Collusion

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

68 thoughts on “Collusion”

  1. BTW, it’s autumn. looks like not just leaves are turning red but GOPers are too – the Яeal  Яed state of affairs. 

  3. craig, jeremy agrees with you on that collusion charge

    note jeremy’s not just another talking head. he kinda knows about these things. according to wiki:
    Jeremy B. Bash (born August 13, 1971) is an American lawyer. He was the chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Defense (2011–2013) and the Central Intelligence Agency (2009–2011), both under President Barack Obama.

  4. if not collusion, how bout useful idiocy?

    mediaite:

    In his first major interview since leaving civil service, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman shared a less than a charitable description of President Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, calling him a “useful idiot” to the Russian president.
    […]
    “President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” he says. Useful idiot is a term commonly used to describe dupes of authoritarian regimes; fellow traveler, in Vindman’s description, is a person who shares Putin’s loathing for democratic norms.
    But do you think Russia is blackmailing Trump? “They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it,” he says. “They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin.”
    Vindman continues, “In the Army we call this ‘free chicken,’ something you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you. This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken.”

  5. Gotta be a harder job this time, now that rRUMPsky is a known entity who only appeals to those for whom racism is more important than anything else.
     
    Meanwhile, folks from the other side of the aisle continue to support Biden, calling him a decent human being.   Cindy McCain has now done that.  Let’s hope that makes the difference in AZ.

  7. I gotta admit that while I consider any polls showing a tie in states like GA and IA potential great news, I’m at the same time skeptical that they are not outliers. They just don’t strike me as likely reflective of sentiment in those states. 

    Oh happy days. I got a solicitation yesterday to contribute to “a national campaign to re-elect the best president seniors have ever had and prevent democrat socialism“. It even gave me a card to carry showing I’m a member of that campaign with that hideous smiling picture of SFB right on the card, just in case I forgot what he looks like I suppose. I don’t think I’ll take that campaign up on its offer. 🙄

  8. Donny Deutsch on Morning Joe this am saying any Jew who votes for Trump isn’t paying attention to history.  It might have been hyperbole but it wasn’t wrong.  SFB is playing the “Other” card about as hard as it can be played.  Saying we are in the early stages of what eventually became the holocaust isn’t out of the realm of possibility.   

  9. Another person Trump doesn’t know:

    I hardly know Cindy McCain other than having put her on a Committee at her husband’s request. Joe Biden was John McCain’s lapdog. So many BAD decisions on Endless Wars & the V.A., which I brought from a horror show to HIGH APPROVAL. Never a fan of John. Cindy can have Sleepy Joe!

     

  10. Backwater Virginia there are a lot of cult members.  What is funny is they are now redoing their hate signs.  No longer is it “socialism” that is evil, that is being over painted with “communism”.  Socialists are not scary enough, now they need communists.  I always try to believe that humans are capable of learning and being better than the past, and I am always finding disappointment.    Yes, they spend a lot of time painting signs showing their love for hate. 

  11. weird. probably best not to click on the RT vid they refer to. it might come back to bite you.

    daily beast:

    We know that Vladimir Putin takes his lifelong campaign to disrupt American democracy and destroy the very foundations of Western civilization extremely seriously—but that doesn’t mean he and his state media minions can’t have a little fun with it now and then.
    A bizarre and, frankly, deeply disturbing ad from the state-controlled RT network shows a deep-faked President Donald Trump joining the channel as an anchor. Although the wig is dodgy, the video superimposes Trump’s face onto a chubby body and plays real clips of him denigrating CNN and lavishing praise on “amazing” Russia.
    The advert starts with Trump rolling up outside RT HQ in a limo and waddling to a dressing room which has the sign “Donald Trump: RT Special Host” on the door. Proudly holding up a signed RT contract which has “$1,000,000,000” scrawled across it in marker pen, the deep-faked Trump says: “It was a very nice offer from President Putin.”
    The message of the advert is to not-so-subtly suggest that Putin is Trump’s personal hero and that the U.S. president is in the pocket of the Kremlin. In one scene apparently meant to show a network executive pitching shows to the deep-faked Trump, he’s handed a poster for a series called “Putin’s Apprentice” showing him standing with the Russian president. He exclaims: “I love that idea! I think I can do that!”
    All of the things put into the mouth of the deep-faked Trump appear to be things he actually said, although the context is obviously very different. For example, the character says: “It’s an amazing country, you know, so many friends in Russia, and I’m very excited to be here.” That seems to be dug up from a 2013 interview when he took Miss Universe to Moscow.
    At another point, when the Trump character is apparently lauding the Kremlin for the generous benefits they pay him, he says: “They’re very nice. I make a lot of money with them. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.” Those comments are lifted from a campaign rally in 2015, when Trump was praising Saudi Arabia.
    […]
    In the only part that uses a voice other than Trump’s, the ad ends with the character singing the 1980s Russian rock song “Peremen” by Kino, which has recently become an anthem for the anti-government protests in Belarus. It’s also been sung at anti-Putin protests in Russia, although some Putin supporters have also adopted it.
    While the advertisement is clearly intended as a bit of mischief from RT, it is, nevertheless, a troubling example of how the Kremlin is looking at the impending election, and just the latest example of Russian state media treating Trump as Putin’s pawn in the run-up to the vote.
    [continues]

  13. I just saw a flash (headline only) that Gale Sayers has died, age seventy-seven.  He played for the Chicago Bears, way back when.  A great runner.

  14. Yeah….  ok…  it’s collusion…
    but now what?…

    I don’t mean to be flippant… but other than voting the gop out and making this country a one party system of Democrats, I don’t see a solution.

  16. Thanks for posting the Mad Kennedy whistleblower story, patd.  
     
    Question: How IN THE FUCK does trumpco get away with forcing government employees volunteers to sign NDAs???

    (caps, profanity, and extra punctuation added for emphasis)

  17. Bink – federal employees cannot sign anything like personal NDA’s.  We do sign specialized NDA’s and in some cases, especially security work, is you do not get debriefed for certain things.  My debriefing for one situation was “you will never be declassified”, along with I cannot write anything without certain agencies reviewing it for release.  I cannot get through to the agency which is to tell me which other agencies must review my scribblings.  The personal NDA’s so loved by SFB are only good for drawing cartoons on if forced on a fed. 

  19. Here’s something for SFB to let roll around in that empty real estate in his head.
    The outpouring of love and respect for RBG is something his fat carcass will never get.
    He does not deserve a state funeral unless Russia wants to foot the bill.

  20. If they are announcing the GJ findings for Breonna Taylor today, and, they’ve announced a curfew for tonight…it’s a pretty good guess 🙁

  21. I missed it the first night, but taped and finally watched “The Sit In -Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show“.  If you haven’t seen it, make the effort to do so.  It was one week early in 1968.  The guest list was almost every major black entertainer, black and white civil rights activists, and discussion of the issues.  I kept crying in parts.  We were so hopeful and then the rest of the year happened.  I was 24 then and 76 now.  To this day I refer to 1968 as the year America died.  What surprised me at the end were comments by Harry now 90 and Whoopie Goldberg who feel the same and that some how all of what happened then and the backlash to that burgeoning feeling of change has led us to what we have now.

    At least the music clips were good.  I especially liked Leon Bibb as I had forgotten how much I loved his singing way back then.

     

  22. Coney Barrett’s cult is the inspiration for the Handmaidens Tale.  Ewwwe send women back to the 1850’s

  23. Oh, by the way, Trump Jr. admitted to colluding with Russian agents in 2016 on Twitter, and then candidate-Trump publicly appealed to Russia to interfere from a widely-broadcast press-conference.
     
    So, why does the press keep saying “if [there was collusion between trump campaign and Russia]”?  They’ve already admitted to it, multiple times.

  26. also happening in florida

    orlando sun sentinel:

    Hours after the announcement that billionaire Mike Bloomberg raised more than $20 million to offset fines and court costs for Florida felons so they can vote, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz appeared on the Lou Dobbs show and called the donation little more than a political bribe.
    In the appearance on the Fox News show on Tuesday, Gaetz, R-Fla., called on Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to open an investigation into what he called “vote buying” for helping to pay the fines for a reported 31,000 felons.
    […]
    The Florida Rights Restitution Council had raised about $5 million before Bloomberg made calls to raise almost $17 million more, according to Bloomberg advisers, who weren’t authorized to speak on the record because the announcement hadn’t been made yet.
    The money is targeted for felons who registered to vote while the law was in question and who owe $1,500 or less. That accounts for about 31,100 people, Bloomberg advisers say. In a state that decided the 2000 presidential election by 537 votes, that could be critical in a year when polls show President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in a dead heat.
    Organizers for the group say they aren’t targeting people registered with a particular political party.

    Moody has not responded publicly to Gaetz’s request, but on Wednesday morning, Moody recused herself from a clemency board vote on Desmond Meade, a felon who led the push for the 2018 constitutional amendment. Meade was denied a full pardon by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Executive Clemency.

  27. Actually… Margaret Atwood’s inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale came from seeing women dressed in burqas while she and her husband were hiking in Afghanistan.

  28. This week’s Newsweek quotes Atwood saying the charismatic catholic groups were an inspiration for the Handmaidens tale.  I would put in the link but I’m on my phone and can’t do it

  29. My book club read The Handmaid’s Tale 15 years ago.  We did some research on the book.  At the time Atwood mentioned the Islamic women as getting her imagination going.  She said it was what put that first seed of an idea into her mind.  She then went on to study Christian groups who believe the Bible is the word of God in order to write a book for the western world.

  30. There is a lot going on in this blender from Hell.  Is there any chance something major will be big enough to overwhelm today?  Damned if I know.  I had Justice Notorious making it to at least February 1, 2021.

  31. I don’t know anything about The Handmaid’s Tale, so I went to the Oracle (Wiki) to see what it has to say on the subject, and it appears that if you were to name any one of about a half dozen countries (the US and Afghanistan being 2) that served as inspiration for various aspects of the book, you’d be right.  I can say one thing about the author – she is incredibly well informed.  (I have one fo the t-shirts that were inspired by Game of Thrones – I drink and I know things, that’s what I do.  With me it’s yes, and a few. Ms. Atwood certainly qualifies on the 2nd count.)
     
    Ha, so Fauci calls out RandPaul for being an idiot.  Good, he is.  Has anyone mentioned to Rand that if his mistaken understanding of herd immunity (mentality?) was right, 22% of the US would be about 75 MILLION people.  At a death rate of 3% – about what we have now (deaths as a percentage of confirmed cases) that would be 2.25 MILLION dead Americans.  It would actually be twice that if the lower threshold for herd immunity – 43% of the population – is correct.  4.5 million dead?  No problem, right, Rand? Goddam idiot.

  32. As I have said before, their friends and relatives would miss them.  The globe?  Not so much.  There will be more viruses. Mother Nature is a bitch.

  33. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that there was a shortage of inspirations for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel. From the ‘celestial marriages’ to david koresh, to the taliban, to Hindu fundamentalism, to hugh hefnerism, to scientology and the children of god, there was an abundance of oppression from which to draw inspiration.

  34. What Biden needs is a good strategist maybe like Rahm Emanuel or someone like the ghoul Steven Miller.  He must fight fire with fire! No Mr. Nice Guy.  No snowflake in the debates.
     
    Biden needs to hit Trump back about Ivanka/China when he starts in on Hunter/Ukraine.
     
    Biden needs middle & poorer class WHITE voters. He needs to stress the Trump tariffs and the effect on them including farmers. He needs to lay out tax breaks, in simple terms, and how they HAVE NOT  helped middle & poorer classes.
    Biden needs to stress that he will NOT interfere with NIH, CDC, & FDA!
    Biden can state that he’s not a malignant narcissist. lol…
    Biden can promise REGULAR  ORDER  in the country.
    Since Trump loves to hit sensitive spots, cause pain, and provoke, Biden needs to figure out what to do when Trump hits Beau Biden. Hopefully he will neither cry nor punch Trump out, literally. Although….
     
    Yes, Biden should walk into the debates WITH a mask on. He can not buckle to Trump’s bullying like everyone else does! Dems don’t have canine obedience to Trump the way the repubes do.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

  35. Biden also needs a team of psychiatrists to advise on how to deal with a mentally ill, malignant narcissist who’s a bully and will stop at nothing to win.

  36. Coney Barrett’s cult used to use the term “handmaiden” for the women members.   I don’t particularly care what Atwood’s inspiration was. I do care about the custom and practice of  Coney Barret and her cult and her understanding of the separation of church and state

  37. Old Man, yep to Mary Trump. Biden needs 9 more to offer suggestions.
     
    KGC….Coney Barrett *shivers*  Yep, it looks like a cult!
     
     

  38. The Senate needs to demand Coney-Barrett tell the truth about the power of her husband over her.   He’s not the one being vetted, but it sounds like men rule the roost in her cult.   
    And, yes, Joe walks in with a mask, he does NOT approach tRUMPsky nor shake hands.   He stays at his lectern and tells the truth.   Don’t interrupt SFB.  Just let him lie, lie, lie.    Joe needs to speak to his plans of realistic hope to fix tRUMP’s sh/+show.   Not pie-in-the-sky ‘it’ll just disappear” nonsense.   Folks will appreciate the truth…except for the racists.    Appeal to Main Street and  to farmers.

  39. bob, he was a moose, not goose, hunter. 

    i would not have been so surprised about the mauling were he hunting geese with whatever light weight weaponry that requires, but hard to imagine he couldn’t have at least scared off the critter with his moose-killing gun.

  40. Well, i was a decent, not great, cook before, but pandemic has turned me into a legitimate pretty-ok cook💪🇺🇸

  42. see where judge ordered  eric trump to show up to be deposed by NY atty gen.  wonder if this quote reported by vanity fair in 2017 will come up:

    “So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

  44.  ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’

     

    how interesting, eric, tell us more

  45. A photo made available by the Russian Foreign Ministry shows President Trump, far left, meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, second to left, and other U.S. and Russian officials during their White House meeting on May 10. (Russian Foreign Ministry/AFP/Getty Images)
    I hope Biden takes pictures or video to the debates.  This is one of Trumps most egregious acts!!!!
     
    Trump Shared Intelligence Secrets With Russians in Oval Office Meeting
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-denies-trump-gave-classified-information-to-russian-officials-1494890345

  48. Apparently Trump now says all the ballots will be thrown out by the court and there won’t need to be a transfer of power. 

  49.  ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ -eric trump
     
    …nice catch, patd

  53. CB, bless you. You remind me of music I forgot I loved. Sea of Heartbreak… North to Alaska. Bubba,  you and JBuffet (pronounced jay-boofay for the uninitiated) bring me back to where I once belonged.  I thank you for that. 
    from your bruddah:
    https://youtu.be/cXQS4S3vgGA
     

  55. This is what hes was capable of.  Now he’ll just throw out the votes. Adam Schiff is calling for repubes to do and say something NOW.
    Cohen Hired IT Firm to Rig Early CNBC, Drudge Polls to Favor Trump
     
     

  56. So, if Orange Julius manages to install himself for another term, it won’t last.  
    We flip the Senate.  
    Impeach tRUMPsky and PENCEsky; remove them from office and off to jail they go for treason.
    Pelosi is sworn in as Prez.
     
    No pardon for either of them.  The whole tRUMP/Kuchner crime family goes to prison.  There is no way out of this for tRUMP.  He’s going down and the entire family is going down with him. 

  57. ok, i’ll click the song with the cool Greco-inspired art

    Damn that was Fleetwood?! Musta been from their “ripping off Santana” period🤷‍♂️

  58. This is how you trap tRUMPsky with intel.  Give him some plausible-sounding garbage and see if it shows up with the Russians.   He is, at the very least, a security threat.  HE’S THE LEAKER!   But really, it’s intentional.   He’s helping Poo-tin because he’s got dirt on him. And Lindsey. And Nunes. And McConnell.  

  61. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/
     
    The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.
    Trump’s behavior and declared intent leave no room to suppose that he will accept the public’s verdict if the vote is going against him. He lies prodigiously—to manipulate events, to secure advantage, to dodge accountability, and to ward off injury to his pride. An election produces the perfect distillate of all those motives.
    We have no precedent or procedure to end this election if Biden seems to carry the Electoral College but Trump refuses to concede. We will have to invent one.
    Trump is, by some measures, a weak authoritarian. He has the mouth but not the muscle to work his will with assurance. Trump denounced Special Counsel Robert Mueller but couldn’t fire him. He accused his foes of treason but couldn’t jail them. He has bent the bureaucracy and flouted the law but not broken free altogether of their restraints.
     

    On Election Day, Trump and his allies can begin by suppressing the Biden vote.

    The 2020 presidential election will be the first in 40 years to take place without a federal judge requiring the Republican National Committee to seek approval in advance for any “ballot security” operations at the polls. In 2018, a federal judge allowed the consent decree to expire, ruling that the plaintiffs had no proof of recent violations by Republicans. The consent decree, by this logic, was not needed, because it worked.

    This year, with a judge no longer watching, the Republicans are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 contested states to monitor polling places and challenge voters they deem suspicious-looking. Trump called in to Fox News on August 20 to tell Sean Hannity, “We’re going to have sheriffs and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys” to keep close watch on the polls. For the first time in decades, according to Clark, Republicans are free to combat voter fraud in “places that are run by Democrats.”

    But Trump’s crusade against voting by mail is a strategically sound expression of his plan for the Interregnum. The president is not actually trying to prevent mail-in balloting altogether, which he has no means to do. He is discrediting the practice and starving it of resources, signaling his supporters to vote in person, and preparing the ground for post–Election Night plans to contest the results. It is the strategy of a man who expects to be outvoted and means to hobble the count.

    The electoral combat will not confine itself to the courtroom. Local election adjudicators can expect to be named and doxed and pilloried as agents of George Soros or antifa.

    Then suppose the president declares an emergency. Federal personnel in battle dress, staged nearby in advance, move in to restore law and order and secure the balloting. Amid ongoing clashes, they stay to monitor the canvass. They close the streets that lead to the polls. They take custody of uncounted ballots in order to preserve evidence of fraud.

    If you read “Disloyal” you know trump is capable of anything to win and will feel no remorse. It’s a grim state of affairs.  I’m voting for freedom and applying for a passport as a backup.

  62. Well, if tRUMP attempts to overthrow the government, there are ways to deal with that. It’ll be the end of his orange ass and good riddance to bad rubbish.
     
    LP needs to do a Russia ad; Junior and Senior and Eric and the guy that just got him coffee once and Deutsche Bank.   

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