But from a practical standpoint, I don’t know that there’s any room to offer Assange a deal, even if Rosenstein got his hands on him and had free say in the decision independent of Sessions and the White House. Offering Assange a deal is sort of like offering Osama bin Laden a deal - he’s a devoted and successful enemy of our country who has brought about the deaths of a significant number of our people and allies - he’s just not someone you can do anything much beyond throw the book at.
I’m sure that Mueller will interview him, but unless Assange decides to give away information of his own free will - no deal being offered - then there’s not much use that he’ll prove to the investigation.
A more interesting question would be: Does Assange have blackmail material on Trump? It seems pretty likely that Wikileaks would be now, if it exists. And it’s likely that it exists.
Making that assumption, Assange would want to get back to the US since that’s where he has the most control over his own fate. He would want to get into US jurisdiction, tell a story that renders Stone and Trump and everyone as innocent as humanly possible given the known facts, but also release all sorts of damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the DNC, or whoever else. He would need to give Trump the ammo he needs to offer Assange a deal for immunity or a pardon.
I hope the UK is smart and keeps him. Mueller can always cross the ocean and interview Assange. He doesn’t need to be here. So long as Trump is president, you want to keep as much as possible out of his reach, in the UK, at the state level, or whatever.
Obama was decidedly NOT a crook. Not a whisper of personal, financial, political, historical, or international scandal. But that didn’t/doesn’t stop the Pubs from hating him. Oh, yeah. Black. That’s certainly a crime.
That makes no sense because then all the criminal has to do is toss out some spurious accusations against the honest guy, then they’ve both been “accused”. And I can’t for the life of me think of any real crime Hillary was accused of. It pretty much came down to “Her and her husband are rich, know rich people and make money off other rich people so there must be some crime we haven’t found”. And there was the e-mail thing, which was stupid, but mitigated by the fact that no actual harm came out of it”
That always struck me as if she ran a red a light. Which became the worst crime ever because she could’ve hit a bus full of nuns and disabled children. It might have killed them all. What a horrible crime. Except she didn’t hit anyone.
You can say “ when there smoke, there’s fire” all day long and while that axiom might have some truth, when all the smoke is coming out of her opponent’s ass - it doesn’t hold up.
I am of the belief that Donald Trump would’ve effectively pulled this crap on ANYONE that ran against him. Sanders would have been a Commie Russian deep cover agent and his wife would’ve have been an opportunist who used her job to commit bank fraud. The National Enquirer would’ve had a new revelation every day and half the country would’ve been convinced that they were the two most dishonest human beings ever to walk the earth.
Voting for candidates who have no chance of winning is not helping. You’re not sending a message, you’re not encouraging a real political movement. You’re just throwing sand in your eyes and hoping it’ll catch on.
If the president of a bank that had been robbed had nothing but nice things to say about the bank robber and insisted that nothing needed to be done about future robberies, and that the robber might not have even done anything wrong, and then insisted on meeting alone with the robber to how to improve bank/robber relationships it would be less obvious what was going on than this is.
They may not be. But why not choose someone who doesn’t seem to ping the radar of law enforcement and the press? The Wall Street Journal has no evidence that Donald Trump launders money, but they present reasonable documentation that his finances look like those of others who have been convicted of laundering money and do not look like those of someone who doesn’t. It’s not conclusive, but at the same time when you’re a woman out dating and there are rumors going around that Bob beat up his ex, it makes sense to turn down Bob when he asks you out. There are several billion men on the planet who don’t have such rumors going around about them, so why not date one of them?
Why take the risk?
Like I said, there’s 100,000,000 Democrats in the country. It is not Hillary Clinton or bust. If she’s innocent then that is unfortunate, but there’s a whole lot of serious and trustworthy people - James Comey included - who seem to get the oogy boogies from the Clintons. That’s reason enough to date elsewhere.
Yeah… but. There is a basic, underlying, fundamental problem here.
Trump supporters - Won’t. Care. Remember, they voted for the piece of shit in the first place. They WANT that piece of shit. If they didn’t figure out long ago what a corrupt moron he is, I don’t think anything will change their minds.
So really, it’s gonna be about numbers.
I do hope that Mueller revels all of the corruption. I do think that those that can think will come out in droves to vote against trump. But will it be enough? I donno.
[ol]
[li]Richard Nixon - Quit when faced with impeachment[/li][li]Albert Fall - Bribery. Served two years[/li][li]Andrew J. Hinshaw - Accepting bribes. Served 1 year.[/li][li]Bernard Kerik - Tax Fraud and Lying to the Federal Government. Sentenced to 4 years.[/li][li]Bill Janklow - Second-Degree Manslaughter. Sentenced to 100 days.[/li][li]Brian J. Doyle - Seducing a Girl on the Internet. Sentenced to 5 years.[/li][li]Donald E. “Buzz” Lukens - Bribery and Conspiracy.[/li][li]Caspar Weinberger - Perjury and Obstruction of Justice.[/li][li]Catalina Vasquez Villalpando - Obstruction of Justice and Tax evasion.[/li][li]Charles R. Forbes - Bribery and Corruption. Sentenced to 2 years.[/li][li]Charles W. Colson - Obstruction of Justice.[/li][li]David Durenberger - Misuse of Public funds.[/li][li]Deborah Gore Dean - Perjury, Conspiracy, Bribery. Sentenced to 21 months.[/li][li]Duke Cunningham - Conspiracy to commit Bribery, Mail fraud, Wire fraud and Tax evasion. Sentenced to over 8 years.[/li][li]Dwight L. Chapin - Perjury[/li][li]Elliott Abrams - Withholding Evidence.[/li][li]Ernest K. Bramblett - False statements in connection with Payroll padding and Kickbacks[/li][li]George V. Hansen - Failing to file out Disclosure Forms. Served 15 months.[/li][li]H. R. Haldeman - Perjury[/li][li]J. Irving Whalley - Staff Salary kickbacks and Threatening an Employee. Suspended sentence of 3 years.[/li][li]J. Parnell Thomas - Salary fraud. Sentenced to 18 months.[/li][li]James F. Hastings - Kickbacks and Mail fraud.[/li][li]James G. Watt - Perjury and Obstruction of Justice.[/li][li]Jay Kim - Illegal Campaign contributions. Sentenced to two months House arrest.[/li][li]Jeb Stuart Magruder - Conspiracy.[/li][li]Jesse Helms - Voter Caging.[/li][li]John Ehrlichman - Perjury[/li][li]John N. Mitchell - Perjury[/li][li]Lester Crawford - Conflict of Interest. Sentenced 3 years of Suspention.[/li][li]Martin B. McKneally - Failing to file Income tax return.[/li][li]Oliver North - Iran Contra[/li][li]Pat Swindall - Perjury.[/li][li]Richard Kelly - Bribery and Corruption. Served 13 months.[/li][li]Thomas W. Miller - Fraud for selling valuable German patents and Bribery. Served 18 months.[/li][li]Tom DeLay - Money Laundering. Sentenced to three years, and K Street.[/li][li]Spiro Agnew - Tax Fraud. and misappropriating (stealing) money for “home improvements”[/li][li]William Heaton - Federal Conspiracy.[/li][li]J. Steven Griles - Obstruction of Justice. Sentenced to 10 months.[/li][li]Joseph A. Strauss - Accepting Payments.[/li][li]Lewis Libby - Perjury and Obstruction of Justice. Sentenced to 30 months.[/li][li]Phillip D. Winn - Bribery.[/li][li]Rita Lavelle - Misused "superfund’ monies and Perjury. Served 6 months.[/li][li]Robert E. Coughlin - Accepting bribes.[/li][li]Thomas Demery - Bribery and Obstruction.[/li][li]William Casey - Iran-Contra[/li][li]Jack Abramoff - K Street scandal[/li][li]Mario Biaggi- Federal official bribery and gratuity, mail fraud, Hobbs Act, and RICO[/li][li]Duke Cunningham - Mail fraud and federal official bribery [/li][li]John Jenrette - ABSCAM, bribery[/li][li]Richard Kelly - Federal official bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and Travel Act[/li][li]David Rivera - Under investigation by the FBI and the IRS for multiple money laundering and tax evasion schemes. [/li][li]Harold Rogers - Used his position as the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee to steer millions of dollars in earmarks to a local manufacturing company in exchange for campaign contributions.[/li][li]Vern Buchanan - Coercing contributions, conduit contributions, excessive contributions, corporate contributions, witness tampering, obstruction of agency proceedings, bribery of a witness, false statements of personal financial disclosure forms, tax evasion[/li][li]Cliff Stearns - Directing public money to his wife, misusing official congressional resources for a campaign, and also improperly using House proceedings on campaign materials[/li][li]Don Young - earmarking transportation funds to a campaign donor, using campaign funds for personal expenses, and neglecting to disclose gifts from lobbyists. The FBI has launched investigations into Rep. Young’s “systemic abuse” of his position.[/li][li]Ron Paul - Sought double travel reimbursements for expenses[/li][li]Darrell Issa - Publicized a letter containing specific and extensive details regarding a wiretap application, potentially in violation of a number of federal laws. [/li][li]Newt Gingrich - Claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes, providng false information to investigators, fraudulent nonprofits[/li][li]Roy Moore - Racist and pedophile[/li][/ol]
I haven’t even touched on Trump and his countless lawsuits, frauds, vrey convenient bankruptcies, and all the Russian money laundering that propped him up in the real estate biz, or Scott Pruitt who just “quit”, etc etc etc. Or any of the most current crop. Do I need to continue???
I assume that you’re talking about the Johnson vote.
Sure, I was probably going to lose out on my mission. But Trump is 4 years of bad. Wahhabism has screwed over the Middle East for the last century. Trump do stupid. Fundamentalism do evil.
The steady movement towards full takeover of the Republican party by the religious right is scary close. There are still enough free market politicians and “play the rubes if it gets you in power” politicians in the Republican party that, for example, I’m somewhat hopeful that we can trust that neither Gorsuch nor Kavanaugh would overturn Roe v Wade, because the free market types are too libertarian to go for it (regardless of what they say on the campaign trail) and the pure slimeballs know what the polls say. But people don’t even remember that it was Republican Supreme Court Justices who passed Roe v Wade. We’ve all come to accept that the Republican party is and always has been the party of Fundamentalist Christians. The future where we are not safe is, potentially, only an election or two away.
Now, people like to spot trends.
The best polling data (i.e. fivethirtyeight) suggested that Trump had a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Most likely Clinton would become the President.
Now that Trump did win, everyone and their brother is telling you that it was written in stone and the election really all came down to factory workers in the Rust Belt and so on. Maybe that’s true, but all the places that Trump won are the same places that Republicans won for House Representatives. All the places that Trump lost are the same places where there are Democratic House Representatives. You could just as well explain Trump’s presidential victory by saying that only the partisans cared enough to vote in the 2016 election, so it was all straight party votes across the country and the result was just a matter of which party had geography (e.g. gerrymandering) in their favor.
That’s not the story that we are left with from the 2016 election, though. A particularly story came out that it was the Rust Belt, and that’s the story that everyone is running with, campaigning with, and tailing their platform to in 2018. Everyone wants to see to the Rust Belt.
Maybe the Rust Belt theory is correct. Maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s a different group that everyone could go after who would be an even better catch and easier to grab, but because everyone takes the first plausible hypothesis that comes out and runs with it, that angle will be completely missed.
If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, as the smart bettor would have gambled, the Republican party would be looking for a reason why. And someone would offer a story. If that story was, “Hey look, the Libertarian people did amazingly well this year! They must have taken all of the Republican voters who were getting turned off by the religious right!” Then you can bet your britches that 2018 would be all about trying to tailor the party platform to free markets and weed. And that would move the party away from the religious right.
A different story might have come out instead, and I can’t do anything about that.
If I had lived in a place that was red, I would have voted for Clinton, because that does more to prevent Pence from getting near the Presidency than trying to boost Libertarianism. But, given where I did live, I had the freedom to work on the fallback strategy.
Dude, just stop. Your rationalizations are bullshit. The Libertarians are merely the perfect example of white privilege run amok, especially when giving a vote to them in 2016.
So, your opinion would be that Clinton should NOT have campaigned more in the Rust Belt?
One popular bit of wisdom is that, since she campaigned in mostly blue states, she ended up winning the popular vote, but wasting all of those extra votes. Winning California safely and winning California by a landslide are both the same thing so far as the Electoral College is concerned, so going there, campaigning like hell, and adding a bonus two million California votes to your tally is just stupid and a waste of time. It doesn’t change the result any.
Clinton didn’t follow that advice, and that was dumb. Her failure to take into account “safe votes” lead to the Trump presidency.
So even though that is, quite possibly, a genuine cause of the Trump presidency, you’re telling me that I should have done the same as Clinton and added a +1 to a solid blue state vote, rather than spend it on something more useful? :dubious:
That is so wrong. By throwing away your vote, you LET Trump win. You voted for a vote splitting loser. You threw away your vote. On a loser. That helps Trump.
And Trumpy fly-over states that don’t matter? Those are the very states that swung the final Electoral count. Here’s a clue. The states with the most voters - i.e. California and New York actually get fucked by the Electoral College. Our individual votes are worth LESS than some Clinton hating fascist sheep fucker in Montana. Because … wait for it … Electoral College. So yeah, the votes that “don’t matter” carry more weight than mine.