CaptHaddock

9 minutes ago, Berkshire said:

Is that so?  This includes all the other folks that the Special Counsel plans to indict?  That would be a huge blow to the Trumpster and all his criminal buddies.

Manafort owns a house in VA.  I don't know if his tax domicile is VA, NY, or somewhere else, but since he evaded federal income tax on his foreign payments from dictators he certainly evaded state income tax in some state if the AG of that state is inclined to indict him.  Beyond state income tax evasion some of the financial crimes he has committed are likely to have ocurred in NY, whose AG is an ambitious Dem.

So, others in the Trump criminal enterprise may have criminal liabilities in VA or other states, but not necessarily all of them

WaPo has Dem gain in VA House of Delegates at 14 with 4 close enough to require recounts.  They need 17 to flip the House, which is still on the table.  This is a major upset for the Rs.

It's also important that the Dem candidate for Atty Gen in VA won since he is one of the state AGs with jurisdiction to charge Manafort on state charges that would be beyond the reach of a Trump pardon.

2 hours ago, amvet said:

Do you think it appropriate for the special council to investigate the taxes of every person who worked for Trump now and up to, say 3 or four years ago?   Is that part of an investigation into collusion? How about Trump real estate deals 20 years ago?  Is that part of Russian collusion? 

 

If the investigation is used to determine Russian interference aided by Trump I'm in agreement with you.  However I think my impression will be born out when I say it is a fishing expedition to dig up any dirt on Trump that is available and smear him till the public cries for a hanging or Trump gets upset and quits.  He's is not the most mature person I've ever seen. 

You mean "special counsel."  Yes, the special counsel should investigate not only tax returns, but banking activity and other financial history of anyone suspected of conspiring with foreign governments since those receiving such payments, which are not reported to the US govt, are especially likely to engage in money-laundering and tax evasion as Mueller has charge Manafort and Gates with.

Mueller's mandate from the Dept. of Justice is to investigate all the issues around Russian involvement in the 2016 election.  It specifically charges him to investigate any other crimes that he comes up in the course of his investigation. 

Flynn, Trump and all of Trump's family will be scrutinized by Mueller with the same thoroughness.  I expect all of them to be charged along with other small fish.  Trump will probably be named an unindicted co-conspirator with a recommendation of impeachment. 

14 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

And did that solve the problem of healthcare in America. Did it create unity?  Did it bring down premiums?  How was it that a president that controlled both houses couldn't get through Universal healthcare. Answer: Because he  didn't want to. He was pandering to a constituency while penalizing others and enriching his corporate sponsors. Hey, that's just my take.  Maybe it isn't exactly how it looks.

 

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/unh/stock-chart?intraday=off&timeframe=10y&splits=off&earnings=off&movingaverage=None&lowerstudy=volume&comparison=off&index=&drilldown=off

I notice how oversimplifications of this kind often prefer a single-actor theory, in this case: Obama did it.  The Clintons' attempted to reform health care in the 90's from the ground up, without the participation of stakeholders like the insurance companies and Congress.  Because these, and other, stakeholders wield substantial power, money, and influence they shut down the Clintons efforts, despite, by the way, Democratic control of both houses of Congress.  So, when Obama took on the problem, he never offered any health insurance plan of his own at all.  Instead, he handed the problem to Sen. Max Baucus, the senator who had received the most support from the insurance industry on Capitol Hill.  That's to say, he let the insurance companies write the bill, which they did.  So, we see, for example, that they agreed to drop their ability to exclude pre-existing conditions in exchange for the expected large increase in their customer base from mandated insurance.  Baucus went so far as to prevent any expert called to testify during hearings on the bill ever from even mentioning a single-payer option.  This is the sausage-making that produces legislation.  The result was a significant legislative achievement that brought concrete benefits to tens of millions of Americans, not just those who had previously been uninsured.

Had Obama attempted to dictate his terms or to drive the insurers out of business with Medicare-for-all his proposals would have ended up like the Clintons'. 

Obamacare has been the biggest improvement in health care access since LBJ instituted Medicare.  Criticizing it for not solving all of America's health care issues is abysmally misinformed.

1 minute ago, lannarebirth said:

I'm not a Trump supporter. I can't stand the guy, for decades now. You may be confused because I blame the Democrats for Trump.

Makes sense.  Just like we all naturally blame Heinrich Bruning for WWII.

12 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

 

No it isn't. She just does not seem very authentic to me. Take this week's me tooing about the rigged Democrat primaries. None of her actions she ever took suggested she cared about the fact the primaries were rigged, though she was in a position to know. Only once the cat was out of the bag does she try to distance herself from never endorsing Sanders and being in the bag for Clinton. That kind of thing. It wouldn't look good on anybody IMO whichever their gender.

Perhaps, but it's hard not to notice that the politicians who seem to have provoked the most outrage from you are both smart, ambitious women,  Warren and HC.  You have to admit that an accusation of opportunism from an admitted Trump supporter will ring a little hollow to those of us on the other side.  Of all the fulsome praise that we have heard heaped on Trump by his coterie of sycophants, no one has ever described him as a highly authentic individual.

Maybe your standards are a little opportunistic.

11 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

That's speculative of course re a Sanders candidacy but polls then and now suggest he would have won. Yeah he would have got beat up some but there wasn't enough muck to find for it to have much legs IMO. Warren IMO is an extremely poor candidate. An opportunist not well disguised. Is The Al Franken Decade finally here?  We'll see.

"An opportunist?"  Are you feeling nostalgic for the naivete of your teenage years?  Do you seriously imagine that any aspirant for high office is in any sense not an opportunist?  "Opportunist" wouldn't be a surrogate for "female," would it?

2 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

That's true, but there are thousands of similar counties to mine across America and they don't all lie in Blue states. I' certain mine and many other counties would have been a Blue county (it has been historically) if the Democrats had put up a better candidate.

I am not convinced.  Since the margin of votes that determined the outcome in the Electoral College was very small, it can be said that any number of factors might have had determined the outcome, e.g. voter suppression in key states, HC's travel schedule, Russian-sponsored adverts on Facebook, etc. etc. 

At it happened there was not another Dem candidate who could have won the popular vote as HC did.  Certainly, not Bernie Sanders on whom the Repub propaganda machine never turned its guns.  He would quickly have become the Jew Communist candidate for pres.  Elizabeth Warren would have been McGovern redux. 

Next time there will be possibilities.  Al Franken, for example.  If we are still holding elections by then.

14 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

I live in a Red county of a Blue state. Nobody I've talked to likes Trump at all and I've talked to a lot of people. But the thing is they really hate Hillary Clinton. They don't disguise their contempt in any way. I think Trump was an own goal score from the Democrats. As I look at the newly formed DNC it looks to me like they are getting ready to repeat some of their same mistakes.

 

So, it may appear if your sampling is a Red county in a Blue state, but those people had no effect at all on the outcome of the election. 

1 minute ago, lannarebirth said:

 

I don't think the Republicans in Congress have any allegiance to Trump. I think they back him if they think it helps their midterm chances and ditch him if they don't. They've got a rubber stamp president waiting in the wings who IMO is even worse than Trump. Be careful what you wish for.

Neither Pence nor any other member of the sorry lineup of Repub wannabes would have beaten Hillary.  Trump is their sole chance to keep the White House and they all know it.  That's what they are loyal to.  The Repubs who can't stomach Trump are being forced out even as we speak, to wit, Flake, Crocker, and some others.  They all know what happened to Gerald Ford. 

It's Trump's party now.

1 minute ago, lannarebirth said:

 

You are correct but I think a firing of the special counsel would be widely seen by reasonable people of all political persuasions as obstruction of justice, in appearance at least if not in fact. It would be an extremely stupid thing for Trump to do IMO and I think sets the countdown to the end of his presidency. If bot by impeachment, then be his resignation.

I am not so sure.  Nixon resigned only when the Republican leaders of Congress explained to him that he would lose in the Senate on Republican votes.  I don't think firing Mueller would result in impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate.  As we all know, the Congress is much more deeply politicized now than in the Nixon era.  Trump fired Sally Yates and then Comey to shut down investigations of his Russia connection and neither of those actions resulted in a debate on articles of impeachment in the House.  You have more faith in the integrity of the Republican members of Congress than I do.

If Trump does fire Mueller, which I believe is inevitable, the controversy that would ensue would paralyze Trump's presidency, an outcome I personally would regard as optimal.  There would be mass demonstrations, maybe round-the-clock filibustering by Dem senators, etc.  The Republic would indeed be in crisis, but the assault on our democratic traditions is already in full swing, so a wider recognition of the situation would be a step forward.

22 minutes ago, EvenSteven said:

Mitch McConnell stated he is not offering any protection to Mueller and his team on MSNBC today.  This could set up another constitutional crisis, if Trump decides to fire Mueller.

 

http://www.msnbc.com/hugh-hewitt/watch/one-on-one-with-sen-mitch-mcconnell-1088557123578

Not really.  There is no actual provision in the Constitution for independence of the Dept of Justice under the Attorney General, since the office of Attorney General was not created by the Constitution.  Trump would only be violating a tradition of such independence.  So, it only becomes grounds for impeachment when a majority of the House decides it is, which isn't going to happen.  The tumult that would ensue following Trump's firing of Mueller would only be a difference of opinion between Dems and Repubs.

The power to enforce the law rests with the president.  The president may have delegated some or all of such power to the Dept. of Justice, but it still remains his to exercise directly if he chooses.

2 hours ago, EvenSteven said:

Straw man.  You have falsely misrepresented what I've said by saying "every time a president signs an executive order that subsequently gets overturned by a court a constitutional crisis will have arisen."  Where did I say that an executive order necessarily challenges the Constitution?  I didn't.  Executive orders can challenge the Constitution, but who said they are necessarily in themselves a violation of the Constitution?  When they do challenge the Constitution though, they become a crisis.

 

Trump's travel ban was a good example of an order that violated the Constitution and it was a crisis during the intervening period, namely, up until the courts relieved the crisis.  And many people had to suffer as a result, but that is another matter and one in which the WH violated the Constitution again.

 

The travel ban violated the Constitution, but the consititutional remedy, being overturned by a federal judge, was effective, so no crisis ensued.  No commentator at the time described it as a constitutional crisis, if you recall.  If, in response to the judicial decision overturning the ban, the Trump administration had insisted on enforcing the ban, then all the commentators would have been talking up the new constitutional crisis.  At that point there would have been no remedy since the federal judge could not order the army to seize the immigration dept.

8 hours ago, EvenSteven said:

A Constitutional crisis is a breach in the Constitution or a violation in the duty of upholding the Constitution.  By law, the president has a duty to uphold the Constitution when he is sworn into office.  He has not.  Trump over-stepped his powers on at least five occasions that challenges the Constitution, as countless legal experts have pointed out, and the Congress will not act on it.  These include Trump's firing of Yates and Comey both of whom while in the duty of upholding the Constitution, Trump's smearing of a judge, Trump's profiting from the office of the WH and his travel ban.  All of these are in violation of the duty to uphold the Constitution.

What you describe is a mere violation of the Constitution, not a constitutional crisis.  When a president violates the Constitution, there is a remedy under the Constitution, impeachment and removal from office.  The situation only rises to the status of crisis if the remedy fails.  If, for instance, following conviction by the Senate, the president refused to relinquish the office.  That would be a constitutional crisis, since there is no further remedy under the Constitution.

The confusion about grounds for impeachment seems to be endless.  Impeachment was expressly established as a political, not a legal, process even though the process is analogous to a judicial trial and the grounds for impeachment are described in terms from English law.   In fact, however, grounds for impeachment are, as Gerald Ford once asserted, whatever a majority of the House of Representatives say they are.  Period. 

There is, therefore, no point in arguing that some particular crime does or does not meet the criteria as grounds for impeachment, even if such an interpretation can be argued from the usage of the legal terms in English law.  There is no body of case law on which to draw for precedent and, more importantly, there is no higher body with the authority to review and overturn the decision of the Senate in an impeachment trial.  If there were such a higher body to which to appeal a verdict of the Senate, then an appeal might well turn on whether the actions of the president satisfied the criteria as grounds of impeachment.  In the complete absence of such a court of appeal, no argument can be made from definitions can be made. 

If Mueller believes that Trump has obstructed justice whether by firing Comey or by some other action or inaction and that that obstruction of justice falls into the category of a high crime or misdemeanor, then he may make a recommendation to the House to consider an article of impeachment to that effect.  So, the question will not be whether Trump's actions constitute obstruction of justice in any legal sense, but only whether they do so in the sense of a majority of the House of Representatives. 

In my opinion, a constitutional crisis has not yet arisen.  We would be in a constitutional crisis if a part of the government demonstrably failed to perform its duties under the Constitution and the remedy under the Constitution failed.  For instance, Attorney General Sessions has refused to answer questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee in its role as overseer of the Department of Justice.  Sessions did so under an entirely bogus constitutional theory that the possible future invocation of the right of executive privilege by the president to protect that testimony entitled him immediately to refuse to testify.  The Senate may exercise its right to a remedy of this unconstitutional refusal by bringing a case before the Supreme Court to test Sessions' theory.  The Senate has not done this, so no constitutional crisis has arisen.  If the Senate were to bring a case before the Supreme Court compelling Sessions' testimony and the Court decided in favor of the Senate and Sessions still refused to testify, then that would constitute a constitutional crisis. 

On the coming constitutional crisis.  So, as the pressure on Trump mounts from more indictments, testimony, guilty pleas, flippers, etc. how far will he go in his efforts to escape punishment for his crimes?  We know that psychopaths like Trump have neither empathy nor guilt, believe themselves to be smarter than everyone else, and lack any moral scruples.  So, what steps might Trump take to hang on to power?  My list to watch for is as follows:

1.  Fire Sessions or instigate his resignation, appoint an acting AG who would fire Mueller or restrict his investigation to the point where Mueller resigns.

2.  Pressure Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate HC or the DNC.

3.  Pardon immediately Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, himself, his family, and anyone else for any federal crimes they might have committed.

4.  Provoke North Korea to fire on a US military ship or plane, the traditional American way to start a war.

5.  In response to an attack of some kind against US civilians or widespread protest, suspend habeas corpus, declare martial law, and suspend investigations as "aiding the enemy." 

6.  Suspend elections because of widespread voting fraud until reforms can be enacted.

7.  Permanently exclude from the WH news media unfriendly to Trump.

These measures may seem in varying degrees far-fetched, but since Trump demonstrably "thinks outside the box" of American democratic traditions, we ought to consider alternatives that we ordinarily wouldn't.  I wouldn't put any of these options beyond Trump.  The only considerations that would ever hold him back would be tactical, not moral.

Looks like Trump is preparing to fire Sessions whose support in Congress is now dropping from the implications of perjury on his part arising out of the Papadopoulos guilty plea and now the Carter Page testimony.  Trump's strategy is, now that Sessions is naked, to fire him with impunity and then have the new, acting AG either fire Mueller or hobble his investigation and then probably open up some smokescreen investigation of Clinton. 

Such a step would be a sudden, new lurch toward fascism in American governance.  But from Trump's recent complaints about his inability to get control of the criminal justice system, that's clearly what he longs for.

23 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

Not in this case.  The poll was pretty straightforward.  The results just changed over time, as all presidential polls do.  Especially when emails are leaked and fake news from Russia and other places comes out.  It had an effect for sure.  Reflected in the polls.

 

Please read this.  Seems these announcements did have an impact on voters.  Did they change the result?  Nobody will ever be able to prove it, but they did have an impact.  Much to the dismay of Trump and his supporters. LOL

 

http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/state/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-election/

 

 

I like what they said in this article.  The problem wasn't the polls, it's how they were used to tell the story of the campaign.

Well, as is often the case, it's the unexamined assumptions that blow you up. 

4 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

One of my favorite classes was stats when we went through the chapter "How to lie with statistics". LOL. What a hoot developing polls to get the results we wanted.

 

Polls are incredibly hard to setup and the results can easily be predetermined by the questions you ask, how you ask them, and in what order.  Sadly, hard core Trump supporters don't understand what polls are all about.  They just take the spoon fed BS from alternate new websites.

To start with.  It's also sometimes the case that polls are manufacturing the sentiment they claim to be measuring.  Don't know that this particular fault was alleged in the case of last year's election, but the deepest possible skepticism about polls may be justified.

25 minutes ago, EvenSteven said:

Sessions may have to resign himself for misleading the Senate Investigation Committee after he did not disclose a meeting with Papa, despite being asked over multiple appearances on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians.

 

“This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump team’s contacts with agents of Russia,” Senate Judiciary Committee member Al Franken (D-Minn.) wrote Thursday in a letter to Sessions.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-demand-that-sessions-explain-his-meeting-with-papadopoulos/2017/11/02/fd374a34-bffd-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.7389866c73f8

 

All true, however, it's well to bear in mind that the current push for Sessions to resign comes from the Gang of Breitbart as the first step in having Trump appoint a new Attorney General who will then fire Mueller.  So, on a lesser-of-two-very-evils theory I say keep Sessions on, vile snake that he is.

2 minutes ago, habanero said:

If they have to stretch this much to find a reason to charge someone, then this whole investigation looks like the witch hunt Trump says it is.

Here's what the Manafort indictment comes down to: It's not that he broke the law by repping for parties in foreign countries. It's not illegal to do that. And he wasn't acting as an agent of some sort of hostile power such that issues like treason would come into play. His business activities were legal, but he was supposed to fill out paperwork to register as a foreign agent. He allegedly didn't do that, so he was apparently in violation of the law.

But usually, when the Justice Department finds someone to be guilty of this particular violation, they don't prosecute. They just tell them to get it taken care of.

Why did Mueller decide to indict in this case? Probably because special counsels need a head to make the roll so he can justify the investigation, particularly in light of what we learned last week about Fusion GPS and Uranium One, not to mention the FBI's foot-dragging on the latter issue when Mueller was still the director.

So Manafort was indicted, and former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy thinks the big picture is looking pretty good for Donald Trump:

You have missed the point of Mueller's releases on Monday.  The Papadopoulos indictment and guilty plea to the minimal charge of lying to a federal agent is the carrot available to those who cooperate.  The stick, for those who do not cooperate, is to be charged with financial crimes going back as far as the statute of limitations permits as well as prosecution under such obscure laws as the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a law under which only about a half dozen prosecutions have taken place in the last fifty years.  In Manafort's case the nub is massive tax evasion up to as much as seventy-five million dollars worth.

Manafort, a wealthy sixty-four year old, may very well crack if he is indeed tried, found guilty, and sentenced to what will amount to the rest of his life in prison.  However, his strategy was made clear by his lawyer who, stopping to speak briefly to the assembled newsmen outside the FBI field office, said little about Manafort, choosing instead to emphasize Trump's supposed innocence.  So, Manafort is counting on a pardon from Trump.  However, it is likely that he will also be prosecuted in both Virginia and New York, which would be beyond the reach of such a pardon. 

So, Mueller's strategy in these initial indictments is not now to show his hand vis-a-vis Trump.  Tha'ts the endgame.  Right now he is just threatening the all the underlings, with carrot and stick, if they do not come forward to help him build his case against the kingpin.  There is nothing innovative here, but it works, cf. Nixon, Richard.

Just now, suzannegoh said:

Maybe I see what it is.  By any chance, do you have Java disabled but Javascript enabled?  That test is deducting 10 points for Flash being enabled (which Fidelity doesn't need) but deducts nothing for Javascipt being enabled.

Yes, that's it.  Javascript is enabled, but whoer doesn't consider it a threat.

Just now, suzannegoh said:

Do you mean that you can logon to Fidelity with JavaScript disabled or that you are able to get a 100% rating on whoer.net without disabling JavaScript?  When I disable JavaScript Fidelity's logon page doesn't even display the boxes in which to enter your password and username.

I get 100% from whoer and I see everything I expect to see when logged in to Fido.  Java, webRTC, and all those other offending programs are disabled.  This is Firefox 56.0.2.

5 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

 

However the reason for it being less than 100% does not appear to be anything related to timezones, it's because whoever runs whoer.net considers Javascript and Flash to be a security risk in and of themselves. The catch is that you can't logon to Fidelity's website with those disabled.

 

 

 

Doesn't appear to be true.  I get 100% from whoer.net and can login to Fidelity.  (Although I did close most of my accounts there as I related, I do still have one category of account that was not included in Fidelity's restrictions.)

5 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

But back to the original topic….
 

It seems like the only reliable method in Windows to avoid the problem of being in the “wrong” timezone is to actually change the system timezone on your computers.  And while it at first appears that Firefox doesn’t “see” system timezone changes except when it starts, that’s not actually at the case, it’s just that it’s not predictable when Firefox will notice the timezone change except when the browser first starts.  If you launch Firefox, and change the timezone while Firefox is running, Firefox won’t switch timezones immediately but it will eventually.

So for now my workaround is just to change the timezone before starting Firefox.
 

FWIW, a quick way to change timezones in Windows without poking through dropdown menus is to either issue one of the following commands at a commandline or to put them in a *.bat file:
 

To change to US East Coast timezone:
tzutil /s "Eastern Standard Time"
 

To change to Thailand’s timezone:
tzutil /s "SE Asia Standard Time"
 

To see what timezone your system is currently set to:
tzutil /g
 

To get a list of all valid timezones:
tzutil /l
 

And this passes the whoer.net test?  You get a 100% anonymity rating?