claims of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the second Kavanaugh accuser. Neither recanted their testimony. Until you deal with both of their stories, I will continue to believe that Kavanaugh was guilty of what Dr. Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez said he did.
No comments from @jjstraka34, @smeagolheart, or @semiticgod about my Gretchen Whitmer post? I admit I might vote for her next time if she follows up on her promises. That should give you all hope for the future if you ask me. I can only speak for myself of course, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my viewpoints.
Edit: Sorry, should have mentioned @LadyRhian also in this post...
Personally, I wish Kavanaugh had never been an option. Kavanaugh is part of the 'swamp' that Trump was supposedly opposed to. I didn't like him from the start. Unfortunately, Trump tried to placate the Republican Party with his nomination and it became a partisan fight with predictable results.
There were plenty of other people that could have been chosen and I wish Trump had picked any of them instead. That's a major reason I'm pissed off at him now!
Edit: Sorry @LadyRhian, in re-reading the post I see you were referring to Trump's guilt not Kavanaugh's. My comments are only referring to Kavanaugh.
If some guy in my neighborhood got accused of being a pedophile, I wouldn't support a lynch mob, but I also wouldn't let my kids stay at his house until I was sure the accusation was false. Reasonable doubt alone would not be sufficient for me to be confident in my children's safety.
The highest court in the land is worth that kind of caution.
And, this just came up on Facebook:
Keystone XL pipeline blocked by federal judge in Montana, throwing project’s future into doubt
https://globalnews.ca/news/4646722/keystone-xl-pipeline-blocked/?utm_source=notification/The future of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has been thrown into doubt after a federal judge in Montana blocked its construction, saying the Trump administration approved it after an incomplete analysis.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on Thursday ruled that the U.S. State Department didn’t look closely enough at factors such as the project’s viability in the face of lower oil prices, new modelling of possible oil spills and ways to mitigate them, or at the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, The Great Falls Tribune reported.
A list of his crimes at one of TWO government agencies he's heading, the one that conservatives LOATHE because it makes them accountable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Mulvaney#Tenure_3
Asking for a budget of $0. Asking for your own agency to be disbanded, giving raises to your lackeys you appointed, demanding that you won't talk to anyone unless they pay you, freezing all work, basically ordering your agency to do NOTHING, only coming to work a few hours a couple days per week...and more.
This is not being an officer in good faith.
He wasn't picked because he was good at his job, or a defender of the Constitution. He is corrupt and morally bankrupt. He's a Trump man.
I amn't familiar with Gretchen Whitmer.. what did you want to discuss about her?