Michael Flynn getting such a sweet deal, a one-count charge that carries no more than 5 years in jail and probably much less, is the worst news for Trump. It means Mueller had good reason to go easy on Flynn, gaining significant cooperation against the boss.
hope his promise of cooperation and supplied information are securely tied to the ultimate charge and punishment. don’t want another ollie north type situation. also hard to trust a liar’s credibility, what can be expected from a self-confessed liar other than more lies?
Question for our legal minds: could the passports of, let’s say, Kushner, the President’s sons been restricted/revoked without the public being made aware? What restrictions can be made on the President’s movements – could he defect? These are not titans of integrity we’re dealing with.
(Rather ironic that Flynn, who led the Lock her up! holler at the convention is meeting that fate. The bell tolls for thee.)
Did the infamous RT Gala play any role in this …. was Stein interviewed or any other For Sale political lesser lights gladly chirping Putin’s PR? This tree has many branches, deep roots. When the whole story comes out will be fascinating.
What role did Israel play in this denigration of our democracy?
Mueller’s place of business should be referred to as The House of Special Purpose. 2018 marks 100 years since the Tsar’s demise. An unfit leader, a family of too much wealth, too little understanding. The river of history moves on.
Watching the river flow
Thanks for Cocker, the late rocker and former peaceful resident of Crawford, Colorado.
I just finished an email to pearce as the senate passed it’s ‘late term abortion of a bill’ (known as tax reform and cut bill) and it is now headed to the house. Many years ago I did comment after rancid did the autopsy on the loser repug party that if the repugs did get back in power? They would punish us by taking away our health care, our money and punish us for hanging out with drug addicts and anyone in the LGBT community. How could average citizens allow this happen to put these idiots who push party and personality over citizens rights? They didn’t as it was an election heist by some really bad people who could never give a rat’s behind about the American citizen. They want to see us fall and falter at the hands of the false potus.
I need to find a menorah for the altar.
By 2040, about 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states. They will have only 30 senators representing them, while the remaining 30% of Americans will have 70 senators representing them. This is why the Electoral College must be abolished.
Meanwhile, back in sparta…
syria shoots down israeli missile after successful hit. trump was very lucky that he coordinated his attack on syria after the poison porn of infants dying hit the airwaves, so he had an early success unlike the earlier, botched yemen raid.
I noticed Harward’s name is being floated again for a position in the trumpence junta. This time it is the old pompeo job at the spookhouse. Earlier this year, Harward did not want part of the ‘shit sandwich’ of the WH which the generals have now changed with more ‘bread’ less caca spread.
Broke peasants means cheap labor.
I fixed your typo —
Broke peasants means
cheapslave labor. That is how china got ‘ahead.’Over 80% of Americans get a lump of coal in their stocking from this idiotic tax bill.
I do not think that the passports of anyone can be revoked. I think the FBI or Mueller or whoever is investigating and plans to bring charges against Kushner at AL could require their passports be turned in, but I don’t think that the state department can revoke them. Wrong department.
Jamie, while I agree with your conclusion, maybe I’m missing your point about the electoral college. Electoral college rep is driven by legislative districts, not senators. Yes, small states do have an advantage in the electoral college collectively, but not because of their senators.
The gop can no longer pretend it’s not for the rich… they are now nakedly exposing themselves. Though I’d bet good money that fox news is still telling it’s viewers otherwise.
Now that the republicans (small r) have their “victory bill” passed, this reminds me of the kill health care payment bill which SFB celebrated as the ultimate win, what can they screw up next? Let’s think of shutting down the government so the moron will have a personal victory. Nothing says win like closing the national parks. Oh the “kill America first tax cut for the one percent” still has to go to reconciliation. That should go smoothly.
My only request of the drive to a shut down is to know which date is the final. I want to make plans and not knowing which day to stay home is a problem. Notice I said “stay home”. We are supposed to be ready to go back to work the next morning in case the Congress passes something to pay for us to work. This group of losers are going to be messed up for a while.
The other thing about a shut down this time of year is it means no presents to be purchased. I need to save my money to pay my mortgage, car payment, credit cards and a boat loan. No spending from me and about two million of my fellow federal employees. Add the millions others who have contracts with the federal government who might have a shut down clause in their contract and you can see the effect of granting SFB wet dream.
too bad ross screwed up, but bet some money was made by someone with that market fall yesterday.
business insider:
ABC News corrected a crucial detail in its initial report on former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s plea deal that caused US stocks to plunge Friday morning.
In a televised report, ABC News’ Brian Ross said that Flynn was prepared to testify that Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, “directed him to make contact with the Russians.”
ABC News, which reported its story based in part on information received from an unnamed Flynn associate, said the source later clarified that, “during the campaign, Trump assigned Flynn and a small circle of other senior advisers to find ways to repair relations with Russia and other hot spots,” ABC News’ correction read. “It was shortly after the election, that President-elect Trump directed Flynn to contact Russian officials.”
The contacts were purportedly intended to discuss “topics that included working jointly against ISIS,” ABC News’ statement said.
The initial report rattled US markets Friday morning as the newest development in the Russia probe unfolded. It was not immediately clear why ABC News reported the clarification hours later.
BB
My son has the same problem. He doesn’t want to get stuck in Michigan as a mandatory management school is coming up shortly.
New Gallup equals lowest approval for Marie Antoinette .. Let the beheadings begin.
Trump: 60% Disapprove; 34% Approve
From yesterday: The one good thing that happened
That poll might be skewed…..
Or back’ards……
back’ards lol
Fixed now
suggested presents for those hard-to-buy-for folks
story about the above gift suggestion
newsweek Impeach Trump Please, Santa: Women’s March Organizers Ask for Christmas Gift in Festive Ad
[….]Although the ad is a lighthearted gag—albeit at the president’s expense—the organization said the message behind it is deadly serious, and part of a festive fundraising push.
March On executive director Vanessa Wruble, who was among the leaders of the January Women’s March on Washington, told NBC News: “It’s a fun Christmas gag. It’s really about fundraising; we’re trying to make money.”
She added there are issues in Congress that the organization intends to tackle—among them the accusations of sexual harassment by women against a number of male politicians.
“Because we are the organizers of the Women’s marches across the country, we are singularly placed to speak to the women’s vote and issue, including the #MeToo movement,” she told the network, adding that women’s voices had made a difference at the marches that took place across the U.S. and internationally.
“Imagine the Women’s Marches, only we’re all headed to the polls,” Wruble added.
[…continues…]
wishful thinking or likely?
politicususa: “A Reeling White House Shudders As Rachel Maddow Has Some Very Bad Russia News For Mike Pence”
Rachel Maddow explains why Mike Flynn’s cooperation with the Special Counsel is another step toward the Russia hammer coming down on Vice President Mike Pence.
Maddow said, “Vice President Pence insisted publicly more than once that Mike Flynn never talked about sanctions with the Russian. That was always a false statement. Well, now we know that multiple members of the Trump transition team knew it was a false statement when Mike Pence said it. So, why’d they let him say it? Honestly, what we learned today also raises the question of whether or not Mike Pence knew that was a false statement when he said it. Well, we can report exclusively tonight that Vice President Mike Pence has not spoken to Robert Mueller or his team of investigators nor has been asked to. We can also report tonight that the Vice President has not been asked to hand over any documents to the Mueller investigation, but given what just emerged today in federal court, one has to expect that he knows that is coming.”
Rachel Maddow was spot on. Vice President Pence isn’t going to be the Republican savior if Trump goes down for Russia scandal related crimes. Pence is going down with him. Vice President Pence was the head of the transition team. He has a direction connection to Mike Flynn and most of the major questions surrounding the Russia scandal. Mike Pence is into this scandal up to his eyeballs, and no one should be surprised if he is indicted before Trump.
salon: Donald Trump is waging war on reality — so far, reality is losing
Trump’s campaign against reality isn’t a distraction or a sign of mental illness. It’s his historical mission
“I am your voice!” Donald Trump told the crowd and the cameras at the Republican National Convention a year ago last July, in a speech that keeps suggesting itself to me as one of those moments where history shifted on its axis just a little.
[….]
…a famous quotation from Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” that seems to describe our current situation with eerie precision:
Understood in its full contemporary context, that passage may hold the key to the Trump presidency. If fakery is actually the content and purpose of this presidency, and if everybody understands that on some level, then at least we are liberated from the endless media self-torture and amateur anthropology regarding Trump’s “working-class” base in the picturesque hinterlands of hurricane-damaged KenTaco Huts.
[….]
A public that no longer believes in anything, Hannah Arendt said in 1974, “is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” We aren’t quite there yet, but the damage wrought by Donald Trump’s presidency — and by the long road that brought us here — runs deep. To paraphrase an important song of my youth, he’s the future: No future.
I don’t get this argument Logan Act irrelevant because it was enacted in 1799. By that logic we should ignore the Constitution. It’s older.
Perhaps we’ve not seen convictions under the Logan Act because this is the first traitor elected president.
another excerpt from salon… Lucian K. Truscott IV, “a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter” in his article
Mueller has a roadmap and the end game is nigh
President Trump is unhinged because Michael Flynn knows everything about his ties with Russia and he’s talking :
[….]
So what is Mueller’s end game? Assuming he survives in office and doesn’t suffer his own “Saturday Night Massacre,” I think he’s aiming to indict the president of the United States for multiple felonies. Trump’s lawyers know this. They’ve told him what Mueller’s intentions are. Maybe this explains Trump’s wild-eyed endorsement of child-molester Roy Moore in Alabama, his deranged retweeting of anti-Muslim videos from some British neo-Nazi website, and his surreal resurrection of Obama’s alleged Kenyan birth. He can see the end coming, and it’s driving him crazy. President Donald J. Trump knows that he and his White House are surrounded by investigators, and they are asking questions of literally every single person who worked on the Trump campaign and in the Trump White House. He knows, because John Dowd, an old time D.C. lawyer who has been through the wars of Washington scandals, has told him, that once an investigation like Mueller’s starts, you can’t stop it. Like a house of cards collapsing, you can’t move your hands fast enough to grab enough cards to put it back together. It just keeps coming down until the whole thing is on the floor.
I swear I did not plagiarize my idea for a novel from Rachel… lol
craig, consider the source but here’s how Gregg Jarrett on faux newspeak answers “Did Flynn or the Trump transition team violate the Logan Act? No”:
[….]
The only conceivable crime these communications with Russia could constitute falls under the Logan Act. But that antiquated law has no application for several reasons.
First, the Logan Act was enacted in 1799. It makes it a felony for a private citizen to interfere in international disputes between the U.S. and foreign governments. But no one has ever been prosecuted under the act, principally because most lawyers, legal scholars and judges agree that it is likely unconstitutional.
Since no one has ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act, no court has ever ruled on its constitutionality directly.
However, courts have commented on the Logan Act from time to time. In 1964, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Waldron v. British Petroleum Co., 231 F. Supp. 72) stated that the act was likely unconstitutional because it is vague, overly broad and ambiguous.
Numerous scholarly publications have argued that the Logan Act also violates the right to free speech under the First Amendment. So its legal efficacy is doubtful.
Second, Flynn was not acting as a private citizen, as the law defines it. He was serving in a wholly different capacity – as a government representative of a president about to assume office.
the idiot just admitted on twitter he knew Flynn lied to FBI when he asked Comey to back off. Hello obstruction of justice. His lawyers now in fetal position.
@realDonaldTrump
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
Craig – he has no clue about anything. All he thinks is that he is the law and the world. He is going to enjoy Florence, the climate is nice. The people are nice (except for his “hotel”). He will probably not enjoy not having a young woman to assault, and that for a very long time. I cannot think of a better ending to the bastard.
craig, is fascinating how he digs his own hole and jumps in to dig some more.
could it be he is the prime example of what the old psychoanalysts theorized about some who have the need to be punished for unresolved oedipal guilt which manifests itself in inappropriate behavior? maybe gen kelley should paddle him once in awhile or mel bring out the manacles and whip.
Patd: for Mr. Jarrett, nice try —
“antiquated law” — so what? so is the Constitution
“no one ever prosecuted” — so what? perhaps no one ever, especially a prez-elect, has been stupid enough to violate it
law “likely unconstitutional” — if it hasn’t been prosecuted how do we know that?
Flynn not a private citizen, but serving “as a government representative of a president about to assume office” — for someone complaining about a law that’s on the books, you’re creating something that no law anywhere creates
This is a classic case of concluding first, then cherry picking spurious arguments to support it.
“This is a classic case of concluding first, then cherry picking spurious arguments to support it.”
craig, substituting colluding for concluding, one could say that about the twit’s idiotic tweets.
nytimes: Emails Dispute White House Claims That Flynn Acted Independently on Russia
[…]
On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump’s victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times
It is not clear whether Ms. McFarland was saying she believed that the election had in fact been thrown. A White House lawyer said on Friday that she meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way.
But it is evident from the emails — which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications — that after learning that President Barack Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. The Trump advisers feared that a cycle of retaliation between the United States and Russia would keep the spotlight on Moscow’s election meddling, tarnishing Mr. Trump’s victory and potentially hobbling his presidency from the start.
As part of the outreach, Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador, Mr. Kislyak, hours after Mr. Obama’s sanctions were announced.
[….continues…]
Screw it all. Time to draw the curtain against the idiocy that is just twenty miles away, under the dome there is more idiocy. The crap that is the Congress is working hard to destroy America. The pile of stinking dog crap in the WH is working hard to destroy America. What do we need to do? #Resistance is not enough.
We need to get them out of D.C. BUT, that is only part of the problem.
These freaks need to be tossed out of our country. They have infiltrated all levels of government. Literally from the lowest levels in your city or town to the states assemblies and legislatures.
I am going to spend the night and most of tomorrow recovering from a nasty GI attack. During this time I will spend very few minutes looking at the horrible world we live in. I will spend my time watching programs like Super Girl, or Turn, or West Wing, or whatever else will not remind me of SFB and the Congress. A congress of horrible men, and women. People who need to rot in hell.
Maybe Monday.
Strzok/Page mystery solved…departure from Moscow Mueller team explained.
Voyager I fires-up after 37 years.
“The Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters,”
Good old Fortran IV still powering the Voyagers.
From the strzok/page article —
During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The extramarital affair was problematic, these people said, but of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season, in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton.
Seems clear Flynn will finger Trump and Jared. Question now is whether he says Pence part of Russia conspiracy. Call this the President Paul Ryan scenario.
Worth noting in Flynn’s plea agreement he submitted to a polygraph and “covert methods” – he wore a wire?