Russia Investigation Heating Up

[Ashliana]

Nonsensical response that didn't address anything that Ashliana said.

Spoiler Alert: That was you spectacularly failing again. Fleeing. Conceding. Losing. Being blown out of the water. Example #2 in the last 2 days.

[time4fun]

[QUOTE=Adrian;2015628]

You are trying so hard to make sense.. but failing miserably. I feel like I should throw you a life preserver.. but I don't really want to. Keep struggling...

As far as my vote goes... who would I vote for? Hillary? What is it on her platform do you believe lines up with my political beliefs?

I knew what I was getting with Trump: Good judicial nominations (hopefully 1 or 2 more in the next 3 years!) and less government regulations.

PLUS, the entertainment value of seeing snowflakes like you have a complete meltdown. I not only called the election for Trump, I also predicted the entertainment I would receive from him winning.



Please tell me the Democrats are suddenly for a balanced budget, a solid middle class and a strong national defense! That would literally be music to my ears... unfortunately for you: that's just bullshit on your part and you know it.





Don't wreck'em too hard Parkbandit !

You don't actually know anything about deficit spending under the previous 6 administrations, do you?

Let's Review:


Reagan (R) 8 years: 132% increase
Bush Sr (R) 4 years: 36% increase
Clinton (D) 8 years: 1% reduction
Bush Jr (R) 8 years: 57% increase
Obama (D) 8 years: 57% increase
Trump (R) 4 years: currently on track to increase the deficit by almost as much as Obama did in 8 years


Obama is the one President there that had an actual Recession to deal with. His spending increase was required to keep the economy of completely shutting down.

You've been trained to think about nothing but spending- as though that's the sole factor that adds to the debt.

Meanwhile Republicans continue to slash revenue without actually reducing spending. PS $1 of government spending is actually better for the deficit than $1 of reduced revenue.

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly acquainted you people are with reality.

[time4fun]

How did that work out for you?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. Nothing bad happened to me. My quality of life isn't linked to which game forum I use.

Whirlin has been gone from the safe space forum for several months now. Cool logic.

I hardly played Gemstone from November through Feb due to a new job. But yeah, I guess I should have been here posting the same gif over and over again in a thread about a subject I'm too scared to have an actual opinion on like a winner.

It's fine, I'm sure your life only looks sad.

[time4fun]

Spoiler Alert: That was you spectacularly failing again. Fleeing. Conceding. Losing. Being blown out of the water. Example #2 in the last 2 days.

You know if we stop responding to them-we can get back to discussing the Russia investigation

[time4fun]

Several stories broke today:

1) A continuation of the previous news cycle about the report Mueller is supposedly planning on putting together. It looks like the timeline is expected to be sometime in June or July. That would make sense as Mueller isn't going to want to put anything out too close to the election. The fact that he is planning a report to answer "the public's questions" indicates that Mueller likely doesn't believe that he can indict a sitting President (either by constitutional law or by the DoJ's own stance). What's really interesting about this is that it's also typically DoJ policy not to release information in situations where no indictment is warranted. That would suggest either that Mueller believes that Trump is guilty of obstruction (and is writing a report in lieu of a criminal indictment he doesn't believe can be made), OR that Mueller has decided that simply declining indictment isn't enough- that this warrants a public Comey-style announcement. That would seem odd as it would open his investigation up to the same malpractice critiques Comey faced.

2) CNN is reporting that Mueller's team has been intercepting Russian Oligarchs who enter the US and questioning them (in one case actually taking electronic devices). Apparently he's looking to track Russian money that may have been funneled into the 2016 election through various means. The investigation into illegal campaign contributions via Russia has been reported on in the past, but this is the first time anyone has reported on targeting of Oligarchs.

We tend to run under the assumption that the reason why Republicans have been so reticent to investigation Russian election meddling is that they don't want to go down with Trump if they find something. But in the back of my mind, I've been wondering if maybe the concerns hit a bit closer to home. Russia was getting involved heavily in conservative circles (think NRA, Cambridge Analytica, etc). Republicans may also be afraid that investigating too closely will turn up evidence that Russian money or aid went to them. I'm not suggesting willful collusion, but if it turns out Russia DID use the NRA to funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election to help Republicans, just being associated with the NRA could suddenly become politically dangerous.

3) Yesterday the Judge in one of Manafort's cases (the one where he's targeting Mueller's investigation specifically) basically told him he had no case based on Mueller's filings. Manafort is definitely fighting until the bitter end, but the vast majority of what Mueller has been letting out publicly seems all bent on putting additional pressure on Manafort to flip. It will be interesting to see if he finally cracks.

4) Mueller seems to be continuing to narrow in on Stone's ties to wikileaks. My best guess is that he's pretty darn sure that if faced with any kind of prison time, Stone will sing like a canary. Stone is abjectly self-serving and seems like an obvious potential weak link. In fairness to Stone though, he actually seems to have a pretty good alibi in regards to having had dinner with Assange. Unfortunately, that email about dinner with Assange is honestly the least of his concerns.

[Parkbandit]

Spoiler Alert: That was you spectacularly failing again. Fleeing. Conceding. Losing. Being blown out of the water. Example #2 in the last 2 days.

I think we've sufficiently covered delusions of grandeur.

Let's move onto your personality disorders.

When did you start hearing other voices in your head?

When was the first time you can remember the self loathing feeling you obviously have?

[Fortybox]

Several stories broke today:

1) A continuation of the previous news cycle about the report Mueller is supposedly planning on putting together. It looks like the timeline is expected to be sometime in June or July. That would make sense as Mueller isn't going to want to put anything out too close to the election. The fact that he is planning a report to answer "the public's questions" indicates that Mueller likely doesn't believe that he can indict a sitting President (either by constitutional law or by the DoJ's own stance). What's really interesting about this is that it's also typically DoJ policy not to release information in situations where no indictment is warranted. That would suggest either that Mueller believes that Trump is guilty of obstruction (and is writing a report in lieu of a criminal indictment he doesn't believe can be made), OR that Mueller has decided that simply declining indictment isn't enough- that this warrants a public Comey-style announcement. That would seem odd as it would open his investigation up to the same malpractice critiques Comey faced.

2) CNN is reporting that Mueller's team has been intercepting Russian Oligarchs who enter the US and questioning them (in one case actually taking electronic devices). Apparently he's looking to track Russian money that may have been funneled into the 2016 election through various means. The investigation into illegal campaign contributions via Russia has been reported on in the past, but this is the first time anyone has reported on targeting of Oligarchs.

We tend to run under the assumption that the reason why Republicans have been so reticent to investigation Russian election meddling is that they don't want to go down with Trump if they find something. But in the back of my mind, I've been wondering if maybe the concerns hit a bit closer to home. Russia was getting involved heavily in conservative circles (think NRA, Cambridge Analytica, etc). Republicans may also be afraid that investigating too closely will turn up evidence that Russian money or aid went to them. I'm not suggesting willful collusion, but if it turns out Russia DID use the NRA to funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election to help Republicans, just being associated with the NRA could suddenly become politically dangerous.

3) Yesterday the Judge in one of Manafort's cases (the one where he's targeting Mueller's investigation specifically) basically told him he had no case based on Mueller's filings. Manafort is definitely fighting until the bitter end, but the vast majority of what Mueller has been letting out publicly seems all bent on putting additional pressure on Manafort to flip. It will be interesting to see if he finally cracks.

4) Mueller seems to be continuing to narrow in on Stone's ties to wikileaks. My best guess is that he's pretty darn sure that if faced with any kind of prison time, Stone will sing like a canary. Stone is abjectly self-serving and seems like an obvious potential weak link. In fairness to Stone though, he actually seems to have a pretty good alibi in regards to having had dinner with Assange. Unfortunately, that email about dinner with Assange is honestly the least of his concerns.

Tl;dr

You realize how much effort you are putting into a forum about games? LOL

[Parkbandit]

Several stories broke today:

1) A continuation of the previous news cycle about the report Mueller is supposedly planning on putting together. It looks like the timeline is expected to be sometime in June or July. That would make sense as Mueller isn't going to want to put anything out too close to the election. The fact that he is planning a report to answer "the public's questions" indicates that Mueller likely doesn't believe that he can indict a sitting President (either by constitutional law or by the DoJ's own stance). What's really interesting about this is that it's also typically DoJ policy not to release information in situations where no indictment is warranted. That would suggest either that Mueller believes that Trump is guilty of obstruction (and is writing a report in lieu of a criminal indictment he doesn't believe can be made), OR that Mueller has decided that simply declining indictment isn't enough- that this warrants a public Comey-style announcement. That would seem odd as it would open his investigation up to the same malpractice critiques Comey faced.

2) CNN is reporting that Mueller's team has been intercepting Russian Oligarchs who enter the US and questioning them (in one case actually taking electronic devices). Apparently he's looking to track Russian money that may have been funneled into the 2016 election through various means. The investigation into illegal campaign contributions via Russia has been reported on in the past, but this is the first time anyone has reported on targeting of Oligarchs.

We tend to run under the assumption that the reason why Republicans have been so reticent to investigation Russian election meddling is that they don't want to go down with Trump if they find something. But in the back of my mind, I've been wondering if maybe the concerns hit a bit closer to home. Russia was getting involved heavily in conservative circles (think NRA, Cambridge Analytica, etc). Republicans may also be afraid that investigating too closely will turn up evidence that Russian money or aid went to them. I'm not suggesting willful collusion, but if it turns out Russia DID use the NRA to funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election to help Republicans, just being associated with the NRA could suddenly become politically dangerous.

3) Yesterday the Judge in one of Manafort's cases (the one where he's targeting Mueller's investigation specifically) basically told him he had no case based on Mueller's filings. Manafort is definitely fighting until the bitter end, but the vast majority of what Mueller has been letting out publicly seems all bent on putting additional pressure on Manafort to flip. It will be interesting to see if he finally cracks.

4) Mueller seems to be continuing to narrow in on Stone's ties to wikileaks. My best guess is that he's pretty darn sure that if faced with any kind of prison time, Stone will sing like a canary. Stone is abjectly self-serving and seems like an obvious potential weak link. In fairness to Stone though, he actually seems to have a pretty good alibi in regards to having had dinner with Assange. Unfortunately, that email about dinner with Assange is honestly the least of his concerns.

Soooooo....... still no collusion.

Check.

[Parkbandit]

In terminal medical cases, doctors often deal with patients who move through “stages” that begin with denial. These so-called Kübler-Ross stages can be a long road toward acceptance. A weird form of Kübler-Ross seems to have taken hold of the media. Rather than refusing to accept indicators of impending death, many journalists and analysts seem incapable of accepting signs that the Trump presidency could survive.
That painful process was more evident Tuesday night when the Washington Post reported that special counsel Robert Mueller told the White House last month that Trump was not considered a “target” but only a “subject” of the investigation. After a year of being assured that “bombshell” developments and “smoking gun” evidence was sealing the criminal case against Trump, the dissonance was too great for many who refuse to accept the obvious meaning of this disclosure.
The U.S. Attorney’s manual defines a “subject” as a “person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation.” It is a designation that can change but it is also a meaningful description of the current status of an individual. Mueller at this time apparently does not believe Trump meets the definition of a target or a “person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.” That would have been less notable when Mueller was appointed in 2017 than it is now, after more than a year, dozens of criminal counts, hundreds of thousands of documents, and a bevy of cooperating witnesses.That Mueller does not believe there is “substantial evidence linking [Trump] to the commission of a crime” would seem to merit some, albeit grudging, recognition. However, there has been a disturbing lack of objectivity in the coverage of this investigation from the start. Throughout it, some of us have cautioned that the criminal case against Trump was far weaker than media suggested. Fired FBI Director James Comey himself told Congress that Trump was not a target of his investigation. Indeed, Trump was reportedly upset with Comey largely because Comey would not say that publicly.
When Trump fired Comey, I supported the call for a special counsel, and I still support Mueller in completing his investigation. However, the case of criminal conduct by Trump has not materially improved over the last year. Last October, Mueller brought the first indictments against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Richard Gates. Notably, none of the indictments were linked to the campaign, let alone Trump. When that obvious point was raised, we were told that it meant nothing and Mueller was likely holding back the really damaging indictments while pressuring Trump aides. Commentators continue to announce “bombshell” disclosures against Trump on a daily basis, with experts alleging clear cases for treason to obstruction to witness tampering and other crimes.
Then, in November, came the disclosure of plea agreements with former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. However, these pleas were for making individual false statements to federal investigators. Neither the charges nor the narratives in the filings tied Trump or his campaign to any criminal act. Later indictments involving lawyer Alex van der Zwaan and internet operator Richard Pinedo involved a false statement and a single count of identity fraud, again unrelated to Trump or his campaign. Nevertheless, commentators insisted Mueller was just laying the groundwork for his major filing.
In February, Mueller handed down indictments of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations for election-related crimes, from hacking to identity fraud. Not only did these charges not implicate Trump or his campaign, but the filing expressly stated that no one in the Trump campaign knowingly engaged Russians in these efforts. Now, Mueller reportedly has said he does not consider Trump a “target” of the criminal investigation. Looking at each of the prior filings, the disclosure would seem consistent with a lack of compelling evidence of a crime by Trump. Indeed, it would indicate Trump’s status has not changed from when Comey told Congress that Trump was not a target.
Still, some analysts immediately denied that Mueller’s disclosure was anything but bad news for Trump. On CNN, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin insisted that “being a ‘subject’ is a very serious thing” and a “very significant designation” because it is clear “the FBI is investigating the president.” Of course, the only lower designation in a criminal investigation would be “witness.” Moreover, it was confirmed last year that Trump was being investigated.

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary...riminal-target

Sorry

[cwolff]

Tl;dr

You realize how much effort you are putting into a forum about games? LOL

Its great isnt it? I get a lot from her perspective and don't even have to buy simucoins for it.