BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

rmnka447, on 2018-February-17, 01:10, said:

I can't understand why when you seem to accept that Russians were trying to disrupt the elections, you still don't find it a big deal how all those people around Trump find themselves entangled with the Russians, the tower meeting didn't result in anything, and claim there's no proof beyond reasonable doubt ...

diana_eva, on 2018-February-17, 08:14, said:

More than the entanglements, the attempts to unravel existing sanctions and refusal to impose the new ones Congress passed is a huge flashing sign that suggest quid pro quo.

And with the indictment describing Russians paying for a flatbed truck with a cage and woman actor to portray Hillary Clinton inside the cage, it makes those "Lock her up!" chants at the political rallies seem a lot less spontaneous.

Methinks the first swamp that needs to be drained is the one supplied by the Russians.

Edit: I'm going to add to this post as not to supercede Ken's post below. But to anyone who still supports this president, I simply ask you to read the following:

Quote

Now, imagine you are the president of the United States and you are informed that the special counsel had issued a quite precise indictment of Russians and Russian-based entities for crimes against the U.S. involving the U.S. election processes.

Is your first thought going to be - Hey, that proves they don't have anything on me!?

Second edit:

Quote

We should no longer worry about collusion - the proper phrase now is criminal conspiracy.

I think history will regard Robert Mueller as one of the most important figures of the first quarter of the 21st century, quite possibly the most important.

He is pursuing very important work that few people would be able to do.


I'll expand a bit on this.

The Russians have been, are now and will be attempting to very seriously meddle in out politics in a clandestine way. For a moment, put aside any "collusion" (in quotes because the word means somewhat different things to different people). The Russians, with or without collusion, with or without "unwitting cooperation" are engaged in a substantial effort.

Sometimes the response is "Oh sure, all nations do this". Well, yes. Obama said it was time for Assad to go and supported efforts to bring this about. Reagan and the CIA supported the Contras. We are currently supporting Kurds. There was the Bay of Pigs. And many other such things. But Assad did not see the American intervention against him as inconsequential saying "Oh well, everyone does that" . Turkey is not happy with our support of the Kurds. And so on. The Russians are engaged in a substantial ongoing clandestine operation to disrupt our elections. "So, what, everybody does it"? "No, so plenty".

To my mind, Trump's dismissive attitude toward this is current collusion, deliberate blindness to a major problem. But of course then we get to arguing about the exact meaning of "collusion". So instead I will just say that it is irresponsibly stupid. In fact, so stupid that it is inexplicable except on the basis of self-interest.

Now back to Mueller. He is actually trying to figure out what the hell is going on, with names, places, details, documents. This is hugely, or bigly to use a Trumpism, important. Besides seriousness, this requires talent, judgment and dedication. And courage. In this age of hacking and tracking, it also requires a clean life. If the guy smoked a joint in 1968 someone will find out about it. Maybe he subscribed to Playboy in his youth. Someone will find out about it. If they don't find anything they will make something up. What he is doing is extremely important and really could probably be done by very few people. If we manage to at least partially cope with the Russian efforts this will be in no small part due to Mueller.

Mueller doesn't need praise from me but I think that it is important for us all to get a grip on what is at stake.

kenberg, on 2018-February-17, 10:30, said:

Ronald Reagan was a great pal of Margaret Thatcher, to their political benefit.. Trump's efforts to develop a rapport with Putin might be a step towards World Peace.

Unfortunately, the US hatred of Russians echoes 1984 and transcends political party.

The main disseminators of "False news" are our local "Ministries of Truth" but people of many nationalities post weird political views backed by questionable claims on social media and. in this thread., although, on the whole, the internet is a benign force for the promotion of freedom of speech.

It's legitimate and sensible to present arguments, to try to influence the politics of other countries, in your mutual interests. (E.g.The US president tried to stop BREXIT). If Russians can swing an election with a few dollars of advertising, then future presidential candidates should drop their current expensive PR companies and recruit them, instead.

Most counties engage in Espionage and Propaganda but there are differences in kind between

• Advertising controversial political views.
• Stealing email (We await credible proof that Russia was responsible)..
• Planting disruptive malware in a computer controlling a nuclear power plant .
• Funding rebellions against countries of whose politics you disapprove.

Winstonm, on 2018-February-17, 10:00, said:

This sounds too pompous. It's looking like a bunch of shady business people who fell right into the Russians' game. How far they fell in, and how much was wittingly, unwittingly, or whatever words will describe it is up for investigation. Except the game is good, Americans increasingly lose trust in their own intelligence service - and Trump feeds this lack of trust. Well played Russia.

I'll leave this here. Because indeed you can not trust "facts".

nige1, on 2018-February-17, 12:30, said:

Winstonm, on 2018-February-17, 10:00, said:

Disagree.

We started this kabuki theater over a year ago under the original premise that the Trump campaign and Russia had colluded to overturn the election. Retail politics indicated that this was supposed to be Clinton's coronation--especially when her campaign bankrolled the Democratic National Committee and steamrolled Bernie Sanders in the process.

The Special Investigator has received a robust budget and hired some of the best lawyers, but to date has delivered no prosecutable cigar regarding collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Needless to say, the Special Investigator has found dirt, but that is no surprise given that Washington D.C. is a political smarmy swamp.

What Mueller might have found is an extensive money laundering scheme which comes as no surprise. Therefore, I give Trump much lateral discretion in this area since the Special Investigator has gone on a veritable fishing expedition to unearth potential graft and corruption of a very different nature.

The Russia and Trump campaign election meddling accusation was a pretext to empanel a grand jury and eventually use the machine of government to conduct a fishing expedition and punish Trump for "meddling" and "disrupting" Clinton's coronation. This is HARDBALL politics at the national level that takes no prisoners. We left the land of "principled politics" and "justice" a long time ago. We are now in the "Land of Vendetta".

diana_eva, on 2018-February-17, 12:41, said:

What I meant is that IF collusion occurred it is no longer a simple political matter but a crime, i.e., conspiracy.

RedSpawn, on 2018-February-17, 12:57, said:

Here is the original Rosenstein letter setting out the duties of the special prosecutor. You should take notice of (II) and (III) rather than insisting (I) is all the investigation concerned.

This investigation is many, many months away from conclusion so at this point there is no way to conclude either way about the president's campaign or staff or himself. What the SP has now done in following the mandates of (II) and (III) is to find that real crimes were allegedly committed by real persons and therefore any willing cooperation with those persons and activities by persons as yet unknown would also rise to the level of criminality.

It should be impossible at this point to pooh-pooh the Russian interference - it takes either complete and utter disdain for reason or complete faith in conspiracy theories to think otherwise. Either way, those who still promote those claims should be embarrassed enough to stop.

Winstonm, on 2018-February-16, 10:52, said:

By and large, I agree:
https://www.youtube....h?v=NKwJI9axblQ

nige1, on 2018-February-17, 12:30, said:

The only peace that one is going to enjoy with monsters like Putin and Trump in charge is the peace of the graveyard.

Nigel, do you even have the most basic clue what kinds of atrocities Putin is responsible for?

hrothgar, on 2018-February-17, 15:28, said:

We're butterflies but Russians are moths?
All sides perpetrate enough atrocities to necessitate urgent peaceful resolution.

nige1, on 2018-February-17, 15:58, said:

You know that there used to be a city called Grozny, right?
You know that under Putin, the Russians have invade several neighboring countries?
You know that Putin regularly has political opponents and journalists murdered?

I readily admit, the US has done some awful things.
I would welcome seeing Dick Cheney hang for crimes against humanity.
I fear the Trump is going to start a war with North Korea because "he can"

However, the fact that the US has *****ed up in the past does not mean that we should e excusing Putin's many many sins...

diana_eva, on 2018-February-17, 12:41, said:

fyp

Speaking about James Risen's piece in The Intercept, last night in an interview he made the comment that after a year in office we still don't know whether or not the president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power.

It is actually a fair question, which makes it even more remarkable, especially when we keep in mind that reporting indicated that once in office his administration immediately began working on ways to remove the existing Russian sanctions, that he refused to carry through Congress' new act to sanction Russia, and since the indictment has come out he still has not condemned Russia for its actions.

nige1, on 2018-February-17, 12:30, said:

Yes, definitely Reagan and Thatcher had a lot in common. The same can be said of Putin and Trump, one perhaps being a buffoon version of the other. You are thinking of this as a good thing, are you?

My point was that we should deal with broad and sustained Russian interference, past, present and planned. Our president disagrees. And I really do favor World Peace, just as Sandra Bullock said in Miss Congeniality, but meanwhile today...

nige1, on 2018-February-17, 12:30, said:

Do read the part of the story awm posted that starts with "WHILE THE WASHINGTON press corps and BBO water cooler people have been obsessing over Donald Trump’s tweets and a ginned-up memo from House Republicans seeking to discredit the Trump-Russia investigation, another major break in the story has just begun to unfold in the Netherlands.".

How do I make a big bet that Facebook will underperform the other FANG stocks between now and the end of the year?

y66, on 2018-February-17, 18:25, said:

Just because someone put together a website and claims that there is a country called "Holland" doesn't prove anything...
Nigel is far too clever for any of these games.

y66, on 2018-February-17, 18:31, said:

What constitutes a really big bet?

If you are serious, you can get a customer derivative created.
The only hard part is finding a counter party...

Alternatively, there is a Facebook specific VIX
http://www.cboe.com/...stocks/facebook

And there are others for Amazon and Google.

So if you leverage yourself properly you can probably use these to place the appropriate bet.