Moose & Squirrel v Boris & Natasha: what's the deal with the rooskies and trumpland?

[visionary]

So what have you done about Russia?

Other than flirt endlessly and make excuses for them?

 

[Llevron]

I find it odd that he tweets fox and friends directly now. 

[LD0506]

21 minutes ago, Llevron said:

I find it odd that he tweets fox and friends directly now. 

 

Actually, I was wondering why it took this long..........

[Bang]

Isn't this the same clown who had no idea they were in Crimea until a few months ago?

 

Actually saw a trumpy hollering about how Clinton was in bed with them the whole time and had been nothing but soft on them,,,  when i recall Trump yelling in one of the "debates" about how her tough stances on Russia were part of the reason the relationship was so strained... including criticizing her for offering advice to Obama on how to handle them tough.

It's just mindblowing to me how people are able to lie to themselves.

 

~Bang

 

~

Edited March 7, 2017 by Bang

[codeorama]

Question, I keep seeing on twitter that either 4 or 6 Russians associate with the Trump Dossier have turned up dead.  I know of 1 that was in the main stream news, but had not seen any others. Wondering if that was real or fake news.

[FanboyOf91]

26 minutes ago, codeorama said:

Question, I keep seeing on twitter that either 4 or 6 Russians associate with the Trump Dossier have turned up dead.  I know of 1 that was in the main stream news, but had not seen any others. Wondering if that was real or fake news.

 

Fake.

 

It's 8 Russians dead.

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by visionary

[visionary]

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

[Jumbo]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-worst-deal

 

 

The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

it's a long piece, and even editing for large excerpts there's a lot more at the link---for me, i look at these individual stories as interesting, but as for them being serious fodder against trump, i'd say right now it's mostly potential  (if there's an increasing accumulation of similar ones to the pile already reported, with more damning details eventually being fleshed out)

 

Quote

 

<edit>

 

A former top official in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Tourism says that, when he learned of the Trump hotel project, he asked himself, “Why would someone put a luxury hotel there? Nobody who can afford to stay there would want to be in that neighborhood.”

 

The Azerbaijanis behind the project were close relatives of Ziya Mammadov, the Transportation Minister and one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, Azerbaijan is among the most corrupt nations in the world.

 

Its President, Ilham Aliyev, the son of the former President Heydar Aliyev, recently appointed his wife to be Vice-President. Ziya Mammadov became the Transportation Minister in 2002, around the time that the regime began receiving enormous profits from government-owned oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. At the time of the hotel deal, Mammadov, a career government official, had a salary of about twelve thousand dollars, but he was a billionaire.

 

The Trump Tower Baku originally had a construction budget of a hundred and ninety-five million dollars, but it went through multiple revisions, and the cost ended up being much higher. The tower was designed by a local architect, and in its original incarnation it had an ungainly roof that suggested the spikes of a crown. A London-based architecture firm, Mixity, redesigned the building, softening its edges and eliminating the ornamental roof.

 

By the time the Trump team officially joined the project, in May, 2012, many condominium residences had already been completed; at the insistence of Trump Organization staffers, most of the building’s interior was gutted and rebuilt, and several elevators were added.

 

After Donald Trump became a candidate for President, in 2015, Mother Jones, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and other publications ran articles that raised questions about his involvement in the Baku project. These reports cited a series of cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan in 2009 and 2010, which were made public by WikiLeaks. In one of the cables, a U.S. diplomat described Ziya Mammadov as “notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan.” The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, told reporters that the Baku hotel project raised no ethical issues for Donald Trump, because his company had never engaged directly with Mammadov.

 

<edit>

 

Ivanka Trump was the most senior Trump Organization official on the Baku project. In October, 2014, she visited the city to tour the site and offer advice. An executive at Mace, the London-based construction firm that oversaw the tower’s conversion to a hotel, met with Ivanka in Baku and New York. He told me, “She had very strong feelings, not just about the design but about the back of the hotel—landscaping, everything.” The Azerbaijani lawyer said, “Ivanka personally approved everything.” A subcontractor noted that Ivanka’s team was particular about wood panelling: it chose an expensive Macassar ebony, from Indonesia, for the ceiling of the lobby. The ballroom doors were to be made of book-matched panels of walnut. On her Web site, Ivanka posted a photograph of herself wearing a hard hat inside the half-completed hotel. A caption reads, “Ivanka has overseen the development of Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku since its inception, and she recently returned from a trip to the fascinating city in Azerbaijan to check in on the project’s progress.” (Ivanka Trump declined requests to discuss the Baku project.)

 

Jan deRoos, the Cornell professor, developed branded-hotel properties before entering academia. He told me that the degree of the Trump Organization’s involvement in the Baku property was atypical. “That’s very, very intense,” he said.

 

The sustained back-and-forth between the Trump Organization and the Mammadovs has legal significance. If parties involved in the Trump Tower Baku project participated in any illegal financial conduct, and if the Trump Organization exerted a degree of control over the project, the company could be vulnerable to criminal prosecution. Tom Fox, a Houston lawyer who specializes in anti-corruption compliance, said, “It’s a problem if you’re making a profit off of someone else’s corrupt conduct.” Moreover, recent case law has established that licensors take on a greater legal burden when they assume roles normally reserved for developers. The Trump Organization’s unusually deep engagement with Baku XXI Century suggests that it had the opportunity and the responsibility to monitor it for corruption.

 

Before signing a deal with a foreign partner, American companies, including major hotel chains, conduct risk assessments and background checks that take a close look at the country, the prospective partner, and the people involved. Countless accounting and law firms perform this service, as do many specialized investigation companies; a baseline report normally costs between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars. A senior executive at one of the largest American hotel chains, who asked for anonymity because he feared reprisal from the Trump Administration, said, “We wouldn’t look at due diligence as a burden. There certainly is a cost to doing it, especially in higher-risk places. But it’s as much an investment in the protection of that brand. It’s money well spent.”

 

Alan Garten told me that the Trump Organization had commissioned a risk assessment for the Baku deal, but declined to name the company that had performed it. The Washington Post article on the Baku project reported that, according to Garten, the Trump Organization had undertaken “extensive due diligence” before making the hotel deal and had not discovered “any red flags.”

 

But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force. In 2008, the year that the tower was announced, Ziya Mammadov, in his role as Transportation Minister, awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company. Keyumars Darvishi, its chairman, fought in the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, he became the head of Raman, an Iranian construction firm that is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering. Reuters recently reported that the Trump Administration was poised to officially condemn the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

 

 

 

 

much more at  link

[visionary]

 

[LD0506]

The FBI and DoJ should just send them copies of Trump's tweets, tell 'em "That's all we got"

[visionary]

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

[Jumbo]

More things are developing today on cyber attacks/contacts and an older story still active of "odd" banking connects (nothing big, but interesting enough) and as been said, will be ongoing...but today brought to my mind a comment I made some time ago....

 

so to promote the likelihood and titillation (however nerve-wracking) of ever-thickening plots and deepening intrigue, think of how formidable the adversaries might be that our agencies would be facing when investigating this stuff  if there really is any kind of cooperative secret game going on here re: hacks/rooksies/money/trumpets for any reason/motive...

 

they might be going up against top russian cyber operatives who may be the same as, or working with, the cyber experts assange's connected to, along with the fact rudy g. is the head of a major int'l cyber security firm...

 

so if those guys were up to something i'd bet they would make getting busted pretty damn hard...however, those are also the kind of deals that something small and stupid and unforeseen happens and ****s everything up lol

 

 

btw, remember when i also pointed out  trump said he was putting rudy (who owns that firm $$$) in charge of redoing out nat'l security systems...and i made a tin foil hat allusion to the idea it was signaling "we'll be able erase everything necessary and alter anything else we want in all those gov't records and every agency's data to read what we want for control of every narrative possible" (trying to channel Ken here but actually sounds too plausible with this group)

[visionary]

 

[BornaSkinsFan83]

 

 

 

Really starting to believe that this needs to end with some firing squads if we're to come out of this as anything other than Russia's ****. If so, hopefully we can throw Hannity in for therapeutic kicks. I know it would make me feel better. 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

What the **** is wrong with Sean Hannity? What the **** is wrong with the right?

[skinny21]

Slashing State Department budget, as well as axing many of the most experienced officials, including the top Russian expert 

Changing policy on Ukraine

Denigrating and threatening Nato

Pro Putin rhetoric 

Insulting allies

Trump Jr talks about extensive Trump business with Russia 

Trump Has business ties to Russian "fertilizer king"

 

Fertilizer king shows up in same location as Trump (more than once)

Putin (uncharacteristicly) does not respond to ousting of Russian diplomats

Roger Stone knows ahead of time about a Wikileaks release

Russia Today knows abead of time of wiki release 

Farage pals around with Trump

Farage visits Assange right after CIA wikidump (another of Russia's biggest enemies)

Russian ex military intelligence 'friend' of Manafort meets with campaign at Republican convention

The only change to the Republican platform is the Ukraine issue... and it's last minute

JD Gordon says Trump was behind the platform change

Russia connections to Steele dossier killed off

Tillerson is well known and respected to Putin, and now in charge of one of Russia's biggest enemies/threats 

Ross, who reduced Russian influence in Cypriot Bank, is brought into administration (after relinquishing his role in the bank).  

 

 

The links and quid pro quo above aren't enough on their own for a conviction, but damn me if they shouldn't be more than enough to get rid of these (dangerous) fools.  

 

Hell, I didn't even mention Flynn and Session.  The fact that the chairmen of the intelligence committees in both the House and Senate were both on the transition team is just the ****ing cherry on top.  

Edited March 10, 2017 by skinny21

[Jumbo]

Hannity is truly vermin. And Jeffrey Lord's good friend.

[LD0506]

7 hours ago, Jumbo said:

Hannity is truly vermin. And Jeffrey Lord's good friend.

 

True, but at least I get their motivations, they are amoral assholes pandering to morons for a buck, ie. "smart" businessmen.

 

It is the base that keeps me awake in a cold sweat, there are vast numbers of people that see the right colluding openly with the Russians to subvert and probably destroy America as we know- yeah, yeah, I know that sounds extreme but refute it, don't just dispute it- and they see this daily and THEY'RE OK WITH THIS!!!!! I never thought that millions of people across the midwest watched Westboro Baptists on TV and thought "Yep, they're right, God hates fags and we're all going to hell" Apparently they would rather see our country gutted, broken up and sold for scrap than see gays marry or blacks actually recognized as equal citizens. The feds are so EVIL for trying to help us all have clean air or water or safe food that they must be overthrown by this insane coup, and even if it means they lose their insurance or grandma's Medicare, even if means eliminating public schooling or constitutional protections, even if it meant we go so far as to build concentration camps in the Utah desert for all them danjerus libruls and Mexkin invadrrs, they would still be ok with this, cuz.........................

 

 

< Brain blue screen>

[Larry]

16 minutes ago, LD0506 said:

 

True, but at least I get their motivations, they are amoral assholes pandering to morons for a buck, ie. "smart" businessmen.

 

It is the base that keeps me awake in a cold sweat, there are vast numbers of people that see the right colluding openly with the Russians to subvert and probably destroy America as we know- yeah, yeah, I know that sounds extreme but refute it, don't just dispute it- and they see this daily and THEY'RE OK WITH THIS!!!!!

 

The only people complaining about it are liberals.  

 

(By definition.  Anybody who complains about it, is a liberal.)  

 

(I think we've seen other people alluding to similar thought processes, before.  People who are on food stamps, but when they think of food stamps, they think of welfare queens who have kids so that they can get more food stamps.  So, they'll vote to cut their own food stamps, because they figure that it will hurt that imaginary food stamp recipient more.)