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So...on more Cohen news...

AT&T hired Cohen for advice on Time Warner merger


http://thehill.com/policy/technology/387187-att-hired-cohen-for-advice-on-time-warner-merger-report

AT&T reportedly hired President Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen to advise the company on several matters including its pending merger with Time Warner.

As part of the reported $600,000 that the telecommunications giant paid Cohen’s consulting firm, Essential Consultants LLC, The Washington Post reports that a portion was directed toward advising the company on its $85 billion merger, which required the approval of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Whatever else he is, Cohen is a marvelous conman. If I could get paid six or seven figures by companies to do stuff I have neither the ability, knowledge, access or standing to do, then fail and still get paid, I'd think I could get away with anything too probably.




I love this bit from the original Wapo story

It is unclear what insight Cohen — a longtime real estate attorney and former taxi cab operator — could have provided AT&T on complex telecom matters.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

The question is more if either country wants to risk lobbing missiles over two or three other countries to do it. its about 600 miles from Tehran to Tel Aviv, so ICBMs are a bit much for the task at hand. So they would have to shoot over Jordan and Iraq. Or it it was to/from southern Iran, it would be over Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israel has the reliable tech to do it, but Iran's missile program is still unproven, with I think about 600 miles being as far as one went before it exploded. Thats dicey for Iran, they would risk most of the other Arab countries joining SA in an attack.

Mobile launcher from Syria. Shaves it down to 300 miles and a fairly straight shot on Tel Aviv. In theory you could do it with a Scud B, which are available on the open market these days, but your yield would be maybe 80kt. So about 4 times Hiroshima or Nagasaki Air burst would make Iron Dome less effective.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

Well, I hope somebody in Washington knows what language the Persians speak, because it sure as hell ain't Arabic....

Locally, I have had people ask me if the language being spoken was Arabic when the language spoken was -
French (which sounds nothing like Arabic). (More accurately Quebecois - Canadian French.)
Swahili (which sounds nothing like Arabic).
Greek (which sounds nothing like any other language I can name....)
And Dutch (which kinda sounds like German, a bit?).

Americans are amazingly insular about what we know about other cultures and languages.

The Auld Grump

Only you pince gringos!

 Ouze wrote:
What I think you're doing here is distracting from talking about the real issues, like the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton Foundation was invented as a Trojan Horse by the MSM to deflect from Benghazi, which was invented by the Obama administration to deflect from Obama wearing a tan suit.

This is exactly what the game plan is. Nunes is going to keep asking for more until Rod Rosenstein is forced to refuse to give them (something), and then he can use it as a pretext to impeach Rosenstein and then end the Mueller investigation.

Exactly, and it isn't even subtle, because Nunes knows that none of his obvious manipulation of the system will reach the Republican base. FOX News won't be reporting on Nunes false ops.

Our government was not really built to handle this kind of cross-branch corruption, I don't think. So I have no idea how to fix something like this. I guess voting Nunes out when he comes up?

The US system was built with effective powers for congress to reign in a president, and even stop a bad president. But there was no consideration for a bad president with an enabling, sycophantic congress.

As for Nunes, CA22 is a +30 Republican district. The last decent poll was January and that showed Nunes ahead by 5, so there's a good sign that rampant cronyism and the general suck of the Republican party has an impact, even in deep red country. I don't know if it will be enough, because if 2016 to now has shown us anything, it's that an incredibly large share of the population just does not care about maintaining the democracy or even about basic honesty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Even prominent democrats didn't approve of the deal...

I'm gonna try and ignore the rest of the whembly links to nonsense show, and just make one point about his great story.

See this guy?


The hair and poor fitting suit might say highschool football coach staring at a 0-4 start to the season, but it's Senator Rand Paul. Every single piece of law or appointment that's been put to the senate since Trump won the presidency has involved this stupid two step dance - Paul claims he will vote against it because the law/nominee isn't conservative enough, but then if Paul is needed to make it to 50+1 then he will fall in to line every single time.

Paul is far from alone in this, I just thought I'd pick him because we don't spend nearly enough time talking about cynical and completely ridiculous that man is. There's another six or seven Republican senators trying to maintain the same kind of outsider cred, all playing up for the crowd and claiming they are no to a bill or nomination, but if they're needed to actually get an affirmative vote, they fall in to line. The only thing that's gone down 49-51 was skinny repeal, and that was because McCain came out of left field.

And of course the Democrats are no different. Making a show of being opposed to a proposal with weak public approval is just good politics for people trying to portray a semi-independent brand.

And whembly has followed politics as long as I have. So he knows this. You only have to follow one or two close bills to see this happen, and once you've seen a dozen bills then you will have seen this happen every single time, you'd have to be an idiot to not see the pattern. But suddenly on the Iran deal whembly forgets that showmanship is part of politics, and he starts claiming that Schumer and friends claiming they were opposed to the Iran deal is a real, meaningful thing that meant the deal had actual senate opposition from Democrats.

It is ridiculous, pretend political argument. Just forgetting the basics of the game as soon as it suits your imaginary story to forget those basics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/TM1212Y17/type/smallest/filters/PD1:1/dates/20180101-20180509/collapsed/true
Very cool polling aggregate.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans as of the last one (May 7th) is 1.4%.

Historically, Democrats need >5% to take the House.

I still think it's too early for this to carry any weight all the way to midterms...

Dude, you know picking out single polls is useless, I've seen you make that comment. And here you're not only using a single poll, you're using a single day result from that poll, and ignoring the 5 day rolling average from that poll gives Dems +10.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

She did explicitly pledged to not allow a restart of “enhanced interrogation techniques”...

That's lovely. And I'm sure the NRA made sure Ollie North promised to stop selling weapons to hostile foreign nations on the downlow before he was appointed at the NRA. Why, I reckon Trump probably even got a promise from Joe Arpaio that would never ignore a court orders again before that pardon was given.

Quite a forgiving party, you guys have there. Happy to forgive all kinds of things, as long as people promise not to do them again. Why you'll even forgive Haspel after she oversaw the torture of a pregnant woman, and I know how deeply committed you guys are to talking about protecting life in the womb.

What a bunch of kindly, forgiving people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
So...do we want to talk about the 3 hostages NK released...or nah?

It's great for those three pople and their families, but how much did we talk about this list of people? Euna Lee, Laura Ling, Robert Park, Aijalon Gomes, Eddie Yong Su Jun, Merrill Newman, Jeffrey Fowle, Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller, Sandra Suh, Arturo Pierre Martinez.

That's the list of people Obama got released from North Korea. But Trump pretends he is amazing for getting three people out, and there's barely any pushback, no note that getting people out of NK has been a fairly routine part of the job for US presidents for some time now. Never mind that Trump dropped another lie on top, claiming all three were taken while Obama was president (only one was), and people just roll with it. It's actually just completely fething amazing that the Trump scam has carried for so long now with no political pushback that people are just kind of letting it happen.

But it is good for those three people and their families. Well done to Trump for doing one thing to basic standard of past presidential administrations.

Is this a head-fake by NK, or is this looking promising?

It isn't a head fake, but it also doesn't look much like the start of an actual, amazing new era of peace on the peninsula. Instead it looks like it will just be business as usual. This is a cycle - NK pushes boundaries and acts crazy, then comes to the table for peace talks they use to extort everyone else for essential supplies, then some point down the line they need some more resources and so they start acting crazy again.

So far not one thing has looked any different to the last dozen times we've been through this cycle. The only difference is Trump seems genuinely unaware of the history, so he's staking everything on producing a huge, lasting deal. Which is playing right in to Kim's hands, as it puts pressure on Trump to leave with some kind of deal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
So...on more Cohen news...

AT&T hired Cohen for advice on Time Warner merger

....

I love this bit from the original Wapo story

It is unclear what insight Cohen — a longtime real estate attorney and former taxi cab operator — could have provided AT&T on complex telecom matters.

This makes me think of an old anecdote about Trump. In the lobby of Trump NY there was a Tower Records store. This store used to play a bunch of select artists on rotation. Local bands could get added to the rotation, but Tower Records charged them $100. It was just to make sure they were only approached by bands that were pretty serious about what they were doing. Anyhow, one day Trump learned about the $100 payments, and he actually tried to claim his share of the $100. The music went out in to the lobby, something like that. It went nowhere, because that was too piddly even for Trump to keep fighting for. But it shows Trump's mindset. This is a guy obsesessed with getting his bit of the action, he's not going to watch someone else carve out some cash while Trump gets nothing.

But now we're asked to believe Trump is learning just now for the first time that Michael Cohen was grifting a bunch of corporate and foreign interests while Trump himself got nothing, and Trump isn't angered about that? If that was what really happened, you know Trump would be irate with Cohen, his underling used Trump's position to make some cash, but Trump didn't give Trump any of the cash? That would be an enormous betrayal.

But Trump is silent. Because Trump knew all about this, and he was getting his cut.

 sebster wrote:

See this guy?


The hair and poor fitting suit might say highschool football coach staring at a 0-4 start to the season, but it's Senator Rand Paul. Every single piece of law or appointment that's been put to the senate since Trump won the presidency has involved this stupid two step dance - Paul claims he will vote against it because the law/nominee isn't conservative enough, but then if Paul is needed to make it to 50+1 then he will fall in to line every single time.

Paul is far from alone in this, I just thought I'd pick him because we don't spend nearly enough time talking about cynical and completely ridiculous that man is. There's another six or seven Republican senators trying to maintain the same kind of outsider cred, all playing up for the crowd and claiming they are no to a bill or nomination, but if they're needed to actually get an affirmative vote, they fall in to line. The only thing that's gone down 49-51 was skinny repeal, and that was because McCain came out of left field.

And of course the Democrats are no different. Making a show of being opposed to a proposal with weak public approval is just good politics for people trying to portray a semi-independent brand.

And whembly has followed politics as long as I have. So he knows this. You only have to follow one or two close bills to see this happen, and once you've seen a dozen bills then you will have seen this happen every single time, you'd have to be an idiot to not see the pattern. But suddenly on the Iran deal whembly forgets that showmanship is part of politics, and he starts claiming that Schumer and friends claiming they were opposed to the Iran deal is a real, meaningful thing that meant the deal had actual senate opposition from Democrats.

It is ridiculous, pretend political argument. Just forgetting the basics of the game as soon as it suits your imaginary story to forget those basics.

...and here you opine that it's a good thing for politicians to lie to their constituents... as long as it's for the greater good.

And people wonder why Congress' approval numbers are in the dumpster.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/TM1212Y17/type/smallest/filters/PD1:1/dates/20180101-20180509/collapsed/true
Very cool polling aggregate.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans as of the last one (May 7th) is 1.4%.

Historically, Democrats need >5% to take the House.

I still think it's too early for this to carry any weight all the way to midterms...

Dude, you know picking out single polls is useless, I've seen you make that comment. And here you're not only using a single poll, you're using a single day result from that poll, and ignoring the 5 day rolling average from that poll gives Dems +10.

A) It's an neat poll/tool
B) I already said it's too early
C) The trendline was interesting, where (D) and (R) is converging
D) Still... call me when the RCP aggregate pollings reaches (D) < 5%.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

She did explicitly pledged to not allow a restart of “enhanced interrogation techniques”...

That's lovely. And I'm sure the NRA made sure Ollie North promised to stop selling weapons to hostile foreign nations on the downlow before he was appointed at the NRA. Why, I reckon Trump probably even got a promise from Joe Arpaio that would never ignore a court orders again before that pardon was given.

Quite a forgiving party, you guys have there. Happy to forgive all kinds of things, as long as people promise not to do them again. Why you'll even forgive Haspel after she oversaw the torture of a pregnant woman, and I know how deeply committed you guys are to talking about protecting life in the womb.

What a bunch of kindly, forgiving people.

[REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED]
...do you want a thread lock? Because this is how you get a thread lock.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
So...do we want to talk about the 3 hostages NK released...or nah?

It's great for those three pople and their families, but how much did we talk about this list of people? Euna Lee, Laura Ling, Robert Park, Aijalon Gomes, Eddie Yong Su Jun, Merrill Newman, Jeffrey Fowle, Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller, Sandra Suh, Arturo Pierre Martinez.

Good for Obama.

That's the list of people Obama got released from North Korea. But Trump pretends he is amazing for getting three people out, and there's barely any pushback, no note that getting people out of NK has been a fairly routine part of the job for US presidents for some time now. Never mind that Trump dropped another lie on top, claiming all three were taken while Obama was president (only one was), and people just roll with it. It's actually just completely fething amazing that the Trump scam has carried for so long now with no political pushback that people are just kind of letting it happen.

But it is good for those three people and their families. Well done to Trump for doing one thing to basic standard of past presidential administrations.

Of course he's going to spike that football and goose it.

Is this a head-fake by NK, or is this looking promising?

It isn't a head fake, but it also doesn't look much like the start of an actual, amazing new era of peace on the peninsula. Instead it looks like it will just be business as usual. This is a cycle - NK pushes boundaries and acts crazy, then comes to the table for peace talks they use to extort everyone else for essential supplies, then some point down the line they need some more resources and so they start acting crazy again.

So far not one thing has looked any different to the last dozen times we've been through this cycle. The only difference is Trump seems genuinely unaware of the history, so he's staking everything on producing a huge, lasting deal. Which is playing right in to Kim's hands, as it puts pressure on Trump to leave with some kind of deal.

That's why I'm hoping Pompeo/Mattis/Bolton keeps the Fanta Menace in check.

I don't think denuclearlization is possible and NK would be fools to give it up. But, would an end to the armistice for end of sanctions be a "net win".

I honestly don't know...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
So...on more Cohen news...

AT&T hired Cohen for advice on Time Warner merger

....

I love this bit from the original Wapo story

It is unclear what insight Cohen — a longtime real estate attorney and former taxi cab operator — could have provided AT&T on complex telecom matters.

This makes me think of an old anecdote about Trump. In the lobby of Trump NY there was a Tower Records store. This store used to play a bunch of select artists on rotation. Local bands could get added to the rotation, but Tower Records charged them $100. It was just to make sure they were only approached by bands that were pretty serious about what they were doing. Anyhow, one day Trump learned about the $100 payments, and he actually tried to claim his share of the $100. The music went out in to the lobby, something like that. It went nowhere, because that was too piddly even for Trump to keep fighting for. But it shows Trump's mindset. This is a guy obsesessed with getting his bit of the action, he's not going to watch someone else carve out some cash while Trump gets nothing.

But now we're asked to believe Trump is learning just now for the first time that Michael Cohen was grifting a bunch of corporate and foreign interests while Trump himself got nothing, and Trump isn't angered about that? If that was what really happened, you know Trump would be irate with Cohen, his underling used Trump's position to make some cash, but Trump didn't give Trump any of the cash? That would be an enormous betrayal.

But Trump is silent. Because Trump knew all about this, and he was getting his cut.

Man... ATT&T isn't getting their money's worth here.

Trump opposes this merger and ridiculously wants the Turner/CNN assets spun off separately.

I'd bet I can offer the same ROI as Cohen if they would pay me.

 whembly wrote:
...and here you opine that it's a good thing for politicians to lie to their constituents... as long as it's for the greater good.

I didn't say it was a good thing. Don't make stuff up. I said it was good politics, which just means that it works.

All of which is irrelevant, what matters is you know that's how the game is played, but you pretend to be fooled by it in order to invent a stupid narrative that Dems wouldn't have backed their own president's deal if it was brought to the senate as a treaty. Stop playing these make believe games.

And people wonder why Congress' approval numbers are in the dumpster.

The senators who play those stupid games keep winning re-election. Think about the dynamics of that.

A) It's an neat poll/tool
B) I already said it's too early
C) The trendline was interesting, where (D) and (R) is converging
D) Still... call me when the RCP aggregate pollings reaches (D) < 5%.

The early stage is meaningless, generic polling early in the year is shown to have very strong predictive power. The problem is its a single poll, which is miles outside the results shown elsewhere. And even worse, they aren't even giving data on likely voters, just registered voters. It doesn't make the data junk, but it means you cannot look at the numbers in isolate, because this won't be won by voters swinging Dem or Rep, it'll be won by turnout.

...do you want a thread lock? Because this is how you get a thread lock.

This is a really interesting conundrum. I mean, I'll grant that talking about you supporting a woman who oversaw the torture of a pregnant woman is quite incendiary. So what do we do? State that as a plain and simple truth, or do we pretend that isn't what you're doing because talking about your position here is so horrible the threat won't survive it?

I mean, I guess ideally you would not support the women who oversaw the torture of a pregnant lady, but that's not going to change, is it?

Of course he's going to spike that football and goose it.

He is the reality show president.

That's why I'm hoping Pompeo/Mattis/Bolton keeps the Fanta Menace in check.

Pompeo to take the lead in taking on 'Chairman Un'. Hoo boy. I wonder if he knows the president isn't called President Donald?

With Bolton tagging along? Bolton who's big treatise on North Korea began and ended with 'I think its legal'. Seriously, did you read that thing? The argument given is entirely legal, about what legal contraints the US does or doesn't have. Bolton doesn't even start to address the issue of whether action against NK would meet strategic goals, or what its risks the action might have. He doesn't even raise those as things that might need to be considered. The guy is so bonkers he thinks establishing a legal argument that something can be done is the same as establishing that it should be done.

And these are the guys you hope keep Trump in line. Mattis is a quality operator, I'll give you that.

I don't think denuclearlization is possible and NK would be fools to give it up. But, would an end to the armistice for end of sanctions be a "net win".

So the Iran deal was terrible because it allowed 30kg of non-weapon grade uranium. But a NK deal that didn't even end the nuke program is good? Okay then.

I mean personally, I think an end to sanctions in exchange for an end to the NK nuclear program, and a regime of IAEA inspectors would be an ideal blueprint. Recognising NK is much further along their nuke program, and much more in need of aid than Iran was, then there would probably also need to be some large subsidy programs thrown in to the deal, probably Chinese coal and US grain both with large US subsidies.

Man... ATT&T isn't getting their money's worth here.

To be fair, $200k is bugger all when we're talking about a multi-billion dollar merger. Which means maybe the $200k was just a foot in the door payment. But then that leaves a big question about what happened after that? Did AT&T flinch at the real price (unlikely, it was always going to be cheaper than fighting the DoJ in court)? Did AT&T flinch when it become clear how obviously illegal the latter payments were going to be? Did AT&T flinch when stories about the investigations in to Trump starting to grow?

Or, was Cohen running his own private grift? Offering access to the president that Cohen couldn't actually deliver, and just taking the money? If that's the case, why isn't Trump really pissed that someone was using their connection to Trump to make themselves money without cutting Trump in on it?

And where's the money gone? Cohen is bankrupt because of his collapsing taxi plate investments, but in 2017 he brought in $4.4m, and is as broke now as he was at the start of 2017.

And lastly, a guy with 16 phones and a pretend law firm doesn't start and stop at one LLC for all his money laundering. How many others were there, and how much money was paid in to those?

 sebster wrote:
It's great for those three pople and their families, but how much did we talk about this list of people? Euna Lee, Laura Ling, Robert Park, Aijalon Gomes, Eddie Yong Su Jun, Merrill Newman, Jeffrey Fowle, Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller, Sandra Suh, Arturo Pierre Martinez.

That's the list of people Obama got released from North Korea. But Trump pretends he is amazing for getting three people out, and there's barely any pushback, no note that getting people out of NK has been a fairly routine part of the job for US presidents for some time now. Never mind that Trump dropped another lie on top, claiming all three were taken while Obama was president (only one was), and people just roll with it. It's actually just completely fething amazing that the Trump scam has carried for so long now with no political pushback that people are just kind of letting it happen.

But it is good for those three people and their families. Well done to Trump for doing one thing to basic standard of past presidential administrations.

Welll.... I don't think past administrations took the time to publicly brag about the ratings while securing the freedoms of wrongfully detained American citizens, while also complimenting the responsible party for just being... really awesome about the whole thing. Gotta put that crass, gakky Trump touch on it, after all.

Are we up to date on the Kely Sadler nonsense? She's a communications staffer for Donald Trump. Trump's administration is quite bothered that Gina Haspel might not get confirmed by the senate as CIA director. Senator McCain is one reason why the nomination is likely to go down, he said while he respected Haspel as a patriot, he believed her refusal to state torture was immoral is disqualifying. Makes sense, as McCain himself was tortured.

This led to a meeting among the communications staffers, including Sadler. Sadler's take? “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.”

That leaked to the media pretty quickly. Now, of course, the wagons are forming around Sadler. Because this is the big lesson learned by the right wing from Trump's victory. It doesn't matter what you did, how obejctively awful it was, if you just refuse to take a backstep it will probably go away, and if it doesn't you can just resign later on.

 Ouze wrote:
Welll.... I don't think past administrations took the time to publicly brag about the ratings while securing the freedoms of wrongfully detained American citizens, while also complimenting the responsible party for just being... really awesome about the whole thing. Gotta put that crass, gakky Trump touch on it, after all.

I'm still trying to get my head around the conservative freak out when some people said Chairman Kim's sister was quite polite and nice at the Olympics. I mean I thought that was a bit naive, but the right wing media was treating it like proof that these people were socialists who were working with NK against US interests.

Now just a few months later and Trump is describing 3 years in a NK labour camp as 'excellent' treatment. And no-one in the right wing media has a problem with that at all.

People on facebook are still calling McCain a traitor that killed Americans, so the average Trump supporter isnt too bright.

I guess if Alex Jones says it is true...

https://twitter.com/LeanneNaramore/status/994626363675103234

"Conversation on Fox about torture: "It worked on John [McCain]. That's why they call him 'Songbird John'""

uh huh.

classy.

 Crazyterran wrote:
People on facebook are still calling McCain a traitor that killed Americans, so the average Trump supporter isnt too bright.

I guess if Alex Jones says it is true...

Must be the chem trails.

 Crazyterran wrote:
People on facebook are still calling McCain a traitor that killed Americans, so the average Trump supporter isnt too bright.

That songbird crap appeared in the 2000 and 2008 Republican primaries. Now it appears again, the next time McCain is going up against fellow Republicans. Funny that.

Thing is, I don't think the problem is the intelligence of the average Trump voter. I'm not defending their intelligence, but truth is every large political bloc has lots of dumb people. The problem, I think, is that Trump/Republican dummies get led by the nose by some really shameless liars.

And those shameless liars survive and flourish because in conservative media and Republican politics there is no penalty at all for telling horrible lies and getting caught. Right now you have purebred turds on FOX News claiming that 'songbird' crap proves torture works, and even though its deeply offensive and a plain lie, there's no penalty. If a Democrat said something like that it would end their career in a second and define them for the rest of their life. For a Republican pundit its just what they said on a Thursday in May 2018, on Friday they'll say something even worse, and by Saturday they'll be attacking the Democrats for not caring for the veterans.

None of this will get any better until conservatives start demanding some decency from their Republicans.

 reds8n wrote:
https://twitter.com/LeanneNaramore/status/994626363675103234

"Conversation on Fox about torture: "It worked on John [McCain]. That's why they call him 'Songbird John'""

uh huh.

classy.

That's absolutely disgusting. He was a POW for 6 years. He was in captivity for longer than US involvement in WW2.

Utterly shameful remark.


In other news (as Baron pointed out in the mankind not learning from science fiction thread), Trump is cutting NASA's greenhouse gas monitoring programme.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44067797
Total idiocy.

sebster: I'm not holding my breath. These are the people who champion family values and want the 10 commandments outside of courtrooms but who seem absolutely fine supporting a serial adulterer and liar.

 Ouze wrote:

 sebster wrote:
It's great for those three pople and their families, but how much did we talk about this list of people? Euna Lee, Laura Ling, Robert Park, Aijalon Gomes, Eddie Yong Su Jun, Merrill Newman, Jeffrey Fowle, Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller, Sandra Suh, Arturo Pierre Martinez.

That's the list of people Obama got released from North Korea. But Trump pretends he is amazing for getting three people out, and there's barely any pushback, no note that getting people out of NK has been a fairly routine part of the job for US presidents for some time now. Never mind that Trump dropped another lie on top, claiming all three were taken while Obama was president (only one was), and people just roll with it. It's actually just completely fething amazing that the Trump scam has carried for so long now with no political pushback that people are just kind of letting it happen.

But it is good for those three people and their families. Well done to Trump for doing one thing to basic standard of past presidential administrations.

Welll.... I don't think past administrations took the time to publicly brag about the ratings while securing the freedoms of wrongfully detained American citizens, while also complimenting the responsible party for just being... really awesome about the whole thing. Gotta put that crass, gakky Trump touch on it, after all.

That guy you beat to death last year? Water under the bridge my chubby North Korean friend

 Da Boss wrote:
sebster: I'm not holding my breath. These are the people who champion family values and want the 10 commandments outside of courtrooms but who seem absolutely fine supporting a serial adulterer and liar.

Yep. I mean just in the last few days we went through the abortion debate all over again, and now Trump nominates a CIA director who oversaw the torture of a pregnant lady, and not one of them has a problem with that.

It isn't about Trump supporters being dumb. The real issue here is one of basic decency. Not just holding their politicians and other leaders to basic decencies like honesty and integrity, but having such decencies themselves, so they are actually upset when their political leaders tell them obvious lies, and they stop following those leaders.

Meanwhile, there's reports that the FOX News pundit who said torture worked on McCain will not be invited back on the network. Hopefully we hear that as an official announcement soon. It's still not fething good enough though. That's a lie that's lingered in Republican circles for nearly 20 years, such plainly false things don't fester that long in healthy cultures. And it is far from the only absurd lie to linger in there.

So France has come out and stated that it is unacceptable for the US to impose sanctions on French companies that have contracts with Iran since the deal started just because the US decided to pull out on its own. So is this what certain people wanted, a rift with Europe to justify their known unknowns at all cost?

Trade war with Europe. Impoverishes us both while our enemies look on, sniggering.

Thanks, Trump.

 reds8n wrote:
https://twitter.com/LeanneNaramore/status/994626363675103234

"Conversation on Fox about torture: "It worked on John [McCain]. That's why they call him 'Songbird John'""

uh huh.

classy.

I saw an excellent take on this by @stonekettle on Twitter. Was along the lines that is doesn't matter whether it worked, it's not an acceptable thing to do. Made the comparison that slavery *worked* - the cotton got picked, didn't it???

My opposition to the European Union is well known on the British politics thread, but as I say, it's one of those rare occasions where I'm glad Britain is sticking with the EU on the Iran deal and not following the USA on this one.

Trump's language on this is what you would expect: gak, but I remember that this is a POTUS that accused British intelligience of spying on him at Obama's request, so I don't know why I'm surprised at his language.

The crap bag who said "torture worked" on "songbird" John McCain was Lt McInerney. He was one of the more prominent birthers.

This is how it works. Crappy people who tell nasty lies, are not held to account, then move on to the next crappy lie, over and again. And all the conservatives who believe they're such good, decent people do nothing. They accept this.

And then people get their knickers in a twist when Clinton calls them out on it, because how dare she?!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And then people get their knickers in a twist when Clinton calls them out on it, because how dare she?!

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, calling it a duck is offensive and will certainly turn them into a duck to teach you a lesson.

McCain is a fething hero. Full Stop.

Doesn't shield him from his political career... but the man is on his deathbed and comments like these are downright deplorable.

 whembly wrote:
McCain is a fething hero. Full Stop.

Doesn't shield him from his political career... but the man is on his deathbed and comments like these are downright deplorable.

Whem you never answered the question about whether you would support a woman who helped to tortured a pregnant women, you just kinda pivoted away complaining about thread locks. What is your answer to the support of a person who helped tortured a pregnant women.

sebster wrote:

None of this will get any better until conservatives start demanding some decency from their Republicans.

You know, I asked about something like that a couple years back in one of these threads, about why the party of God and family values behaves so poorly, you know what the answer was? "Because when the Republicans do the right thing, they lose". Very telling, and I'll let you guess who said it.

Cohen's gifts keep in giving.

AT&T: Hiring Cohen was 'big mistake'

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/387242-att-hiring-cohen-was-big-mistake

In a memo to employees, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that while everything the company did in hiring Cohen was in accordance with the law, they should not have done so.

“There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake,” Stephenson wrote. “To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is, our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment.”

In the letter, Stephenson also announced that Bob Quinn, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external & legislative affairs, will step down. AT&T’s legislative affairs group will now report to the company’s general counsel, David McAtee.

TL;DR "oopsie, we got caught paying lots of money to a conman for nothing"

Theyre kicking out a VP over it too, which is interesting. A booboo definitely occurred.

Reports of school shooting in process in california

 Ustrello wrote:

 whembly wrote:
McCain is a fething hero. Full Stop.

Doesn't shield him from his political career... but the man is on his deathbed and comments like these are downright deplorable.

Whem you never answered the question about whether you would support a woman who helped to tortured a pregnant women, you just kinda pivoted away complaining about thread locks. What is your answer to the support of a person who helped tortured a pregnant women.

On the one hand, she's definitely qualified...

On the other... I wouldn't simply because of this PR fiasco.

Why didn't you bag on Obama & the Senate when John Brennan was confirmed?

 whembly wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:

 whembly wrote:
McCain is a fething hero. Full Stop.

Doesn't shield him from his political career... but the man is on his deathbed and comments like these are downright deplorable.

Whem you never answered the question about whether you would support a woman who helped to tortured a pregnant women, you just kinda pivoted away complaining about thread locks. What is your answer to the support of a person who helped tortured a pregnant women.

On the one hand, she's definitely qualified...

On the other... I wouldn't simply because of this PR fiasco.

Why didn't you bag on Obama & the Senate when John Brennan was confirmed?

Because I only started posting seriously on these forums in the past 3 years so I wasn't here


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:

 whembly wrote:
McCain is a fething hero. Full Stop.

Doesn't shield him from his political career... but the man is on his deathbed and comments like these are downright deplorable.

Whem you never answered the question about whether you would support a woman who helped to tortured a pregnant women, you just kinda pivoted away complaining about thread locks. What is your answer to the support of a person who helped tortured a pregnant women.

On the one hand, she's definitely qualified...

On the other... I wouldn't simply because of this PR fiasco.

Why didn't you bag on Obama & the Senate when John Brennan was confirmed?

Also I expected a lot more pushback with your stances on fetuses besides calling it a "PR fiasco"