Russia Russia OMG Russia

[Hard_Rom]

Those of the imperial/geopolitical persuasion. See also: neo-cons.

Maggie Thatcher is long dead now.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Oh gosh, it turns out that Russia may have been trying to undermine Trump. And it may have done so in collusion with the Democrats. The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberly Strassel noted Thursday that Fusion GPS has ties to the Democrats — and will not reveal who paid it for the dossier. Strassel asked: “What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign?” The money could have passed through intermediaries, she added.

That means the real story of collusion in the 2016 election could be that Democrats were working with Russia. And that would make sense, given their long history of appeasing the Russians, under both Clinton and Barack Obama.....

Don't you love it when the truth comes out.

Even better when it's also reported on Breitbart so all us little stormtroopers know about it too.

 

[JackLuis]

Oh gosh, it turns out that Russia may have been trying to undermine Trump. And it may have done so in collusion with the Democrats. The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberly Strassel noted Thursday that Fusion GPS has ties to the Democrats — and will not reveal who paid it for the dossier. Strassel asked: “What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign?” The money could have passed through intermediaries, she added.

That means the real story of collusion in the 2016 election could be that Democrats were working with Russia. And that would make sense, given their long history of appeasing the Russians, under both Clinton and Barack Obama.....

Don't you love it when the truth comes out.

Even better when it's also reported on Breitbart so all us little stormtroopers know about it too.

It has been reported, (in the Lefty MSM) that Fusion GPS was working for all sides in this 'cause they are Capitalist Whores, that way. Fusion was hired by the Russian that met with Don Jr. to work on removing sanctions on the Russian Oligarchs that had money tied up in the US, that included Putin's cut of a scam worth Billions. So I wouldn't make too much of the Dems financing Opo research by Steele.

 

[ChloeTzang]

It has been reported, (in the Lefty MSM) that Fusion GPS was working for all sides in this 'cause they are Capitalist Whores, that way. Fusion was hired by the Russian that met with Don Jr. to work on removing sanctions on the Russian Oligarchs that had money tied up in the US, that included Putin's cut of a scam worth Billions. So I wouldn't make too much of the Dems financing Opo research by Steele.

But ... but ... but... but I trust the Wall Street Journal and everything they report. How could they lie to me? How could they......

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Maggie Thatcher is long dead now.

However, Tony Blair and David Cameron are still at large. Not that we should dwell all that much on their malfeasance -- they are front men for the real powers that be, in the private sector. The Empire was privatized long ago.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

The desperate smear campaign now being launched against Fusion is so lame.

Consider this brilliant deductive reasoning:

We know that Mr. Simpson [owner of Fusion] is tight with Democrats. His current attorney, Joshua Levy, used to work in Congress as counsel to no less than Chuck Schumer.

Mr. Simpson's attorney used to work in Congress for a Democrat, therefore he's "tight with Democrats?"

The only known facts are that Republicans, Democrats, and Russians hired Fusion at various points in time.

The Rs were digging up dirt on Trump. The Rs were digging up dirt on Hillary. The Ds were digging up dirt on Trump. The Russians were digging up dirt on BOTH Trump and Hillary. Fusion did whatever work came their way.

The Russians didn't know who would win the election. They always want possible blackmail material. They investigated both sides. Who knows what dirt they held over Trump in that June 9 meeting?

The current spin is that because someone's second cousin who used to be a lawyer who may be friends with James Comey because his ex-wife once baked some cookies for Bob Mueller's daughter's girl scout troup is a Democrat means that Fusion is obviously a liberal smear campaign against Trump. Get it?

What I find funny is that wing nut dupes think this brilliant logic will be a match for Bob Mueller's ACTUAL Special Counsel Investigation. Uh, no.

It has been reported, (in the Lefty MSM) that Fusion GPS was working for all sides in this 'cause they are Capitalist Whores, that way. Fusion was hired by the Russian that met with Don Jr. to work on removing sanctions on the Russian Oligarchs that had money tied up in the US, that included Putin's cut of a scam worth Billions. So I wouldn't make too much of the Dems financing Opo research by Steele.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Elsewhere, in Real News:

Trump’s Russian Laundromat
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

Really great article on Trump's connections to dirty Russian money in the New Republic, from July 13th.

It's actually quite bone-chilling. I'm convinced this is why Trump is so terrified of the SC. He knows his base thinks he's some kind of business genius. What will they do when it's proven it's all ill gotten gains? No--really. He's a mobbed up criminal, not a "brilliant businessman." It'll be like having his bald head exposed, and he can't have that.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Once one has developed a taste for conspiracy theories, it becomes like eating pretzels, and the deeper one gets into the minutiae, the more intense the craving becomes.

Here's the big picture, which is fairly straightforward: the Anglo-Americans have persisted in converting their economies into vast bubbles of speculation. The blow-out of 2008 was a pre-shock; the big one is coming soon.

Meanwhile China has successfully adopted the economic model which was so stunningly effective in the US under FDR. They are recruiting other nations, particularly Russia, to the Belt and Road Initiative, the biggest infrastructure-building plan in world history. They have managed to lift 700 million Chinese out of poverty (which is more than twice the population of the US) and they are now turning their attention to the long-festering infrastructure deficits in Africa and South America. They are directing their attention at the real frontier areas of science and they plan to go to the moon soon.

The US has a standing invitation to participate in these magnificent projects. For the imperial/neocon crowd, this is a nightmare scenario where the US would be relegated to being a mere member of the rapidly advancing world community, instead of the imperial center of a backward and dependent world (the model perfected by the British in the past.)

Trump, who is a major doofus, is nonetheless not sold on the idea of taking the world up to and past the brink of nuclear war in order to preserve the dominance of the collapsing Anglo-American empire. Therefore, the corporate media will ignore all of his major faults and blunders, and instead harp relentlessly on the Great Russia Conspiracy, in hopes of manipulating Trump into a war policy in order to get the favorable coverage his ego craves. Let's all pray that this effort does not succeed.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Once one has developed a taste for conspiracy theories, it becomes like eating pretzels, and the deeper one gets into the minutiae, the more intense the craving becomes.

Here's the big picture, which is fairly straightforward: the Anglo-Americans have persisted in converting their economies into vast bubbles of speculation. The blow-out of 2008 was a pre-shock; the big one is coming soon.

Meanwhile China has successfully adopted the economic model which was so stunningly effective in the US under FDR. They are recruiting other nations, particularly Russia, to the Belt and Road Initiative, the biggest infrastructure-building plan in world history. They have managed to lift 700 million Chinese out of poverty (which is more than twice the population of the US) and they are now turning their attention to the long-festering infrastructure deficits in Africa and South America. They are directing their attention at the real frontier areas of science and they plan to go to the moon soon.

The US has a standing invitation to participate in these magnificent projects. For the imperial/neocon crowd, this is a nightmare scenario where the US would be relegated to being a mere member of the rapidly advancing world community, instead of the imperial center of a backward and dependent world (the model perfected by the British in the past.)

Trump, who is a major doofus, is nonetheless not sold on the idea of taking the world up to and past the brink of nuclear war in order to preserve the dominance of the collapsing Anglo-American empire. Therefore, the corporate media will ignore all of his major faults and blunders, and instead harp relentlessly on the Great Russia Conspiracy, in hopes of manipulating Trump into a war policy in order to get the favorable coverage his ego craves. Let's all pray that this effort does not succeed.

I don't think to many here realize the sheer scale and ambition of China's plans. They're totally replacing the US in a lot of Africa and making inroads all through Asia as well as buddying up with Russia with an eye to those Siberian resources. The left over the last fifteen-years has seen the US increasingly taking a back seat and Obama was instrumental in that over the last few years. China really doesn't give two hoots for all the left wing feel good stuff that's busy destroying us. They're too busy moving back to the #1 spot.

They'll keep milking us for as long as it lasts and then it'll be sayonara, so long and thanks for all the cash. And btw, please pay back those Treasury bonds as soon as you can and if you can't afford it, I understand you've got a few spare carriers and submarines you can't afford any more. And there'll be some chinese version of Literotica where little Chloe's and Carnal Flower's sit writing hot stories about chinese guys and american blondes and latino girls and the sex industry in San Francisco and LA and New York and how much fun wealthy chinese guys can have with those el cheapo american bargirls.

http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/12z7v7/Silk_road_map_729.jpg

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think to many here realize the sheer scale and ambition of China's plans. They're totally replacing the US in a lot of Africa and making inroads all through Asia as well as buddying up with Russia with an eye to those Siberian resources. The left over the last fifteen-years has seen the US increasingly taking a back seat and Obama was instrumental in that over the last few years. China really doesn't give two hoots for all the left wing feel good stuff that's busy destroying us. They're too busy moving back to the #1 spot.

They'll keep milking us for as long as it lasts and then it'll be sayonara, so long and thanks for all the cash. And btw, please pay back those Treasury bonds as soon as you can and if you can't afford it, I understand you've got a few spare carriers and submarines you can't afford any more. And there'll be some chinese version of Literotica where little Chloe's and Carnal Flower's sit writing hot stories about chinese guys and american blondes and latino girls and the sex industry in San Francisco and LA and New York and how much fun wealthy chinese guys can have with those el cheapo american bargirls.

http://www.smh.com.au/cqstatic/12z7v7/Silk_road_map_729.jpg

We've heard this sort of thing before; in fact, predictions of America's fall have been a persistent feature of American history since the last 1600s, when grumpy Puritans were disappointed that American hadn't become the moral paragon they had hoped it would be. The single most interesting thing to me about American politics is how emotionally and ideologically invested people are in their doom and gloom. It's something I've never shared, and never quite understood.

As a country we face all sorts of problems, and challenges from China rank high among them. But here are the facts: We spend as much on defense as the next seven countries combined. We are the most powerful country on earth, by far. Our standard of living is many times that of China, and it is higher than it has ever been. By every objective measure -- after tax income, gdp per capita, life span, access to health care, access to good food, access to information, communications, entertainment, travel and leisure opportunities, you name it -- Americans are better off in the year 2017 than they ever have been. It is pure fiction that there was some time in the past when America was "greater" than it is now. Pick a date, and look at the facts, and you'll see things weren't better then.

The sorts of things you are saying about China were being said about Japan in the late 1980s. Japan was going to take over the world. People said this about the USSR in the 1950s. They said it about Germany or the USSR, in the 1930s. We know how all that turned out. China is much bigger than Japan, so it may be different, but it also is a rapidly aging country that will begin shrinking well before mid-century, and that is just now beginning to run up against the limits of how much you can prop up a country's development through dictatorial government-led spending. They've built cities that aren't inhabited. Their growth is slowing rapidly, and will continue to slow as they transition from a developing country (which they still are, in terms of standard of living) to a developed one. By the time China gets there, India will have a bigger population and will begin to challenge the size of its economy. India, not China, one day will have the world's largest population and economy. Probably. The US may not be at the top, but it will be in the top 5, and its standard of living and quality of life will be higher than the others, as it is now. Probably.

We don't know what's going to happen in the future, but my experience is that people have been predicting doom and gloom since I was a little kid, and the predictions never come true. Somehow or another, we muddle through. That we will continue to do so is the best guess about what will happen in the future.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

So let's see.

The Fake Media (per Trump) is hounding him about Russia (a fake story) in order to manipulate him into a war policy whose ultimate goal is to flatter his ego.

So the Fake Media with their Fake Russia Coverage is actually a long-range pro-Trump strategy.

Then why is Trump so against it?

HOw is the Fake Russia story going to push him into a war policy?

Why take such a circuitous route? Why doesn't the Fake Media just go all out and flatter his ego? Why would MSNBC and CNN be pushing for war "in order" to achieve this end?

Trump, who is a major doofus, is nonetheless not sold on the idea of taking the world up to and past the brink of nuclear war in order to preserve the dominance of the collapsing Anglo-American empire. Therefore, the corporate media will ignore all of his major faults and blunders, and instead harp relentlessly on the Great Russia Conspiracy, in hopes of manipulating Trump into a war policy in order to get the favorable coverage his ego craves. Let's all pray that this effort does not succeed.

 

[Hypoxia]

We don't know what's going to happen in the future, but my experience is that people have been predicting doom and gloom since I was a little kid, and the predictions never come true. Somehow or another, we muddle through. That we will continue to do so is the best guess about what will happen in the future.

Doom+gloom are fun and fairly reliable. There's always another doom ahead. Robert Reich used to talk of how he predicted the crash of 1987. It was easy; he predicted it every week for a decade, and eventually it happened. Or like the Millerites, predecessors of the Adventists and Witnesses -- Armageddon is always just around the corner, postponed a bit from prophesy but just wait, just wait...

However, we have the prospect of REAL doom. Tromp's financial will show he's pwned by Russia. If there's a chance they'll be released, he's likely to get his war on to distract attention. Pyongyang can yet be nuked. This scares me.

 

[ChloeTzang]

.....We don't know what's going to happen in the future, but my experience is that people have been predicting doom and gloom since I was a little kid, and the predictions never come true. Somehow or another, we muddle through. That we will continue to do so is the best guess about what will happen in the future.

I'd share your optimism if it weren't for the unholy alliance of left wing progressives determined to destroy jobs, environmental activists who resist any and everything, globalists who want to outsources pretty much everything and bring our wages down to third world levels and the increasing destruction of any pretense we have of a legal system that is adhered to. On top of that we're bankrupting ourselves being the world's policeman, a thankless task if ever there was one, and we're wasting a huge amount of money on what are basically military toys for the boys.

If we get lucky, Trump hangs in there and takes Bannon's advice and the Republicans pull their act together and work as a team, we may make yet a come back. Otherwise, I see us slipping into second place. The Chinese are making a huge push with their space program for example while we're doing next to nothing serious, they're asserting themselves regionally in the South China Sea and projecting forward into the Indian Ocean(Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma), ringing India in and making huge inroads into the resource rich states of Africa. I'd like to think we'll pull thru but all it takes is the RINO's to fuck up more than they have been and we're doomed, Simon. Doomed to go the way of the UK post WW2, not irrelevant but no longer what we were.

Add in the huge overhead of massive waves of illegal aliens, dead cities like Detroit and New Orleans and the rest of them, the potential for Balkanization of the US coz there's a lot of outright hate and unwillingness to abide by the laws we have in place and nope, I'm not that hopeful.

 

[JackLuis]

Elsewhere, in Real News:

Trump’s Russian Laundromat
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

Really great article on Trump's connections to dirty Russian money in the New Republic, from July 13th.

It's actually quite bone-chilling. I'm convinced this is why Trump is so terrified of the SC. He knows his base thinks he's some kind of business genius. What will they do when it's proven it's all ill gotten gains? No--really. He's a mobbed up criminal, not a "brilliant businessman." It'll be like having his bald head exposed, and he can't have that.

Thanks for that link CF. It fills in the background for lots of the Trumpanzy's "Great Accomplishments". What is interesting is that a lot of this was known long before Trump began his run for the Prez. I wonder why the MSM hadn't put this out there while Trump was "Crooked Hillary-ing"?

 

[AlwaysHungry]

So let's see.

The Fake Media (per Trump) is hounding him about Russia (a fake story) in order to manipulate him into a war policy whose ultimate goal is to flatter his ego.

So the Fake Media with their Fake Russia Coverage is actually a long-range pro-Trump strategy.

Then why is Trump so against it?

HOw is the Fake Russia story going to push him into a war policy?

Why take such a circuitous route? Why doesn't the Fake Media just go all out and flatter his ego? Why would MSNBC and CNN be pushing for war "in order" to achieve this end?

I don't think you're as slow as you say you are. The objective of the Fake Media is to get the war (as in Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the list goes on and on.) It's the only way to efficiently disrupt the Peace Through Development strategy of the BRICS nations. Trump, unlike other recent presidents, is not sold on the importance of going to war. But he's a narcissist, and if the media keep depicting him as some sort of peacenik pansy, he may feel compelled to prove he's a manly man by picking up where Obama left off. It's not complicated. Trump's ego is not the issue. War is the issue.

As a country we face all sorts of problems, and challenges from China rank high among them. But here are the facts: We spend as much on defense as the next seven countries combined. We are the most powerful country on earth, by far. Our standard of living is many times that of China, and it is higher than it has ever been. By every objective measure -- after tax income, gdp per capita, life span, access to health care, access to good food, access to information, communications, entertainment, travel and leisure opportunities, you name it -- Americans are better off in the year 2017 than they ever have been. It is pure fiction that there was some time in the past when America was "greater" than it is now. Pick a date, and look at the facts, and you'll see things weren't better then.

I must respectfully disagree, in many ways. While it is true that we have a humongous military, I'm not particularly pleased about that. We stopped building our own infrastructure in the 1960s when NAWAPA failed to pass the Senate, and now the country is rotting away. New York City is paralyzed right now as we speak because the transportation infrastructure was allowed to collapse. The southwestern states are just beginning to recover from years of crippling drought.

GDP is a useless statistic -- it measures money changing hands, not actually useful, productive activity. We have a "Bernie Madoff" economy. Suicides have become the second-leading cause of death among teenagers in the United States. Our education system is a shambles. Infant mortality rates in the US are higher than most of Europe and much of Asia.

We are doing great in the "access to entertainment" department, I'll grant you that. Bread and circuses.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Here's a very useful article by Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

 

[sharingfantasies]

The southwestern states are just beginning to recover from years of crippling drought.

And there will be drought again. Then La Nina will come in and dump a ton of water, plants will grow, fires will burn, mud will slide, the drought will come again

Not sure what the government has to do with this cycle.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

And there will be drought again. Then La Nina will come in and dump a ton of water, plants will grow, fires will burn, mud will slide, the drought will come again

Not sure what the government has to do with this cycle.

So-called "natural disasters" are usually the result of a failure of the government to build the infrastructure that would have protected the population. In this instance, we are talking about NAWAPA.

 

[JackLuis]

So-called "natural disasters" are usually the result of a failure of the government to build the infrastructure that would have protected the population. In this instance, we are talking about NAWAPA.

Interesting, but probably impossible to build for a few reasons, politics, National interests and it's so big it would be impossible to control the graft!

But to the point of the thread:

I don't know why people are running around with there hair on fire over the Russia thing?

I do not doubt that the Russians played their fucking games, but I don't think that they had a significant impact one way or the other. Unless there were actual votes changed in the machines or counting process and that would be hard to do from Russia.

Now did Trump or his organization collude? I'll let Bob Muller figure that out.

What we need to talk about is how to make our elections less susceptible to manipulation and how to get greater participation. The "Butterfly Ballot" (IBM card, punch card) is way better from many standpoints than the electronic scanners, Computer machines that have a lot of problems and are expensive.

We need to motivate the poll workers and Election commissions to do a betterr job, and hang a few to make a point about the sanctity of the election and counting process.

And mostly we need to reform the Establishments that control our National parties. To do that we need to take the money out of the process.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

If you haven't heard of William Browder, you should:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RsAGjUXtg&t=3194s

He's the one behind the creation of the Magnitsky Act. His book Red Notice about it is being turned into a movie, which I predict will be the first great film of the Trump Era--an expose of Putin, Humanitarian abuses in Russia, how a kleptocracy works, and what role the US plays, built around a true martyr and his friend.

Browder's comments here did not get covered in the press as they should have. He goes into detail about Natalia Valanetskya (sp.) and the other Russians at the Trump Tower meeting, and what they would have wanted from Trump. Unbelieveable. EVEN IF Dum Dum Jr. had no idea what he was walking into, just hearing how close this nest of snakes got to Trump is chilling. That they even gave them a meeting is shocking.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

And mostly we need to reform the Establishments that control our National parties. To do that we need to take the money out of the process.

Not sure why you made "Establishment" plural. George Soros and the Koch bros. are like peas in a pod.

 

[sr71plt]

If you haven't heard of William Browder, you should:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RsAGjUXtg&t=3194s

He's the one behind the creation of the Magnitsky Act. His book Red Notice about it is being turned into a movie, which I predict will be the first great film of the Trump Era--an expose of Putin, Humanitarian abuses in Russia, how a kleptocracy works, and what role the US plays, built around a true martyr and his friend.

Browder's comments here did not get covered in the press as they should have. He goes into detail about Natalia Valanetskya (sp.) and the other Russians at the Trump Tower meeting, and what they would have wanted from Trump. Unbelieveable. EVEN IF Dum Dum Jr. had no idea what he was walking into, just hearing how close this nest of snakes got to Trump is chilling. That they even gave them a meeting is shocking.

CNN has had Browder on a few times of late--and I think Rachel Maddow has had him on. I hadn't heard of him before that.

 

[JackLuis]

Not sure why you made "Establishment" plural. George Soros and the Koch bros. are like peas in a pod.

I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

But to the point of the thread:

I don't know why people are running around with there hair on fire over the Russia thing?

Depends on which people. The string-pullers are using it to prevent the US from doing what is in its own national interest, which is to join with the global infrastructure drive of the BRICS nations and abandon the past 50 years of increasingly suicidal economic policies which are based on the idea that financial speculation is the driver of economic success.

There are also some ultra-sleazy political game players that think playing nuclear chicken with Russia will give them partisan advantage. This is why the political landscape is now being re-configured so that the Democrats are the super-right-wing party. Fortunately, some media commentators are taking a moment to consider where this is leading us.

If you haven't heard of William Browder, you should:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RsAGjUXtg&t=3194s

He's the one behind the creation of the Magnitsky Act. His book Red Notice about it is being turned into a movie, which I predict will be the first great film of the Trump Era--an expose of Putin, Humanitarian abuses in Russia, how a kleptocracy works, and what role the US plays, built around a true martyr and his friend.

There's another movie about the Magnitsky Act which you are unlikely to see, because Browder, a sleazeball hedge fund operator, had sufficient moolah and connections to have it suppressed.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Update on the Magnitsky business.