Turkey fans BOO during pre-match minute's silence for the victims of Paris attacks an

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Exactly!!!!!!

That "audit" is the equivalent to a "visa"!!!!!

At the end of the day, you need permission! Your making my point!

[Unregistered]

Exactly!!!!!!

That "audit" is the equivalent to a "visa"!!!!!

At the end of the day, you need permission! Your making my point!

Tee hee walked into that one! Logical arguments are not his thing.

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In the meantime we discover that yet another member of Trump’s administration has tight connections with Russia that he previously failed to disclose.

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So now there will undoubtedly be another torrent of posts about Hillary.

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Reports are that Flynn and his son may be indicted soon.

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Reports are that Flynn and his son may be indicted soon.

The guy who said in his speech at convention [B]if I did 5-10% of what she did I’d be in prison? That was leading “lock her up” chants? That guy?

Isn’t he same guy who accepted payment from a foreign govt for services without registering with his own, as required by law? Then proceeded to discuss snatching someone off our streets and rendering them to same foreign power paying him, extra - judicially as it were.


That guy?

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Amazing isn’t it....floodgates are opening

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Just the constant smell of “somethingburger” in the air is amazing.

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Robert Mueller’s Brilliant Strategy for Outmaneuvering Trump Pardons

Some have wondered: Why is special counsel Robert Mueller bringing so few charges against George Papadopoulos and, especially, Paul Manafort?

Papadopoulos is easy. Mueller has charged him with one count of false statement, even though there are a dozen other felonies clearly suggested by his plea stipulations. The quick answer is that Papadopoulos has agreed to be a cooperating witness in exchange for a very short sentence. The maximum sentence for false statement is five years. If Papadopoulos cooperates, Mueller can ask for a short sentence, but if he doesn’t, Mueller can add new charges.

Manafort’s case is less obvious. Andrew McCarthy at National Review is puzzled about Mueller’s charges for Manafort, calling it “curious” that he leaves out so many possible charges, including tax fraud and other forms of fraud. “These omissions do not make sense to me,” McCarthy writes. After reading the Papadopoulos plea agreement, and knowing that Manafort is reportedly an unnamed “high-ranking campaign official” in a series of allegedly incriminating emails, one might imagine a dozen other charges Mueller might be mulling.

McCarthy speculates that Mueller did not charge federal tax fraud because those prosecutions require the involvement of the Department of Justice tax division, which would have been an extra bureaucratic hurdle. I’d add that Mueller might have worried that any additional contact with the main DOJ carried a risk of leaks or obstruction. But for the other potential charges, McCarthy writes, “These [other] omissions do not make sense to me.”

Mueller’s moves may make strategic sense because of a shadow hanging over the entire investigation: the potential that President Donald Trump might use his presidential pardon power to protect possible accomplices in potential crimes.

Mueller knows that Trump can pardon Manafort (or any defendant) in order to relieve the pressure to cooperate with Mueller and to keep them quiet. But Mueller also knows that presidential pardons affect only federal crimes and not state-level crimes. On the one hand, double jeopardy rules under the Fifth Amendment prevent a second prosecution for the same crime, but the doctrine of dual sovereignty allows a state to follow a federal prosecution (and vice versa). So in theory, Manafort and Papadopoulos can’t rely on Trump’s pardons to save them even after a conviction or a guilty plea.

But in practice, state rules can expand double jeopardy protections and limit prosecutions. In fact, New York is such a state. New York is the key state for Mueller because New York has jurisdiction over many alleged or potentially uncovered Trump–Russia crimes (conspiracy to hack/soliciting stolen goods/money laundering, etc.), and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and New York district attorneys are not politically constrained from pursuing charges.

New York’s Criminal Procedure Law 40.20 states, “A person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense.” The issue is that New York defines “prosecution” broadly. Section 40.30 continues:

Except as otherwise provided in this section, a person “is prosecuted” for an offense, within the meaning of section 40.20, when he is charged therewith by an accusatory instrument filed in a court of this state or of any jurisdiction within the United States, and when the action either: (a) Terminates in a conviction upon a plea of guilty; or

(b) Proceeds to the trial stage and a jury has been impaneled and sworn or, in the case of a trial by the court without a jury, a witness is sworn.

The New York statute does not allow a state prosecution to follow a federal prosecution (“a court of any jurisdiction within the United States”) for the same basic facts. The bottom line: If Mueller starts a trial on all of the potential charges, and then Trump pardons Manafort, Mueller will not be able to hand off the case to state prosecutors. And thus he would have lost leverage at the time of the indictment if he seemed headed toward losing the state prosecution as a backup.

Instead, Mueller wisely brought one set of charges (mostly financial crimes that preceded the campaign), and he is saving other charges that New York could also bring (tax fraud, soliciting stolen goods, soliciting/conspiring to hack computers). Mueller also knew that his indictment document on Monday would include a devastating amount of detail on paper without relying on any witnesses to testify, showing Mueller had the goods on a slam-dunk federal money laundering case. Then he dropped the hammer with the Papadopoulos plea agreement, showing Manafort and Gates that he has the goods on far more charges, both in federal and state court.

Papadopoulos conceded that Russian representatives told him they had “dirt,” in “thousands” of Clinton’s emails in April 2016. It is clear—depending on what Papadopoulos has told them—that prosecutors could start building a case of conspiracy and solicitation of illegal hacking and trafficking in stolen goods against campaign officials Papadopoulos may have informed as well.

I discussed some of the parallel state felony charges in this Slate piece (also published in Just Security). In August, sources revealed that Mueller was already coordinating with Schneiderman, likely to work out this strategy. I also noted that all of this legal background is relevant to solve an additional problem: If Trump fires Mueller, state prosecutors can carry on with his investigation and prosecutions based on parallel state laws.

This same strategy adds an explanation for the single Papadopoulos charge. I explained above that a single charge is a classic part of plea deal for cooperation. But Mueller can be saving a number of other charges, both in his own back pocket to incentivize cooperation and also for the front pockets of state-level prosecutors in case Trump gives Papadopoulos a blanket pardon. Mueller is a stone-cold professional.

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The Democrat Civil War

Jen Psaki: Elizabeth Warren Saying DNC Was "Rigged" Because She Wants Bernie Voters In 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...s_in_2020.html

[Unregistered]

More advice from another lib to TeeHeeMan.

Demo-catastrophe: It was worse than we thought, and bigger than Bernie vs. Hillary

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/04/dem...ie-vs-hillary/

The Democratic Party’s corruption was, and is, systemic rather than specific....we have a party that has lost close to 1,000 state legislature seats over the past decade and suffered historic wipeouts in the last two midterm elections, leaving it in a weaker position on Capitol Hill than at any time since the Great Depression. That party became so strapped for cash, not to mention so spiritually enervated, that it rented itself out to one of its presidential candidates while pretending to remain neutral with respect to that candidate’s campaign. ...There’s no way to separate the Democratic Party’s ideological collapse from its institutional collapse, or from the way it has self-gerrymandered into a regional party whose voters are an awkward coalition of rich and poor in the coastal states and the top dozen or so metropolitan areas.....The Demo-catastrophe cannot be swept under the carpet in the name of winning a House majority in 2018 (which isn’t going to happen anyway), although that’s a fair description of the party’s official strategy. That way lies madness, or at least the form of liberal derangement represented by Jon Ossoff, the guy who spent 30 million bucks, more money than any congressional candidate in history, to get exactly the same number of votes as the previous Democrat to be defeated in his suburban Atlanta district..... we’ve all spent too much time blathering on about that and coming up with halfway plausible explanations: It was sexism and Russian meddling and racial resentment and “economic anxiety” and the marginalization of the white working class. It was a flood-tide of right-wing fake news and Jim Comey’s October surprise (remember, we were supposed to hate him before we were supposed to love him). It was voter suppression and depressed turnout and bearded millennial snowflakes who voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.....Hillary Clinton’s bizarre defeat-in-victory was an event so unlikely it seems like a metaphor. So does the fact that the Democratic Party was so broke and so cynical it literally sold its soul for rent money. But those things happened. Until we face them honestly there will be no Resistance, no victory, no political renewal and no democracy.

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Democrats are so focused on tearing down the GOP they can't see their own shortcomings.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/artic...nd-republicans

The Democrats seem to enjoy gloating about the hot mess that is the Republican Party these days. Former GOP presidents warning the president about the people he surrounds himself with; sitting Republican U.S. senators calling the president unstable and unqualified; and a former GOP speaker of the house saying "there is no Republican Party. The president isn't a Republican." And Democrats' friends in the mainstream media have kindly created an echo chamber that makes them think that they are always right and the Republicans are a bunch of sexist, racist, whack jobs.

So why aren't they winning?

They must be longing for the halcyon days of the Obama election in 2008. They were so eager to lay all of America's troubles entirely at the feet of President George W. Bush: The Iraq War (which most of their party voted to support), Hurricane Katrina response (ignoring any involvement by Democratic local officials) and the financial collapse (which had little to do with Washington – although President Bush and President Barack Obama worked hand in hand to bail the country out of it). They were so full of hope! They were ushering in a new America. A post-racial America where everyone has health care and a good middle-class job. Stories written in the wake of the November election wrote the obituary on the Republican Party (too white, too rich, too old and on top of that, technology morons who can't turn out the vote). The Democrats were here to stay – or so they thought.

That arrogance caused them to nominate Hillary Clinton to be their party's standard bearer. Possibly the only candidate who could lose to Trump....

....there is no figure in American politics as guaranteed to unite the GOP base in opposition as the person who coined the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" in an effort to deflect from her husband's misdeeds (which everyone in the country seemed to find plausible, except for her). Never mind her inability to connect with working-class voters in the same folksy way as her husband. Never mind her reputation for refusing to take responsibility for things that happened on her watch (like Benghazi). Everyone should ignore all that. Because it's time for us to shatter that glass ceiling, and no one but Hillary can do it. The Democrats seemed shocked the race between Clinton and Trump remained relatively close because they seemed to stop talking to the white working-class voters who, for decades, had defined their base.

....the Democratic Party was drummed up and new, forward-looking leaders took the reins and offered an alternative to what they saw as the disaster of Donald Trump. Wait, no. That isn't what happened. Instead, they re-elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house. They elected Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader and completely sold out to the New York and California wings of the Democratic Party.

Instead of talking about middle-class tax cuts, they talked about transgender bathroom access. Instead of talking about fixing Obamacare, which was crushing many in the middle class with high premiums and complicated doctor selections, they walked right into the trap of the alt-right and began tearing down Civil War statues.

In the first big test of party strength: the Virginia governor's race, they have thrown up all over themselves. Virginia should be easy for them. Clinton won it in 2016. Trump's numbers are completely under water. The Republican candidate has awkwardly embraced Trump and some of his controversial positions while trying not to hug him too close. But somehow they ended up with one of the least inspiring Democratic candidates Virginia has seen in a long time. And they backed an ad that seemed to depict Virginians who drive pickup trucks as a bunch of rednecks looking to plow down children of color.

That race is now a dead heat.

....What they don't seem to understand is that you can point out your opponent's weaknesses all day long, but if you don't provide an alternative, then people will stick with the status quo.

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Spin, divert, deflect

vs.

Type, type, type

I wonder which is going to win? Hmmm...

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So much spinning and diverting from all around it's impossible to tell who you are referring to....

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So much spinning and diverting from all around it's impossible to tell who you are referring to....

Hint for the dense among us: Which 'side' is being serious about prosecuting and is studiously rounding up the evidence of criminal activity, and which isn't?