CNN landed a major news coup with the airing of one of the conversations that Michael Cohen secretly taped with President Donald Trump. The tape is not the best in terms of the audio quality but it contains some troubling portions. Notably, this was clearly not a telephone conversation but sounds like an actual meeting where Cohen is sitting and meeting with Trump. I just posted a column on the implications of this secret recording by an attorney. While Rudy Giuliani insists that the tape is clearly exculpatory, the tape could prove more damaging than beneficial to a defense. Clearly, both sides can read negative or positive elements into this tape. While some have insisted that Trump sounds like a mobster, there is not a clear crime being discussed on this tape. There are reportedly more tapes, but this tape has good and bad elements for the Trump team. However, the tape can be used to show that Trump was informed of the deal before the election and participating in the strategy to silence Trump’s alleged former mistress Karen McDougal. However, Trump has not spoken to investigators (as a basis for some false statement prosecution) on this issue.
The most damaging elements include the reference by Cohen to David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, American Media Inc. (AMI), as their “friend” and the plan to buy the rights to McDougal’s story from Pecker. I have previously written that Cohen continues his breathtakingly bad legal advice in suggesting the purchasing of the story. While the plan was never carried out, it would have magnified the mistakes of Cohen exponentially.
You can hear Trump speaking in the office to other individuals about getting something to “go away quickly” and doing “the Charleston thing.” It is not clear what the means but it is not likely the 1920s dance. Certainly people in Charleston are curious and confused:
TRUMP: [In background] Good. Let me know what’s happening, okay? Oh, oh. Maybe because of this it would be better if you didn’t go, you know? Maybe because of this. For that one, you know, I think what you should do is get rid of this. Because it’s so false what they’re saying, it’s such bulls—. Um. [PAUSE] I think, I think this goes away quickly. I think what — I think it’s probably better to do the Charleston thing, just this time. Uh, yeah. In two weeks, it’s fine. I think right now it’s, it’s better. You know? Okay, hun. You take care of yourself. Thanks, babe. Yup, I’m proud of you. So long. Bye.
The most damaging material concerns the planned creation of a corporation to shield the purchase of McDougal’s story from their friend Pecker. Notably, there does not appear to be any question that Pecker would sell the only recently acquired right to McDougal’s story — an exchange that reenforces the view that the contract was a “catch and kill” job by Pecker and AMI:
COHEN: Even after that, it’s not ever going to be opened. There’s no, there’s no purpose for it. Um, told you about Charleston. Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that — I’m going to do that right away. I’ve actually come up and I’ve spoken —
TRUMP: Give it to me and get me a [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
COHEN: And, I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …
TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?
COHEN: … Funding . . . Yes. Um, and it’s all the stuff.
TRUMP: Yeah, I was thinking about that.
COHEN: All the stuff. Because — here, you never know where that company — you never know what he’s —
TRUMP: Maybe he gets hit by a truck.
COHEN: Correct. So, I’m all over that. And, I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be —
TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?
COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something.
TRUMP: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] pay with cash.
COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it.
TRUMP: Check.
The reference to paying cash will be significant. The only reason to pay cash is generally to avoid a money trail. However, Trump supporters insist that it is Cohen making that statement or that the President is actually saying “do not use cash.” Others have said it is clearly Trump. Audio analysis could well answer that question.
The other negative element is the discussion over delaying the release of divorce papers linked to Ivana Trump for just a short time — the type of strategy that seemed evident in the payments to McDougal and Daniels two months before the election.
COHEN: Um, so, we got served from the New York Times. I told you this — we were …
TRUMP: To what?
COHEN: … To unseal the divorce papers with Ivana. Um, we’re fighting it. Um, [Trump attorney Marc] Kasowitz is going to —
TRUMP: They should never be able to get that.
COHEN: Never. Never. Kasowitz doesn’t think they’ll ever be able to. They don’t have a —
TRUMP: Get me a Coke, please!
COHEN: They don’t have a legitimate purpose, so —
TRUMP: And you have a woman that doesn’t want this.
COHEN: Correct.
TRUMP: Who you’ve been handling.
COHEN: Yes. And —
TRUMP: And it’s been going on for a while.
COHEN: About two, three weeks now.
TRUMP: All you’ve got to do is delay for —
That is the bad stuff. However, it is important to note that the worst criminal allegation would likely be a campaign finance violation, which can be hard to prove. This tape is no smoking gun in that sense but it does offer possible tiles for a mosaic of an alleged violation.
The good stuff is that it sounds like Trump is just being informed of some of these efforts by Cohen like having Pecker sell them McDougal’s story. However, Trump clearly refers to the payment in asking “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
While many have criticized the waiver of attorney-client privilege over this tape, there are two reasons for doing so. One is to prevent the tape from being released by the court under the “crime-fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege. Such a ruling would be highly damaging from a political standpoint. Second, timing is key in scandals. Since much of the material in these scandals seem to be leaked over time, it is sometimes better to release the material at a time of your choosing. By releasing the tape, you can immediately offer the early spin like highlighting the exculpatory elements. Finally, there are all those voices in the background. This sounds like a meeting with third parties present or in the room, which could defeat a confidentiality claim.
In the end, Cohen continues to amaze with his consistently bad legal advice and inclinations. One thing however has clearly changed. Cohen is now clearly a foe and not a friend to Trump.
Where did the recording take place? Was it a two party state? Wouldn’t a lawyer be disbarred for secretly recording a conversation with his client? Wouldn’t that be privileged information?
I have not understood the issue. Everyone knew Trump was a philanderer. I assume he has made a habit of paying women for their discretion. He is now getting burned because women who sleep with married men are not discrete or trustworthy, any more than the cheating husband. Truth has a tendency to come out. Is this a shock to anyone, that he probably slept with numerous women over the years? Why is everyone hanging on word of affairs? He was not a pastor who ran for President, but rather a man with a history of affairs. And now…everyone’s upset because he had a history of affairs?
The double standard on the Left is breathtakingly unfair. The “Lion of the Senate” drove drunk, got in an accident, left a woman trapped in a small air pocket in a car at the bottom of a lake, and he left her there to die. He didn’t call police until the next day, after he’d ordered the morning newspapers and spoken with two lawyers. Divers said that they could have saved her hours after the crash before she smothered from lack of oxygen. After that, he was such a serial philanderer that his wife was driven to drink and divorced him. He even made the infamous “waitress sandwich” in which he literally threw a waitress down in a private room of a restaurant and attempted to rape her. Right there in the restaurant. The Left idolized Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton, both of whom were philanderers while in office. They were both accused of sexual assault, but it was absolutely no problem for their career. Bill was eventually found guilty of perjury for lying under oath about a consensual affair in the White House. Therefore, their frantic hysteria at a politician engaging in consensual affairs before he took office makes absolutely no sense. The same elitists who glamorize cheating as sexual freedom suddenly become Puritanical.
I do not condone cheating. We all knew Trump has cheated in the past. I dearly hope he does not cheat while in office, but past does predict future.
Is the problem that he paid yet another woman for discretion before the election, which would have interfered with the public finding out about his philandering, which we all already knew about? If so, then why was it OK for Hillary Clinton to deny that she had control of the DNC and defrauded Bernie Sanders, denied she had multiple private servers, denied she sent and received classified information on them, denied that she uploaded Top Secret information to the Cloud, denied that people with zero security clearance had access to those servers and backed them up, claimed it was a video, denied she benefited from the Uranium One Deal, denied she paid a British spy to get false information from Russian spies, which she tried to release just before the election in order to defraud voters and steal the election, denied that this fraudulent opposition research was used by the FBI to meddle in the election process and afterwards the Presidency… In other words, you have got to be kidding me that trying to maintain discretion about personally embarrassing is suddenly treason, because Hillary has lied her pantsuits off about criminal activity, let alone embarrassing information.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully–left-young-woman-die.html
I myself was shocked, shocked to learn that three-times married Trump had tryst with playboy bunny and arranged payment to protect Trump brand – shocked!…
I dearly love that little vignette from Casablanca.
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The panic from the right on this site is beyond reason. Deflect and deceive all you want, but when the truth about Trump really comes out, Please don’t blame anybody but yourselves for putting your faith in a con-man salesmen that’s only mission was to his glory and riches.
We have all waited for such predictions to be proven and to date, we find that almost all the serious cheating and lying come from the left side of the aisle or those trying to protect them.
Trump isn’t perfect but to date, nothing has been found that wasn’t known before the election and he has done nothing while in office that as President he didn’t have the right to do. Not only that but he is doing a good job.
Panic? LOL! Project much? 🙂
President Trump is not someone I panic about, in office or out. He’s resetting the separation of powers back within their proper limits and unwinding the uber president’s legacy in the process. He’s a bull in a china shop and the china needed his kind of attention.
Olly, you are not talking to the bravest of people. They scamper as soon as they hear a little noise.
on the contrary, the professional agitators such as our former President who was a “community organizer,” and various other stripes of social-engineers, are usually well chosen for their persistence. the “social progressive” left is great at selecting psychologically intense people who are willing to do dirty for dirt pay. the “right” such as it is, is pathetically ill organized by comparison
but Trump knows how to deal with them and he’s giving Republicans one lesson after another
“willing to do dirty for dirt pay. ”
That doesn’t make them brave. Look at ANTIFA. They do their dirty work in large packs and wear masks.
Or they turn their “Occupy ICE” into a hazmat site from dumping trash and pooing on the street. I thought the Left cared deeply about saving the planet???
I love the but when the truth comes out bit. The reason we’re at the point we are, with them in a full blown panic, is they’re not actually interested in the truth. They’re looking for confirmation of their bias and it isn’t happening.
he already had the riches. as to glory, what man who runs for president doesnt want it?
or woman?
another big so what comment from the peanut gallery
not panic btw just pure joy at watching Olly’s bull in the china shop. Toro, toro!
Thank you sir! 😉
By the comments, I can see that I was right…..PANIC
https://fair.org/home/action-alert-its-been-over-a-year-since-msnbc-has-mentioned-us-war-in-yemen/
Fishy’s got it down. There is a panic to be sure. It’s always the Right I see dropping f-bombs, tearing up streets with pick axes, wearing strange pink hats during riots, calling opponents traitors, racists, homophobes and perverts, calling for folks to be beheaded, calling for the rape of spouses and minor children of political opponents, and generally being schmucks ‘ cause they didn’t get their way. Oh wait …..
I think you project too much. I can’t believe you are very successful with such failed rhetoric.
Yet another misjudgment. You’re on a roll.
Ynot, are you saying that the Left has not used curse words in their rhetoric against Trump and his voters, repeatedly destroyed his Star of the Walk of Fame with literally a pick axe, worn female genitalia hats at protests, rioted, called Trump supporters Neo Nazis, racists, homophobes, held Trump’s severed head in effigy or shot him in music videos, or Tweeted that his wife should be raped and his child thrown in a cage with pedophiles?
You can argue with opinion, to be sure, but you cannot argue with facts. I would add to Mespo’s assessment above that the Left also engages in Fascist tactics against conservatives in general, barring them from speaking at college campuses across the country under threat of violence, cyberbullying anyone who makes the most innocuous remark in support of a conservative (such as Mark Duplass’s remark in favor of Ben Shapiro precipitating such a tidal wave of outrage that he had to apologize for suggesting anyone understand the other side’s point of view), and even going after conservatives’ jobs.
The Left is intolerant of opposing ideas. You don’t see conservatives across the country physically barring all Liberal speakers, threatening violence against them or the school, or heckling them during their entire speech. You don’t see Hollywood bigotry against Liberals.
Let’s also imagine, for a moment, what the reaction would be if Republicans hurled racist slurs at Liberal minorities, trying to intimidate and force them to vote Republican, if they barred Liberal speakers from college campuses across the country, if they “Occupied” government agencies they believe oppress them, like the IRS, and left the place a pigsty, if mainstream media claimed Obama separated children because he liked it, if there was a wave of un-friending on social media and disowning in person of anyone who voted for Obama because of Obamacare, and if a celebrity held Obama’s severed head in effigy, and rap artists shot him in their music video, and Republicans called Israel illegal and supported the terrorists trying to engage in another Jewish genocide…
Think long and hard on that, and get back to me why it’s ok that this behavior has become normalized on the Left. It is true that not every Democrat gave up their Republican friends, but there is a noticeable trend among them to believe that the majority of Republicans are evil “Rethuglicans” and “Trumpists” and therefore any cruelty inflicted is deserved.
It used to be that my only point of disagreement with the Democratic Party is that I do not believe that Big Government, high taxes, high spending, and eroded individual liberty was the way to prosperity. But I believed that both sides sincerely wanted what’s best for the country. Of late, the racism, anti-semitism, concerted efforts to fight the Constitution, intolerance of opposing ideas, threats against conservative speakers, obsession with bathrooms, gender bias, the weaponization of various government agencies, harassment of conservative students, double standard in the criminal justice system, violence and threats of violence…suffice it to say that what passes for “normal” in the Left is way too extreme for my taste. It’s concerning.
The truth? That he had a history of affairs? I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but this was long understood for the past few decades.
I guess Professor Turley feels a need to feed the prurient and voyeuristic part of our society that for some reason must have unsatisfactory sex lives if this is all they think about. I guess it conforms with the daily news cycle of trash so one cannot blame the good Professor who reports on the news. What I find interesting in this discussion are the relationships that all flow back towards the Clinton machine. Lanny Davis now represents what seems to be a low life lawyer (Cohen) I guess on the behest of his low life friend Hillary.
Who is paying Lanny Davis? Who paid for the Steele Dossier?
The Democratic Party of today sounds more like a flop house than an honorable political party.
Allan – since the Democratic Party is the Party of Jim Crow and the KKK, I do see how you could ever call them “honorable.”
Paul, I guess if you forget the Democratic Party’s history, its racism, its failed policies, its support for violence, its history of dealing with Russian leaders, its violations of the law you could call them honorable, right?
stop reminding they kkk of their historical association with democrats, it’s embarrassing to them
Or that Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood lamented in her speeches of the 1930s that the Germans were way ahead of Progressives in their eugenics programs. In fact, at Nuremberg, it came out that the Nazis modeled their segregation of Jews after the Democratic Jim Crow South, and exchanged ideas about exterminating “undesirables” with US Progressives.
Don’t give elitists or the government too much power.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
“Elitists, utopians and so-called “progressives” fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton’s eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind–and less or none of everyone else.” Progressive, elitist, Democrats are still up to their old tricks, only now their utopia is global Progressivism, and anyone opposing such a goal is evil. Ever see how they react when a minority steps off the plantation and comes to a different opinion than the Democratic Party line? Do they say, we disagree with what you said but will fight to the death for your right to say it and think for yourself? No. They attack with racist slurs, massive online bullying to try to force a return to the Democratic Party, threaten their livelihood. And they make sure that conservatives of any race understand they are “not welcome anywhere.” Some things never change…
PAUL: THIS STUPIDITY HAS TO STOP!!!!
“Allan – since the Democratic Party is the Party of Jim Crow and the KKK, I do see how you could ever call them “honorable.”
Anyone who knows their history is aware that the political parties flipped 50 years ago. Beginning then White southerners started gravitating to the Republican party. Nixon intentionally courted them in ’72 with his ‘southern strategy’. Reagan had his own southern strategy for 1980.
Today Southern Whites are almost solidly Republican. In fact, the Democratic party is no longer competitive in many southern states. Texas, our second most populous state, is so Republican that’s it’s state legislature thoroughly gerrymandered the state to make sure that Democrats were limited to only a few districts.
But since Trump distinguished himself as a panderer to racist sentiments, his defenders have ‘crafted’ this utterly stupid argument that Democrats are the ‘real’ racists because White southerners were all Dixiecrats in the Jim Crow era. As though the last 60 years never happened!
This mindless argument is insulting to Blacks more than anyone. It implies that somehow they all flocked to the wrong party out of total ignorance.
Like Blacks should really vote Republican, the party that uses Voter I.D. laws to keep them from voting. The party that wants to cut every social safety net, trash Affirmative Action, deny healthcare to the masses, deny choice to women, deny unions a seat at the bargaining table and drug test applicants Unemployment Benefits. ‘Blacks should vote for them because Lincoln was Republican’.
This reasoning only makes sense to the stupidest of Whites!
Blacks and Hispanic unemployment levels are at the lowest levels since records were kept on the subject. How does that comport to your theory Paul?
Darren, your question is almost as stupid as Paul’s argument.
The economic expansion we’re currently in began in June of 2009; meaning it is entering its 9th year! Historically that’s a long run for an expansion. Therefore Trump’s tariff threats could possibly threaten an already aging expansion.
But somehow Trumpers think this expansion began the day Trump took office. Like ‘only then did we emerge from the recession’! This idiotic argument ignores the fact that Obama beat Romney in 2012. Obama achieved that feat only because most Americans felt the recession was behind them at that point.
And statistics show that the unemployment rate had fallen to tolerable levels by November of 2012. What’s more employment stats continued improving all throughout Obama’s second term. Trump was lucky to inherit a good economy.
But again, the question now is tariffs. Will they finally end this expansion? This is now the subject of intensive debate. So Trumpers should hold off on bragging up this economy. Trump has plenty of time to ruin it.
If you believe that Blacks and Hispanics are worse off today in terms of economic mobility and station you are the one that has blinders on.
It’s always someone else’s fault when the favored politician fails to perform on their duties and when the un-favored politician is in office when something is good the previous favored politician gets the credit. Broken record analysis Peter.
Since it is important to you the time when President Trump assumed office lets look at the underlying economics behind that. The president instilled much confidence into the market by his various policies and approaches. Economic growth or contraction is very often a function of public perception as to the future. The market reacted bullishly toward a more rewarding future and the spillover benefits generating from this led to increases in employment, durable goods ordering, and repatriation of outsourced industries from foreign soils.
If you chose to cling to a vanilla flavored set of political orthodoxy and not experience a bounty of different tastes it’s your loss. Nobody else really cares either way.
Darren, since the economy is doing so great, we can raise the minimum wage. That would really help Blacks, Hispanics and poor Whites. One of the major reasons so many people are dependent on Food Stamps is because they can’t live on low-wage jobs without government assistance.
Yet Republican congressional leaders won’t even allow a debate on minimum wage. What’s more, Trump and the Republicans are trying every which way possible to sabotage Obamacare while offering no alternative. Again, since the economy is doing so great there’s plenty to go around. If Trump really cared about Blacks, Hispanics and poor Whites he wouldn’t be sabotaging Obamacare.
And ‘yes’, corporate America is bullish on Trump. Corporate America was bullish on George W. They liked W’s efforts at deregulation. But how did that all end..??
Barak Obama inherited the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. He turned it around, but the trajectory of economic success created by President Obama has leveled off since Trump took office, so Trump didn’t do squat and hasn’t even maintained squat. Don’t forget that Bill Clinton left office with a surplus. We now have record deficits, which are projected to worsen to an historic degree, all to pay for tax cuts to the uber-wealthy. Whose economic plans are better?
mostly people over rate the extent of fault and success attributable to the president.
presidents take credit because they know they will take the blame
there is a business cycle in capitalism that will never go away no matter who is president
the number one factor in the cycle is probably interest rates set by the Fed which is designed to be independent and is pretty much so for the most part.
it’s complicated but elections are not won with complicated slogans or ideas
“Barak Obama inherited the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. He turned it around, but the trajectory of economic success created by President Obama has leveled off since Trump took office,”
Natacha, If you know anything about economics you would know that after a recession the upturns occur quicker. Obama was faced with a very slow upturn and then the rates of change declined. When Trump came in there was a rapid upturn when the rates should have continued to fall. That demonstrates that Obama’s return to a normal economy was slow and weak and that Trump reversed the change.
You can see all this very easily by reviewing the U6 and U4 numbers of the last year of the Obama administration vs the first year of the Trump administration despite the fact that we were approaching what we consider full employment. Approaching full employment levels caused a flattening in the rate of change as seen with Obama before full unemployment levels were reached. Trump reversed the trend.
natch’s studies thus far have only extend to U2, that is, not the Gary Powers U2 but the one with the lead singer from Ireland named Boner
Darren Smith – I think the #WalkAway movement by ex-liberals is driving the left crazy and is starting a panic in the ranks. Trump got more minority votes than any Republican in a long time. He has several black commentators on YouTube backing him. I don’t think the mid-term is going to turn out like Democrats think it will.
Paul, show me statistics that say Trump, “got more minority votes than any Republican in a long time”.
Just off the top of my head I can tell you that George W. did much better with Hispanics. As Governor of Texas, W. was reasonably popular with Hispanics there.
Regarding the ‘Walkaway” movement, they’re a joke! No liberal takes them seriously!! I was debating Walkaway on a Facebook thread and their arguments were just generic talking points from Fox. I don’t believe any ‘ex-liberals’ walked away to them. It’s just wishful thinking on their part; whoever the hell they are.
Peter Hill – here you go.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/11/trump-got-more-votes-from-people-of-color-than-romney-did-heres-the-data/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.10e5325431a8
Thanks, Paul.
I wasn’t aware that Romney did so poorly with minorities. Though I’m not surprised. Romney was just a corporate suit to most Americans.
As I said, George W. did okay with Hispanics.
But it’s not completely true that Trump ‘did better than any Republican in a long time’. His numbers were respectable in comparison but not ‘blow away’.
Here’s an excerpt from your article that sums it all up:
“At the same time, Trump performed better with black voters than McCain did in 2008, and on par with Bush’s performance in 2000.
Trump performed as well as McCain did with Latino voters in 2008, and did only somewhat worse than Bush in 2000 — which is surprising given the way that Trump launched his campaign with incendiary remarks about Mexican rapists, kicked out a prominent Mexican American journalist from a news conference, and questioned the fairness of Hispanic judges.
Finally, among Asian Americans, Trump performed significantly worse than Bush did in 2000, and marginally worse than McCain did in 2008”.
A bunch of drivel Peter Shill. Any time a black strays from the plantation the leftist run, they are demonized. It is very racist when you start with the presumption that blacks are inferior to whites so they require a white person’s assistance to permanently help them.
I’m not against such help to people in need, but I don’t have to assuage my guilt by assisting in cultural genocide.
Peter Hill – I thought the stupidest of whites were the Democratic members of the KKK.
Peter:
Actually, blacks started voting for the Democratic Party when it was still run by the Klan in the 1930s because of the New Deal. They were lured by the stuff. The Republican Party has never stood for racism. Why do you think that the South is still antebellum? I lived in Virginia in a middle class neighborhood with black friends. Race didn’t matter in my neighborhood and everyone played together fine. In the North, the elites typically don’t live with black neighbors. Northern schools and neighborhoods tend to be virtually exclusively white or black or Latino.
Schools in the south are less segregated than in the North, where it is more common to find virtually exclusively all black schools. The gaps between whites and blacks are more similar in the South in many metrics.
https://www.theroot.com/is-the-south-more-racist-than-other-parts-of-the-us-1820893655
Your response to the racist and repressive history of the Democratic Party, and their racist and repressive tactics today, seems to be to claim that the South is more Republican now than it was, the South is racist as a whole, like it’s a little racist nation of its own and blacks inexplicably don’t just move away, and so therefore the entire Republican Party must be Racist. You ignore the black Republican legislators, jurists, writers, and philosophers, especially those from the South, as, what, a repeated outlier? What about the Democratic openly racist and gender bigotry expressed against whites, especially white males? What about Democratic identity politics, in which your value as a human being is determined by factors like race and gender? What is your excuse for the inevitable racist epithets hurled at Republicans who leave the Democratic Plantation and have a dissenting opinion? The response is typically how dare they have a different point of view? At what point do you look at the hellhole that is Democratically held cities and think perhaps you should try a different approach? San Francisco with its poo and dirty needly maps? Detroit? Baltimore? Gangland Chicago?
Flint, Michigan with thousands of children exposed to lead in their drinking water? Will Democratic lawmakers ever be held responsible for promising utopia and delivering Third World? What are they, Teflon?
I do not believe that Bigger Government, higher taxes, and the erosion of individual rights is the way to prosperity. I do not believe we should be judged on the color of our skin or gender. We have numerous examples throughout history, as well as present day such as Venezuela and North Korea supporting the wisdom of that statement. The Left believes the opposite, and until 2016, many academics sang the glory of the Soviets, and Communism, and Socialism are still openly embraced by Democrats, even those outside the insulated world of academia.
EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton sold out Honduras: Lanny Davis, corporate cash, and the real story about the death of a Latin American democracy:
Want to know why Clinton’s State Dept. failed to help an elected leader? Follow the money and stench of Lanny Davis
“Though it’s less sexy than Benghazi, the crisis following a coup in Honduras in 2009 has Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints all over it, and her alleged cooperation with oligarchic elites during the affair does much to expose Clinton’s newfound, campaign-season progressive rhetoric as hollow. Moreover, the Honduran coup is something of a radioactive issue with fallout that touches many on Team Clinton, including husband Bill, once put into a full context.”
“It was a military coup, said the UN General Assembly and the Organization of American States (OAS). The entire EU recalled its countries’ ambassadors, as did Latin American nations. The United States did not, making it virtually the only nation of note to maintain diplomatic relations with the coup government.”
———————————————-
“If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is, you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis,” said Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador, just a month after the coup. Speaking to Roberto Lovato for the American Prospect, Davis revealed who that was: “My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America.” In other words, the oligarchs who preside over a country with a 65 percent poverty rate. The emerging understanding, that the powerful oligarchs were behind the coup, began to solidify, and the Clinton clique’s allegiances were becoming pretty clear. If you can believe it, Clinton’s team sided with the wealthy elite.
———————————————————-
“A post-coup government a couple years later would announce that Honduras is “open for business,” if not open for human rights and democracy. Foreign policy Clintonism may be more technocratic than the Republican model, but its goals are effectively the same. Clintonite mercenaries wear Brooks Brothers suits, not military fatigues.
Lanny Davis’ role as PR guerrilla is reminiscent of fellow Clinton team member James Carville, who worked in the 2002 campaign of multimillionaire Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (“Goni”) in Bolivia, another pro-globalization, pro-Washington, hyper-capitalist candidate running against socialist Evo Morales.”
https://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy/
oh autumn stop quoting fox news and hannity!
oh wait, that’s from SALON magazine? oops
yah Mr. Kurtz – back when Salon actually did some great reporting =)
I would like to know why you are so obsessed with Hillary Clinton. She hasn’t even been in public office in 5 1/2 years and won’t be returning to one.
i think that hillary’s ties to the “Deep State” that is the military industrial complex and intelligence agency apparatchiks, and her clique’s participation yet another Central American misadventure, is worth a mention considering that she was the darling of the war powers and Trump ran on a pro peace platform, non-interventionist, at least.
Very nice. More “Deep State” materials, please. Oh ya, also more BENGHAZI HEARINGS!!!
this is to “I can fold my own hats in record time now, but the aluminum sometimes give me “foil cuts” kurtzi
Obsessed? Nah, I just despise her and everything she and her husband and the rest of the neo con / neo libs they represent. Hard to ignore her when she’s constantly coming out of the woods to accept rewards and lie and whine.
Thanks to her ego – cheating Bernie out of the nomination and refusing to step aside – one of the two most hated candidates ever we have Trump. The handwriting was on the wall for those of us who were paying attention – EVERYTIME she made an appearance her poll number dropped
The people voted and like it or not he IS the president. All this focus on Russia, Russia, Russia is beyond absurd.
Attack him on policies — and get the Dims to actually offer a decent platform if you wanna win. Get behind someone with integrity like Tulsi Gabbard
Seems like you are simply deflecting from the kompromat that it is clear Russia has on the president. Clinton doesn’t influence policy in the United States anymore and hasn’t in years.
oh that is funny. China’s influence is enormous. Starting with financial influence. No, not talking about their threats in the trade war, which are serious and do matter; not talking about them being the big buyer of US debt; just a little more specific here:
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2086163/does-chinas-buying-spree-hollywood-studios-project-soft-power-not
All they need is their current “platform” of not being under the control of Putin.
this is to “ya, he’s an imbecile of the first order, but at least he’s an old white guy” allan
Marry – Hillary keeps reinserting herself into the limelight, so we have to deal with her. Personally, I would rather she rode off into the sunset and retired, but it appears she is going to try for a third time to win the Presidency.
Your memory is failing, PCS.
HRC has faded into the limelight sunset of current events.
It would seem that only speeches by the attorney general — supporting the chants of juveniles — bring the long-discredited woman to the forefront again.
Of course, being the fool you are, it cannot be helped that you interpret this as her doing.
I asked a question elsewhere but yet have been given an answer. Who is paying Lanny Davis to represent M. Cohen and why?
You may very well be right about HRC’s future but does she know it?
I think she does, I hope she does. It’s nice to see her backside.
“Who is paying Lanny Davis to represent M. Cohen and why?” — Allan
Is this a new conspiracy theory concerning HRC?
Where can I read the answers to such leading prepositions, Allan?
Illuminate the hoi polloi with your wisdom.
You are allowed two links.
“Is this a new conspiracy theory concerning HRC?”
I don’t think so Lien. I asked a question that I didn’t have a documented answer to. I figured you might have an opinion. Strange. Of all people to represent M. Cohen….
Naw, you didn’t ‘figure that’, Allan.
You were running up a trial balloon, a thought from the fringe you intellectually inhabit.
Cowards are always recognizable by their propensity to walk backwards, much like PCS does — though his direction is usually sideways.
If you have a question — ask it; don’t presuppose.
You are an idiot Lien. I asked a serious question and of course, it wouldn’t have been asked if Lanny Davis wasn’t so close to Hillary.
The question remains, who is paying for Lanny Davis? We already know the DNC / Hillary paid for the Steele document and used her power to nuke Bernie. I think this is a legitimate question.
R. Lien – Hillary was Tweeting today. Who is the fool now?
Millions of people tweet, PCS.
I don’t care about any of them, including HRC’s.
Did HRC say she was going to pay back the $400M Putin claimed she got, and that you repeated for days?
What, exactly, is your point?
You’ve got to up your game if you think your response is in anyway definitive of an argument you refuse to state.
Article is from 3 years ago. How is it relevant to Trump paying off a mistress..??
Spin, lie, distract, deflect and repeat, they have learned well from the dear leader.
I am indeed taking notes from DJT, our fearless leader. Hail to the Chief!
History matters. Fact is Davis is not only a shady figure but is responsible for the overthrow of a democratically elected leader which is more important than mistresses and porn stars.
It’s also bad for Trump because it shows how easily he can be blackmailed.
If two prostitutes can blackmail him so easily, then it would be simple for a former KGB operative to dig up dirt on him for blackmail.
After hearing this tape, I have no doubt now that Trump is compromised.
MAM/ATV re “After hearing this tape, I have no doubt now that Trump is compromised”.
The Donald’s ardent supporters think otherwise
This fool doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Just ignorant like ‘you’, Autumn.
I enjoy Kevin – he’s very entertaining IMO. What’s irritating to you and your ilk is that he’s a black man who happens to be very passionate about the Donald.
He can’t distinguish McDougal from Daniels.
It must not take a lot of brains to extort President Trump if someone like a prostitute could do it.
Don’t you think someone as savvy as Putin could?
you are suggesting prostitutes are not smart. not nice. they may indeed be smarter than you think. also karen mcdougal was a model to be fair not a prostitute. playboy playmate.
and the matter of women using sex and then threatening to tattle unless paid off is old hat. really old hat. this is not much of a story. it”s quotidian stuff in some circles.
Yes, it is old hat, which is my point. Why would a beautiful 35-year-old woman who could easily find an attractive man want to have sex with a senior citizen unless she was looking for money?
Anyone but the most naïve person could see what her intentions were.
He is a dupe who is easily blackmailed.
on the contrary, women are attracted to powerful older men by nature. younger men see this all the time. it’s quite obvious. money goes hand in hand with such things likewise
I agree with the blackmail potential. It is just my opinion and I don’t expect this to be legislated but for me if a politician cheats on his/her spouse they should be removed from office immediately.
If a person’s integrity is so fractured they can abandon their wedding vows for sex, they just as easily can be bribed or influenced unduly. Not only does this compromise the public trust but the risk of a malfeasant politician retaining office for their own corrupt ends is a risk the citizenry should not bear.
If we only had a means by which the citizenry could possibly know if such a malfeasant politician had been bribed or unduly influenced; or a process to remove them from office. I’d suggest the constitution, but no one pays attention to that old rag. When our government is literally wielding powers they’ve not been granted and simply making $hit up as they go along, a malfeasant politician is one that is not of your tribe.
Public trust? That’s a joke, right? Risk? Every politician is a risk. In our system the greatest risk are the citizens themselves. They deserve the government they elect to office and really deserve the government they reelect to office. James Garfield had it correct:
Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature … If the next centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.
Carnal Loophole
King Solomon was monogamous with 300 concubines.
“Although it’s true the Bible nowhere explicitly condemns concubinage, a condemnation can be found implicitly from the beginning of time. According to Genesis 2:21-24, God’s original intent was for marriage to be between one man and one woman, and that has never changed (Genesis 1:27). As a matter of fact, a study of the lives of men like King David and King Solomon (who had 300 concubines; 1 Kings 11:3) reveals that many of their problems stemmed from polygamous relationships (2 Samuel 11:2-4).”
Marry – Trump is no more compromised than LBJ, JFK, Slick Willie, etc.
You are, of course, referring only to sexual compromisation in your .
response, while whistling past the graveyard of many others.
Trump’s compromisations — to anyone paying attention — lie in realms outside the sexual.
Of course, I can understand how you only see the former.
R. Lien – we know the Steele dossier is fake, so what is he being compromised with?
Why do you negate your statement:
“Trump is no more compromised than LBJ, JFK, Slick Willie, etc.”
while referring to the Steele dossier?
If you believe it is fake, then why refer to the people you did, while claiming the dossier is fake?
You go in circles, PCS, attempting to obfuscate the fact that you’re a fool.
Trump will be exposed for financial transgressions, not sexual.
You should read more.
He is not fooling anyone; PCS is equivalent to BS.
TONY – you have yet to refute me. No evidence, no case. If the glove does not fit you must acquit!!!!
JFK took the virginity of and otherwise abused an innocent 19 year-old intern and shared her with an aide inside the White House. RFK was in L.A. and S.F. the night of the murder by suppository of the girlfriend he shared with his brother et all, Marilyn Monroe. WJC was expelled from Oxford for sexual abuse, raped Juanita Broaddrick and attended “Orgy Island” frequently. Nonviolent consensual affairs like Trump’s are innocuous and ubiquitous.
yeah JFK was a philanderer but a good president. most leaders of nations throughout history have probably been philanderers. it’s kind of irrelevant. of course rape is a serious crime, that’s a different matter.
I have never been able to judge JFK, but I do remember he almost got us into WW3. Historians write history and have a lot to do with convincing the future of who was great. JFK and the family liked control over history. I believe his assassination did more for his reputation than anything else.
he maybe got us in, or maybe other people almost got us in, and he got us out
it’s hard to judge such a thing but in retrospect he was going in the right direction on a lot of things — perhaps, including de-escalating in vietnam.
it would have been a departure from his escalation in vietnam, but macnamara says that is where he was headed. this is a thorough read of the subject. im not too deep into the subject, it seems debatable to me, worthy of consideration in either direction
http://bostonreview.net/us/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam
“….McNamara describes the National Security Council meeting of October 2, 1963, which revealed a “total lack of consensus” over the battlefield situation:
One faction believed military progress had been good and training had progressed to the point where we could begin to withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should begin to withdraw. . . . The third faction, representing the majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but believed our training had not been in place long enough to achieve results and, therefore, should continue at current levels.
As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow. The denouement came shortly thereafter:
After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it publicly. That would set it in concrete. . . . The president finally agreed, and the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting.
Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy’s action had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal “by December 31, 1965,” (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a public announcement, to set these decisions “in concrete,” which was made. McNamara also added the critical information that there exists a tape of this meeting, in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, to which he had access and on which his account is based.
The existence of a taping system in JFK’s oval office had become known over the years, particularly through the release of partial transcripts of the historic meeting of the “ExComm” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. But the full extent of Kennedy’s taping was not known. And, according to McNamara, access to particular tapes was tightly controlled by representatives of the Kennedy family. When McNamara spoke in Austin, only he and his coauthor, Brian VanDeMark, had been granted the privilege of listening to the actual tape recordings of Kennedy’s White House meetings on Vietnam.
In 1997, however, this situation changed. The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent civilian body established under the 1992 JFK Records Act that has already been responsible for the release of millions of pages of official records deemed relevant to Kennedy’s assassination, ruled that his tapes relating to Vietnam decision-making should be released. In July the JFK Library began releasing key tapes, including those of the withdrawal meetings on October 2 and 5, 1963.7
A careful review of the October 2 meeting makes clear that McNamara’s account is essentially accurate and even to some degree understated. One can hear McNamara—the voice is unmistakable—arguing for a firm timetable to withdraw all U.S. forces from Vietnam, whether the war can be won in 1964, which he doubts, or not. McNamara is emphatic: “We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.”
In Retrospect’s discussion of Kennedy’s decision to withdraw ends at this point. McNamara makes no mention of NSAM 263. However, on the tape of the meeting of October 5, 1963, one can clearly hear a voice—it may be Robert McNamara or McGeorge Bundy—asking President John F. Kennedy for “formal approval” of “items one, two, and three” on a paper evidently in front of them. It is clear that one of these items is the recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by the end of 1963, the rationale being that they are no longer needed. This short exchange is thus unmistakably a request for a formal presidential decision concerning the McNamara-Taylor recommendations. After a short discussion of the possible political effect in Vietnam of announcing this decision, the voice of JFK can be clearly heard: “Let’s go on ahead and do it,” followed by a few words deciphered by historian George Eliades as “without making a public statement about it.”
Unfortunately, the last White House tape from the Kennedy administration is dated November 7, 1963. The archivists at the JFK Library have no information on why the tapings either ended or are unavailable for later dates.”
Mr. Kurtz,…
The period that you mention, in the fall of 1963, was a critical period in the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy.
As you mention, JFK was getting conflicting assessments of the then-current state and survivability of the S. Vietnamese govermment, and the best way to proceed.
State Department was recommending one thing, CIA disagreed with State, and the military advisors differed from State and the CIA.
Since late August, 1963, there was an ongoing debate about whether the U.S. should support a coup to depose the Diem government.
Henry Cabot Lodge had just been appointed as Ambassador to South Vietnam, and based on his “vast experience” of serving in that position for weeks, decided that Diem must go.
Toward that end, Lodge was communicating with generals who wanted to depose Diem.
The CIA, and Lodge’s predecessor as Ambassador, opposed a coup.
The military gave JFK a fairly positive assessment of the South’s war against the Viet Cong insurgency
I’d have to double-check to be sure, but I think Sec. McNamara supported the military’s assessment that the S. Vietnamese military was making progress.
Irrespective of what he might have said yesrs later, I think McNamera’s position was that we continue our military presence in Vietnam.
I’ve listened to the available tapes and have read accounts from the key participants’ memos and other documentation of what transpired in that critical period.
But if you can point to evidence that indicates otherwise…e.g., a memo, a particular date on the audio tapes, I’d be interested in looking at it.
McNamara seemed hawkish on Vietnam policy, and optimistic about prosects for success, well past LBJ’s escalation in the spring of 1965.
Back to JFK…he ultimately gave the green light to support the coup that ousted ( and killed) Diem and Ngu
This was in early November 1963, just a few weeks before JFK himself was killed
I think it’s an open question as to what JFK’s decisions would have been about Vietnam had he lived into a second term
I haven’t seen stong evidence that “cinches” the answer to the question of how JFK would have proceeded.
The aftermath of the Diem coup was disaster, resulting in a continuing series of military coups that last overv two years
There is an excellent book, “A Death in November” by Ellen Hammer, that deals with the lead-up to, and the aftermath of, the Diem coup.
Kurtz, Many people head in two directions and those observing can never be sure which direction is the winner. Sometimes even the individual in charge doesn’t have that answer.
1. The entire political class went along with the VietNam War at its inception. The odd exceptions were Ernest Gruening, Wayne Morse, Gaylord Nelson, and George McGovern.
2. See Col. Harry Summers on Robert McNamara’s interviews and public utterances after 1968. Summers upbraids McNamara for sending troops into battle for objectives he though hopeless. See the quotations Summers’ references: McNamara during his World Bank years said he came to this judgment at the beginning of 1966.
3. The supposed distinction between Kennedy and Johnson was one promoted ca. 1971 by Democratic Party press agents like Arthur Schlesinger. I don’t think Schlesinger was talking turkey.
“The supposed distinction between Kennedy and Johnson was one promoted ca. 1971 by Democratic Party press agents like Arthur Schlesinger.”
DSS, as I said: “Historians write history and have a lot to do with convincing the future of who was great. JFK and the family liked control over history. I believe his assassination did more for his reputation than anything else.”
IMO, The Vietnam War was a foolish war to get into. However, if one goes into war one must go in to win. Our exit from Vietnam after the agreement was signed was deplorable. Many of Obama’s friends when entering the White House acted as “enemies of the US” during the war and afterward.
Wars are an extension of politics. Politics, in the literal sense of the word, is about the life of the city. The city to live must gain resources. So wars are on many levels about resource competition. Sometimes they have to be waged and sometimes abated. Sometimes they are strategic only if waged weakly. Nobody ever tells that to the soldiers.
Wars are pursued half heartedly throughout history oftentimes for reasons that are not entirely obvious. Especially if the wars in question are civil wars. If we take George Orwell’s view of Stalin’s support of the Spanish Civil war, it was less to support the “worker’s movement” than it was to suppress Trotskyites in a foreign theatre which had conveniently concentrated them in one place for him to sequester and liquidate– or allow to be liquidated by the other side.
William Wallace was such a one who thought as you Allan, who waged war to win. But the French support for Scotland flagged, and the Scots nobles acquiesced to Edward. Wallace did not, he would not bury they hatchet, and the English buried the hatchet in him.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/william_wallace/
The sovereign decides. The fighters are essentially hired hands in the game whether conscripts or mercenaries. Those who only take on the aspect of sovereign ship in their independent acts of war are partisans. They are political by comparison to the other belligerents. Maybe you would find this fine work of Carl Schmitt interesting
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/spaceshotsairheads/carlschmitttheoryofthepartisan.pdf
at a time when the left is characterized by the bellicose antics of antifa and BLM, perhaps those who fashion themselves as opposed, should study the theory of the partisan, for clues on the metaphysical aspects of how to proceed
“Wars are an extension of politics.”
I think it would be more accurate to say that wars are an extension of diplomacy or better yet failed diplomacy. Fighting a war to lose or tie is foolish. Without a winner, wars can go on forever. Note the Peloponnesian Wars, the Punic Wars, World War 1 and World War 2.
JFK and RFK had Marilyn Monroe murdered as she was going to publicly reveal their relationships and other data. Good president – can you say the idiot was such a great captain that he had his ski-boat in paradise cut in half by a Jap destroyer and that he was played by Khrushchev, giving up foreign intel bases as a way out of the Cuban Missile Crisis – Khrushchev got something for nothing. JFK was the son of a criminal bootlegging rum-runner. Seriously?
yeah JFK was a philanderer but a good president
He was a fine public speaker. His staff successfully suborned important elements of the media (especially The Washington Post). He didn’t make some of the mistakes Johnson did, but that’s saying he was better than a disaster.
BTW, as long as were talking about compromisation — are you still banging the drum of HRC getting $400M from an Englishman?
You mentioned it many times in various posts of yours — until Putin corrected his initial claim.
Do you really think people didn’t notice?
Thank goodness you’re on to new subjects, where your idiocy won’t be noticed until tomorrow.
R. Lien – I am only repeating what Putin said. If he got it wrong, it is not my fault. I am not the one making the claim. However, I do think Putin’s offer to Mueller is interesting and worth thinking about. You are going to have to work a lot harder if you want to get my goat. 🙂
What bull.
You trumpeted this claim of Putin’s for two days, even rhetorically asking if HRC would pay it back.
You swallowed propaganda — hook, line, and sinker.
You’re a fool.
R. Lien – you are a twit. I very carefully explained my position a couple of times. Either you did not read it or you ignored it because it made sense. Which was it?
PC Schulte,….
( Dog woke me up to take me for walk, and I think he’s now angling for a treat)😱
I skimmed some of the comments in this area and others.
When I asked you about the history of trolls on this site, that question was promoted by the fact that there’s been a notable increase in troll activity here over the past 6-8 months.
I’ve previously mentioned those in that “troll category”, I won’t review the usernames of all of the current crop of trolls who are active here.
At c. a half dozen, it’ s not like their numbers are a large percentage those who comment here; in fact it’s a very small percentage, and if one is using multiple usernames, their numbers are even fewer.
E.G., ” R.Lien’s” style is very similar to Mark M.’s unique and obnoxious style.
R. Lien may be a disciple of Mark M., or Mark M. himself, or Mark M.’s team mate here.
Without trying to review all of the possibilities, R. Lien may simply share Mark M.’s sociopathic concept of “entertainment”.
Doesn’t really matter much, I guess
Whatever the “combinations” and the very small precise number,the high activity level in terms of comments made by the trolls has been unusually high.
Should be “prompted” by the fact,…autocorrect used “promoted” instead
Tom Nash – some are building their bona fides for the election. Money is to be made trolling. You have to get your CV in soon with examples of your work, so they may be working overtime to generate trollishness. Still, they are a drop in the bucket to what it was when I got here. However, there are others who were here long before me so they may be better judges.
PC Schulte,…
– I didn’t”see any of that (trolling,etc.) when I first started following this site in 2014.
But I think you, Nick, and some others have been around a few years longer than me.
I’m not trying to get your goat. I really don’t care what a fool thinks or utters.
I’m just pointing out how eagerly you believe what suits your purpose — no matter the source; how you broadcast rumor as fact.
Is this not what you accuse others of?
You are a fool, and a hypocrite.
R. Lien – you clearly care what I say since you hang on my every word, don’t lie about it. Twit that thou art, calling me a fool does not make me one.
if you dont care THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE? BUZZ OFF if you think the readership are so many fools
Mr. Kurtz, Lien is a know nothing with a bad personality. Lien can’t debate squat so he makes wild accusations to cover his tracks. Fortunately, one doesn’t have to see his tracks as one can smell the stench.
Lien is another of Diane’s sock-puppets. I figure she varies her ID according to whether she’s at home, at the library, or at Starbucks.
How do you know? If Lien is Diane then she is a disgusting creature. Without the Lien alias, she is just a doddering old fool who has misused everything she has learned over a lifetime.
you can’t know, unless you have ips, and then if they are disciplined at masking IP with VPNs, not then either.
but you can detect similarities by linguistics and plain old common sense readings of what people say
after all the talk of Russian bots I have been thinking.
It’s ironic how the Pentagon and Democrats and pro war Republicans are so closely aligned on all this. Maybe they are Pentagon bots?
https://www.axios.com/russian-bots-increase-2195bf68-567c-4466-a705-17e69d4b6cad.html
Paul, you’re hitting on something here. It seems the only way Trump supporters can defend him is by making false equivalencies to long-dead presidents.
“Sure, we know Trump is an ant-intellectual, emotionally retarded liar, but JFK was almost as bad”.
One would think a blog run by a law professor would draw the best arguments. But the arguments here are no more compelling than the average Facebook thread.
One would think a blog run by a law professor would draw the best arguments. But the arguments here are no more compelling than the average Facebook thread.
Take a day off and that average will improve.
Maybe you should follow your own advice?
That wasn’t advice, that was an observation. Now your comment would be advice. Thanks anyway.
Olly, please don’t listen to Lien. We wouldn’t want the quality of posting to fall so much.
Ah, Allan returns to his favorite place — the gutter.
Praising s**t as shinola, simply based on his impressions of allies on a blog.
Small mind exposed, especially given his propensity to argue semantics for weeks on end.
“Ah, Allan returns to his favorite place — the gutter.”
How else could I find you Lien. Maybe in a toilet or a garbage can. This time you are hanging out in the gutter to attack people as they stroll by trying to remain clean despite being in the presence of people like you.
Listen stupid, a compliment to Olly doesn’t bring anyone down and for the most part, Olly has tried to remain above the fray. I’ll paraphrase what I said. If Olly left the blog the quality of the postings would fall. This most recent comment of yours demonstrates that fact to the fullest.
Peter Hill – I did not know Slick Willie was dead, much less long dead. 😉
Slick Willie looked dead in that infamous photo that keeps showing up in memes.
my proposition on many occasions is that Trump ran on an anti-expansionist, war critic platform, and there is a lot of push back from a faction of the mlitiary industrial complex represented by Clapper and Brennan.
seems to me like there are parallels between JFK’s reluctance to go the distance with the military industrial complex, and what opposition he had from them
Even if you do not accept the premise that a cabal engineered his assasination
(the cabal which was named by E Howard Hunt when he was in extremis being the one that seems most credible– Green light from LBJ, some degree of backing from Dulles and Cord Meyer, down the chain to Howard Hunt as bag man and Frank Sturgis as one of of the shooters– maybe that is wrong or maybe not) …. but even if you do not accept the cabal assassination hypothesis, it’s undeniably factual that Dulles was fired over Bay of Pigs and there was a faction of the CIA that were old associates of Dulles that likewise hated JFK and LBJ hated him too.
you people who hate Trump, maybe surprised if you get your way in doing him in.
I think it’s reasonable to lay LIbya on Hillary since she claimed credit for it, and maybe escalation of the civil war in Syria too. Both of which have been a disaster for the middle east and especially Europe invaded by refugees.
I’m not the only person who’s made such observations, more astute and credible people than me I am sure have seen and said as much
BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY WANTS TO GAG DOCTORS TREATING WOMEN
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/opinion/trump-title-x-abortions.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront
Sheep
Whenever I see photos of outraged protesters dressed in pre-printed garments, holding placards printed and worded on behalf of political string holders, and bleating in unison the dictates they are commanded to repeat, I have no respect for these persons as individuals. They have no sense of self-determination or independent thinking, willingly consigning their minds to their handlers who only value them in aggregates as useful idiots to serve their own political ambitions and greed.
“War on Women” what a crock. I don’t see any gulags, hanging women for blasphemy, stoning rape victims or refusing to allow girls to attend school beyond 8th grade as is the case of other parts of the world.
Darren Smith – I will happily give up the War on Women the day the Women surrender in the War on Men. I think that is fair.
Have you ever worked a job where you have to wear a uniform? The outfits provide solidarity.
Uh, yes I wore a uniform and it was at most times statutorily required.
Are you implying these protesters were paid? Well, some of them are but most constitute cheap labor by doing this voluntarily.
There is a fundamental difference between carrying the signs & parroting the words of others, and crafting one’s own words and making their own statements. The solidarity could consist in their mutual attendance of certain functions, beyond that wearing pussy hats and shouting preformatted ramblings is just a form of mental slavery–that is self indenturing oneself to perform the bidding of others after being hoodwinked by charlatans who proffer they care for others’ best interest when in fact they only want money and power.
Darren….You are absolutely correct…Terrific comment.
What a bunch of nonsense from Peter Shill and the NYTimes. It has been documented that federal funds have been used in subversion of state laws that involve protection of minors.
If a physician or a clinic doesn’t wish to live under the rules of a federal grant they shouldn’t assault the American public by demanding unlimited rights, some of which can be against state and federal law.
This does not constitute “assault on the patient-provider relationship”. In some cases, it prevents the assault on parental rights something some people must believe shouldn’t exist.
Allan, why do we want government intruding on doctor-patient relationships??? If I remember correctly, opposition to Obamacare was premised on that fear.
If a pregnant woman has just been diagnosed with cancer, shouldn’t her doctor be able inform her of every healthcare option?? Why do we evangelical preachers getting in the way??? Only people nostalgic for the Dark Ages want that.
we don’t want it, and probably trump doesnt care a fig about this. I sure don’t. let the doctors tell the women all their information including of course about terminating the living fetus humans inside their bodies. it’s on the women if they do that, in the end. let it be legal, as it is and has been for what 35 years now, it’s nothing new and it’s not like anybody gets to vote on that anyhow. big snooze, just trying to whip up more opposition
“Allan, why do we want government intruding on doctor-patient relationships???”
Peter, the government is always regulating and as a person from the left, you should know that unless you think all the Medicare rules should be thrown into the toilet. Or do you have selective leftist ways of viewing the world?
When a patient and a doctor enter into a relationship based on a third person’s dime they have asked for intrusion into the care provided. I am a great believer in the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship and that is one of the reasons why I prefer government as far away from healthcare as possible.
If I remember correctly, opposition to Obamacare was premised on that fear.”
It did far worse. Additionally, it was recognized as a failure before the ink dried on the bill and before it was signed. The problem is that people with a certain type of mindset don’t seem to be able to grasp economics. The predictions of its failure and why it would fail were right on target, but I don’t think people like you understood then or now why it could not survive.
“If a pregnant woman has just been diagnosed with cancer, shouldn’t her doctor be able inform her of every healthcare option??”
Absolutely. Until the physician is misusing his license and his funding he and the patient should be left alone. Unfortunately, there are too many people that take advantage of the law and I think that is what led to this bill.
So you’re saying doctor – patient relationships ‘should’ be private. But earlier you said that Evangelicals have a right to dictate health policies through the Republican party.
“But earlier you said that Evangelicals have a right to dictate health policies through the Republican party.”
I never said that but everyone has a right in this country to their opinion even those that use that right in a subversive manner Peter Shill.
If you want me to pay for your rectal exam, I at least want the pleasure of being there when it is done.
Allan, that sounds threatening. I photographed your comment and emailed it to my lawyer. You might want to hand low for a while.
You are too used to bending over Peter so I don’t think you would find that threatening at all.
Peter Hill…
You already have the government intruding on doctor-patient relationships.
Overall, neither doctor nor patients are too crazy about that intrusion, so it didn’t come about because people “wanted” or demanded those intrusions.