He pardons Manafort/Gates, they lose 5th amendment protections on any crime they are pardoned for and MUST testify in regards to them if called before the court or Congress. And if Mueller has enough to indict them, he damn well knows enough to call them out if they lie on the stand about who was involved; meaning they could STILL be thrown in prison for perjury.
Really, I think it's more likely they end up dead before they can testify to anything.
So what takes them out? Old age, Putin's cronies, or Trump's?
A related read from Popehat: As Blagojevich Might Say, Just Shut the Fuck Up, because talking to the FBI without some sort of queen for a day agreement is suicide.
excerpt said:
And what are they going to say? You think President Trump had anything directly to do with this? You think he personally approved an illegal activity? He can't tear himself away from Fox News/Twitter long enough to do anything, much less green light a massive fraud or collision with Russia.
This is a case of the mice at play while the cat was away (staring into a mirror, telling itself that it is the best, smartest cat EVER). Nothing is going to go higher than Manafort, I would bet anything on it.
This is my guess as well. Trump is such an easy target, stroke his ego enough and he's yours. Until you don't tell him what he wants to hear. He was probably trying to use Trump to get a foot in the door of the white house.
What will be more interesting is how Trump handles all of it.
From a New York Times article about the court documents relating to Papadoplous:
Do you think that he didn't tell Trump about this? Or that Trump is really so lazy as to not care if the Russians offer him information about Hillary's missing emails? Because he sure cared enough to Tweet about those emails a lot.
Dave
Staff member
And he tweeted about it minutes after the information was related to Papalapadingdong. Seems like a big coincidence.
Oh boy, it gets better (or worse if you're part of the Trump campaign), CNN is reporting on a affidavit that references an email that Papadopoulos sent to setup a meeting with a foreign contact:
That bolded part? Implies that the higher ups, such as Trump, knew about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...ment-paul-manafort-rick-gates-indictment.html
"The indictment against the two men contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts."- CNN
The NYT document is pretty long but it looks like they have an extremely solid paper trail to back up their charges. This could be the first in a long row of dominoes.
"The indictment against the two men contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts."- CNN
The NYT document is pretty long but it looks like they have an extremely solid paper trail to back up their charges. This could be the first in a long row of dominoes.
You know, that list pretty much comes down to "espionage and a bit of treason". One of the few things must countries actually still have the death penalty for, even if it's been turned into life for most other crimes. "In war time", that is.
These people will obviously never face that, heck most will not see a jail. Still. I wonder how long and how much the "real patriots" will keep defending this and the people involved. Nothing serious, nothing remarkable, fake news, what have you...
These people will obviously never face that, heck most will not see a jail. Still. I wonder how long and how much the "real patriots" will keep defending this and the people involved. Nothing serious, nothing remarkable, fake news, what have you...
Man, I wished I could have knocked on Kushner's front door this morning at 5am.
A simple hand wave and a "yeah, yeah, whatEVER," without looking up from the TV or phone could be construed as both knowledge and approval. At least enough for an indictment.
GasBandit
Staff member
He wants to end the diversity visa lottery program (probably because that's how the Manhattan truck guy allegedly entered the country), but can barely articulate that.
I really hope trump is self aware enough to see how truly powerless he actually is in Washington. He holds the highest office in the land with the Senate and Congress on his side and can not accomplish anything. He can't even keep secrets for a few hours and Mueller can keep huge secrets safe from prying eyes for months on end.
Sad.
Sad.
Is he cracking under the strain of the now-open indictments and arrests, or is he acting like he's cracking under the strain? I fucking hate this government. I don't have a better solution for it, I just hate it. I've come to grips with the fact that aside from voting in local and national elections, my political activism career is over. The stress hit massive levels back in September (back with everything else that was going on), and I (rather intelligently) unfollowed about 2,000 accounts on Twitter, because it was all just bots and bullshit screaming into the wind. Now - with the exception of a few actors who will probably be unfollowed shortly as well - if you're not a personal friend of mine, a Halforumite, or a news agency/emergency management account, you're not on the list. And really, aside from the Reddit mobile app opening twitter links in the Twitter app, I couldn't tell you the last time I voluntarily opened the app. And I haven't been this calm(?) since about this time last year. I didn't realize until election day when the results were coming in that we were fucked.
I brought this over here because I don't think Politics should infect General too much:
Or am I missing something here that makes Trump responsible for a massive increase (take your pick of the numbers to work with) of premiums for you guys in the USA? And/or were premiums skyrocketing before the ACA and it just didn't fix it either?
I'm wondering about this, because my understanding was that basically every Republican effort to do anything related to the ACA (Obamacare) didn't pass congress, and/or was never voted on. So if that's true, how the hell can you blame Trump for this? Isn't this just all consequences of the existing ACA that was passed before? Sure Trump hasn't fixed it, but it doesn't look to me like he broke it either.
Or am I missing something here that makes Trump responsible for a massive increase (take your pick of the numbers to work with) of premiums for you guys in the USA? And/or were premiums skyrocketing before the ACA and it just didn't fix it either?
Dave
Staff member
Blotsfan has it exactly right. The markets were stabilizing (if not already stable) until Trump got elected on a platform of repealing it, which made insurance markets very nervous. When that didn't happen, he instead started targeting pieces of the plan that he could affect through executive actions, like stopping payments to insurance companies that allow them to lower deductible amounts to low-income families and the loosening of mandates.
These two things together are not necessarily a death knell, but it hurts people who rely on the ACA for their coverage. The first - the stoppage of payments - has caused a lot of companies to leave the exchanges because they are still mandated by law to offer low cost insurance to the poor, but are no longer able to count on the reimbursement from the government. This makes it so the insurance companies would lose money, so they are leaving. This was calculated by the administration to sabotage the ACA.
Trump is intentionally hurting people to spite Obama - again.
Is this another collision between executive orders and law then? About funding I mean. And even then, which orders has he done which has affected this?
Or is the cause the influence of saying "I'm going to repeal it!" repeatedly purely?
Interesting that wikipedia's article about this is 7 years out of date, but was showing about a 13% increase PER YEAR (1999-2009) of insurance costs in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_costs_in_the_United_States
Which way did the ACA go with this? The numbers that I can find (quickly) on the internet just vary so wildly it's hard to tell wtf is happening. I've seen everything from 3% per year, to 25% per year (nationally I mean).
Or is the cause the influence of saying "I'm going to repeal it!" repeatedly purely?
Interesting that wikipedia's article about this is 7 years out of date, but was showing about a 13% increase PER YEAR (1999-2009) of insurance costs in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_costs_in_the_United_States
Which way did the ACA go with this? The numbers that I can find (quickly) on the internet just vary so wildly it's hard to tell wtf is happening. I've seen everything from 3% per year, to 25% per year (nationally I mean).
Correct me if I'm wrong but Obama started paying subsidies through executive orders when Congress would not agree to include them in the budget. So they sued the executive branch as money is the pervue of Congress, while the lawsuit is progressing the States sued to keep the payments coming. Then trump used an EO to force Congress to deal with the issue and capitulated the lawsuit to them. Thus cutting the subsidies forcing the market to adjust itself accordingly.
Have I got that right?
Have I got that right?
figmentPez
Staff member
