You bust no guns but you ready to go to war. Shut up and get back to posting shytty gifs and day old tweets
RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
We're not going to war though.
We slapped some dudes who were out of line.
Now we're back to business.
GO cry about it.
We should be dropping a few more, in my opinion.
Smiley worthy
This nikka just posted 6 times in a row...
Holy shyt
Holy shyt
I wish yall would just say, "fukk those people who got gassed" and be done with it.
Theres no real morality with some of yall.
Theres no real morality with some of yall.
This isn't "trump's plan"
This is "the world continues to turn admist Trump's fukkery"
This is "the world continues to turn admist Trump's fukkery"
Its possible the Brazilians did it for plausible deniability.
I see your point.
I never thought of that
Didn't make sense for Saddam to use gas either too...maybe it was the Chinese
Keep believing the U.S. media and war machine when they have outright killed people for snitching on their activities... and used the CIA for killing democratic leaders overseas just to keep money flowing in the pockets of rich white men, meanwhile we struggling here on the streets and getting mowed down by cops with impunity...
You call everyone who supports any military invention a chicken hawk.
You have none of this stamina to criticize Russia or China though.
Fence sitters like you have a career in being anti-American. You wouldn't know values if it slapped you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.b407c22452ad
The anti-anti-Trump cohort has a fatal flaw in its thinking
By Ronald A. Klain
President Trump — shedding staff, shredding norms — remains defiant, with little evidence that his critics are persuading supporters to abandon him. For some Trump opponents, this has led to new introspection about the effectiveness of “the resistance.” Case in point: David Brooks, a self-declared “Never Trumper,” proclaimed this week that the “anti-Trump movement is a failure” and that unless “somebody comes up with a better defense strategy, Trump and Trumpism will dominate” American politics in the future. Brooks is not alone in this second-guessing about the Trump opposition.
Perhaps some Never Trumpers believed that a mere “summer school” course on Life in Opposition — a few columns, some cable chatter and warning shots from the special counsel — would be enough to topple a Humpty Dumpty president. Most of us who have been in the trenches in politics had no such delusions. Here’s a reality check: The resistance is not “failing” — it is gathering steam for a long, uncertain battle ahead.
Let’s start with the fact that seems most vexing to the resistance critics: the failure of Trump’s approval rating to fall below 40 percent, even as bad news mounts. To be clear, at 40 percent, Trump remains as unpopular as he was when he was the most unpopular first-year president ever — 20 points below Gerald Ford after he pardoned Richard Nixon. True, Trump has not sunk further in this sub-sub-basement level of public support, but that misses the point: The success of the anti-Trump movement is in keeping him there, notwithstanding the low unemployment rate, stock market gains and billions in tax-cut stimulus surging through the economy. Only two other modern-era presidents enjoyed an unemployment rate below 4.3 percent in their terms and suffered an approval rating below 50 percent: Lyndon B. Johnson (during the Vietnam War) and Harry S. Truman (during Korea). Trump’s 40 percent approval rating doesn’t reflect a failure of his opposition: It reflects success in preventing Trump’s ratings from soaring the way any other peace-time president’s would under such conditions.
Moreover, the anti-Trump movement has shown political progress where it matters most: the ballot box. In the past 150 days, Trump opponents have won a blow-out in Virginia, the first newly elected Democratic senator from Alabama since 1986 and a victory in a Pennsylvania House district Trump carried by nearly 20 points. If the anti-Trump movement is “failing,” that’s news to the GOP leaders sounding “blue wave” tsunami alerts.
Nor have the anti-Trump movement’s wins been merely political: They have come in policymaking, too. Obamacare — albeit wounded — remains alive, covering about 12 million Americans. Deep cuts in social programs were reversed by a bipartisan spending bill Trump loathed — but signed. Trump’s wall is not built, states are enacting common-sense gun reforms and Trump’s environmental protection rollback is more rhetoric than reality.
A vibrant, booming legal resistance — powered by a mix of established groups and new organizations — has checked many of Trump’s worst initiatives. Court rulings have stopped his anti-refugee plans, moves against the LGBT community, deportations of “dreamers,” the foolish “voter integrity” commission, rollbacks of contraception rights, rule changes that undermine environmental protections and more.
True, some of these wins may be transitory, as Trump continues to press allies in Congress for action and to stack the courts with judges less likely to constrain him. But even with the White House and Congress in GOP hands, the anti-Trump movement has defied the odds to block many of Trump’s most outrageous ideas and preserved critical elements of President Barack Obama’s achievements.
Two final points show the flaw in the new anti-anti-Trump thinking.
First, the record number of Americans taking part in “resistance” protestsmay not yet have won over their fellow citizens, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t making progress. In February 1965, even after years of marching, a Gallup poll showed that a substantial amount of Americans (42 percent) still thought civil rights enforcement was moving too fast, rejecting the movement’s view that more action was needed — the month before the “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. A year later, again, after countless antiwar protests, a poll found that Vietnam “hawks” in the population outnumbered “doves,” 47 to 26 percent. Were the civil rights or anti-Vietnam movements “failures” in the mid-1960s? Or did they simply have more work to do before achieving their ultimate victories?
Second, it is true that 46 percent of voters backed Trump in 2016, and 40 percent still approve of his performance as president. But 46 percent of voters backed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, and 47 percent backed Mitt Romney in 2012, and no one thought McCain-ism or Romney-ism was ascendant. Trump’s continuing appeal points to the fact that we remain a divided country, where more Americans oppose Trump than support him, but elections — and policy-making power — turn on which group shows up at the polls and who wins the dwindling number of people who teeter between the two camps.
The resistance has much more to do, for sure. Victory is far from assured in either 2018 or 2020. But the anti-Trump movement has not failed. It is only just beginning.
Read more on this issue:
The anti-anti-Trump cohort has a fatal flaw in its thinking
By Ronald A. Klain
President Trump — shedding staff, shredding norms — remains defiant, with little evidence that his critics are persuading supporters to abandon him. For some Trump opponents, this has led to new introspection about the effectiveness of “the resistance.” Case in point: David Brooks, a self-declared “Never Trumper,” proclaimed this week that the “anti-Trump movement is a failure” and that unless “somebody comes up with a better defense strategy, Trump and Trumpism will dominate” American politics in the future. Brooks is not alone in this second-guessing about the Trump opposition.
Perhaps some Never Trumpers believed that a mere “summer school” course on Life in Opposition — a few columns, some cable chatter and warning shots from the special counsel — would be enough to topple a Humpty Dumpty president. Most of us who have been in the trenches in politics had no such delusions. Here’s a reality check: The resistance is not “failing” — it is gathering steam for a long, uncertain battle ahead.
Let’s start with the fact that seems most vexing to the resistance critics: the failure of Trump’s approval rating to fall below 40 percent, even as bad news mounts. To be clear, at 40 percent, Trump remains as unpopular as he was when he was the most unpopular first-year president ever — 20 points below Gerald Ford after he pardoned Richard Nixon. True, Trump has not sunk further in this sub-sub-basement level of public support, but that misses the point: The success of the anti-Trump movement is in keeping him there, notwithstanding the low unemployment rate, stock market gains and billions in tax-cut stimulus surging through the economy. Only two other modern-era presidents enjoyed an unemployment rate below 4.3 percent in their terms and suffered an approval rating below 50 percent: Lyndon B. Johnson (during the Vietnam War) and Harry S. Truman (during Korea). Trump’s 40 percent approval rating doesn’t reflect a failure of his opposition: It reflects success in preventing Trump’s ratings from soaring the way any other peace-time president’s would under such conditions.
Moreover, the anti-Trump movement has shown political progress where it matters most: the ballot box. In the past 150 days, Trump opponents have won a blow-out in Virginia, the first newly elected Democratic senator from Alabama since 1986 and a victory in a Pennsylvania House district Trump carried by nearly 20 points. If the anti-Trump movement is “failing,” that’s news to the GOP leaders sounding “blue wave” tsunami alerts.
Nor have the anti-Trump movement’s wins been merely political: They have come in policymaking, too. Obamacare — albeit wounded — remains alive, covering about 12 million Americans. Deep cuts in social programs were reversed by a bipartisan spending bill Trump loathed — but signed. Trump’s wall is not built, states are enacting common-sense gun reforms and Trump’s environmental protection rollback is more rhetoric than reality.
A vibrant, booming legal resistance — powered by a mix of established groups and new organizations — has checked many of Trump’s worst initiatives. Court rulings have stopped his anti-refugee plans, moves against the LGBT community, deportations of “dreamers,” the foolish “voter integrity” commission, rollbacks of contraception rights, rule changes that undermine environmental protections and more.
True, some of these wins may be transitory, as Trump continues to press allies in Congress for action and to stack the courts with judges less likely to constrain him. But even with the White House and Congress in GOP hands, the anti-Trump movement has defied the odds to block many of Trump’s most outrageous ideas and preserved critical elements of President Barack Obama’s achievements.
Two final points show the flaw in the new anti-anti-Trump thinking.
First, the record number of Americans taking part in “resistance” protestsmay not yet have won over their fellow citizens, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t making progress. In February 1965, even after years of marching, a Gallup poll showed that a substantial amount of Americans (42 percent) still thought civil rights enforcement was moving too fast, rejecting the movement’s view that more action was needed — the month before the “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. A year later, again, after countless antiwar protests, a poll found that Vietnam “hawks” in the population outnumbered “doves,” 47 to 26 percent. Were the civil rights or anti-Vietnam movements “failures” in the mid-1960s? Or did they simply have more work to do before achieving their ultimate victories?
Second, it is true that 46 percent of voters backed Trump in 2016, and 40 percent still approve of his performance as president. But 46 percent of voters backed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, and 47 percent backed Mitt Romney in 2012, and no one thought McCain-ism or Romney-ism was ascendant. Trump’s continuing appeal points to the fact that we remain a divided country, where more Americans oppose Trump than support him, but elections — and policy-making power — turn on which group shows up at the polls and who wins the dwindling number of people who teeter between the two camps.
The resistance has much more to do, for sure. Victory is far from assured in either 2018 or 2020. But the anti-Trump movement has not failed. It is only just beginning.
Read more on this issue:
Let me put this back in the original Russian:
Этот чувак думает, потому что у него есть понимание «realpolitik», что он каким-то образом делает его гуру и более важным и просветленным, чем он есть на самом деле.
Его не очень сложная концепция для понимания, и любой, у кого есть базовое понимание истории, может ее понять.
Его не очень сложная концепция для понимания, и любой, у кого есть базовое понимание истории, может ее понять.
A Brief History of Michael Cohen's Criminal Ties
From the Russian mob to money launderers, Trump's personal attorney has long been a subject of interest to federal investigators
4 days ago
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer, walks through the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on Jan. 6, 2017. Sam Hodgson/The New York Times/Redux
Copyright © Seth Hettena. Based on an excerpt from Trump / Russia: A Definitive History to be published by Melville House Publishing on May 8th.
Michael Cohen, President Trump's long-time lawyer and personal "pit bull," was brought to heel yesterday when federal agents raided his office in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center. The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, acting on a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is investigating Cohen for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations that stem, at least in part, from a $130,000 payment Trump's attorney made to hush up a porn star who says she slept with the president. ("I will always protect Mr. Trump," Cohen said.) Meanwhile, Mueller is investigating a $150,000 "donation" that Cohen arranged for Trump's foundation in 2015 from a Ukrainian billionaire named Victor Pinchuk. "Attorney-client privilege is dead!" Trump tweeted this morning. It's not dead, but the raid on Cohen's home, office and swanky Park Avenue hotel room is an extraordinary step that underscores his decade-long role as Trump's heavy, fixer and connector.
Cohen joined the Trump Organization in 2006, and eventually became Trump's personal lawyer, a role once occupied by Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy's heavy-lidded hatchet man during the Red Scare who advised Trump in the 1980s. Michael Cohen's bare-knuckled tactics earned him the nickname of "Tom," a reference to Tom Hagen, the consigliore to Mafia Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather. He grew up on Long Island, the son of a physician who survived the Holocaust in Poland, and like Tom Hagen spent a childhood around organized crime, specifically the Russian Mafiya. Cohen's uncle, Morton Levine, was a wealthy Brooklyn doctor who owned the El Caribe Country Club, a Brooklyn catering hall and event space that was a well-known hangout for Russian gangsters. Cohen and his siblings all had ownership stakes in the club, which rented for years to the first Mafiya boss of Brighton Beach, Evsei Agron, along with his successors, Marat Balagula and Boris Nayfeld. (Cohen's uncle said his nephew gave up his stake in the club after Trump's election.)
I spoke to two former federal investigators who told me Cohen was introduced to Donald Trump by his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine who arrived in the U.S. in 1975. Shusterman was in the garment business and owned a fleet of taxicabs with his partners, Shalva Botier and Edward Zubok – all three men were convicted of a money-laundering related offense in 1993. "Fima may have been a (possibly silent) business partner with Trump, perhaps even used as a conduit for Russian investors in Trump properties and other ventures," a former federal investigator told me. "Cohen, who married into the family, was given the job with the Trump Org as a favor to Shusterman." ("Untrue," Cohen told me. "Your source is creating fake news.")
Shusterman, who owned at least four New York taxi companies, also set his son-in-law up in the yellow cab business. Cohen once ran 260 yellow cabs with his Ukrainian-born partner, the "taxi king" Simon V. Garber, until their partnership ended acrimoniously in 2012. Glenn Simpson, the private investigator who was independently hired to examine Trump's Russia connections during the real estate mogul's presidential run, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Cohen "had a lot of connections to the former Soviet Union, and that he seemed to have associations with organized crime figures in New York and Florida – Russian organized crime figures," including Garber.
A curious episode in Cohen's life came in 1999 when he received a $350,000 check from a professional hockey player named Vladimir Malakhov, who was then playing for the NHL's Montreal Canadiens. According to Malakhov, the check was a loan to a friend. The friend, however, swore in an affidavit that she never received the money and never even knew the check had been written until it was discovered years later in a Florida lawsuit. So what happened to the money? One interesting lead was an incident involving Malakhov, who was approached in Brighton Beach and shaken down for money by a man who worked for the Russian crime boss, Vyacheslav Ivankov. "Malakhov spent the next months in fear, looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, avoiding restaurants and clubs where Russian criminals hang out," according to testimony an unnamed Russian criminal gave to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Cohen, who said he didn't know Malakhov or anyone else in the case, offered his own theories as to the origin and fate of the check in a 2007 deposition with Malakhov's attorneys.
Q. You don't recall why this check was written to you for $350,000 in 1999 and how these funds left your trust account in any way, shape or form?
A: Clearly Vladimir Malakhov had to have known somebody who I was affiliated to and the only person I can—and I mentioned my partner's name, Simon Garber, who happens also to be Russian.
Regardless of what he did or didn't know Cohen was able to purchase a $1 million condo at Trump World Tower in 2001, persuading his parents, his Ukrainian in-laws and Garber to do the same in other Trump buildings. Cohen's in-laws Fima and Ania Shusterman bought three units in Trump World Tower worth a combined $7.66 million (one of which was rented to Jocelyn Wildenstein, the socialite known as "Catwoman" for undergoing extreme facial plastic surgery to please her cat-loving husband). Cohen later purchased a nearly $5 million unit in Trump Park Avenue. In a five-year period, he and people connected to him would purchase Trump properties worth $17.3 million. All the frenzied buying by Cohen and his family caught the attention of the New York Post, often described as Trump's favorite newspaper. "Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market," Trump told a reporter in 2007. "He has invested in my buildings because he likes to make money – and he does." Trump added, "In short, he's a very smart person."
he had invested $1.5 million in a short-lived Miami-based casino boat venture run by his two Ukrainian business partners, Arkady Vaygensberg and Leonid Tatarchuk. Only three months after its maiden voyage, it would become the subject of a large fraud investigation. But Cohen was saved from his bad investment by none other than Trump himself, who hired Cohen as an attorney just before his casino ship sank. A source who investigated Cohen's connections to Russia told me, "Say you want to get money into the country and maybe you're a bit suspect. The Trump organization used lawyers to allow people to get money into the country."
Residents at Sunny Isles included people like Vladimir Popovyan, who paid $1.17 million for a three-bedroom condo in 2013. Forbes Russia described Popovyan as a friend and associate of Rafael Samurgashev, a former championship wrestler who ran a criminal group in Rostov-on-Don in southeastern Russia. Peter Kiritchenko, a Ukrainian businessman arrested on fraud charges in San Francisco in 1999, and his daughter owned two units at Trump Towers in Sunny Isles Beach worth $2.56 million. (Kiritchenko testified against a corrupt former Ukrainian prime minister who was convicted in 2004 of money laundering.) Other owners of Trump condos in Sunny Isles include members of a Russian-American organized crime group that ran a sports betting ring out of Trump Tower, which catered to wealthy oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. Michael Barukhin, who was convicted in a massive scheme to defraud auto insurers with phony claims, lived out of a Trump condo that was registered to a limited liability corporation.
Selling units from the lobby of the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles was Baronoff Realty. Elena Baronoff, who died of cancer in 2015, was the exclusive sales agent for three Trump-branded towers. Glenn Simpson, who spent a year investigating Trump's background during the campaign, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Baronoff was a "suspected organized crime figure."
An Uzbek immigrant who arrived in the United States as a cultural attaché in public diplomacy from the Soviet Union, Baronoff became such a well-known figure in Sunny Isles Beach that she was named the international ambassador for the community. Baronoff accompanied Trump's children on a trip to Russia in the winter of 2007–2008, posing for a photo in Moscow with Ivanka and Eric Trump and developer Michael Dezer. Also in the photo, curiously, was a man named Michael Babel, a former senior executive of a property firm owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian metals tyc00n Paul Manafort allegedly offered personal updates on Trump's presidential campaign. Babel later fled Russia to evade fraud charges.
Baronoff had interesting connections to Sicily. She reportedly met her friend, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, there. Baronoff was also close with Dino Papale, a local businessman, who described himself to The New York Times as "president of Trump's Sicilian fan club," while sporting a red "Make America Great Again" cap. Days after Trump's election in November, the local newspaper, La Sicilia, quoted Papale at length describing Trump's secret visit to the island in 2013. Papale hinted that he organized meetings between Trump and Russians.
Michael Cohen's in-laws, the Shustermans, also bought real estate in Sunny Isles. The development was paying off. Trump's oldest son, Don Jr., would later note, "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." There is no question Trump owed his comeback in large part to wealthy Russian expatriates.
here.
:moscowmjpls:I have no love for syria or the greater middle east...but I do know that America's military is constantly in the wrong being the world's policemen, it's nothing honorable about the military's actions around the world because for every good thing they do, there's a ton of negative shyt they do that people don't understand... shyt is gonna get to a point where the military is not gonna be necessary they cause more trouble than what it's worth... You can't be the world's policeman and expect your actions to go unanswered...
Keep sucking that american jingoistic nationalistic dikk nap... suck it dry til it clogs down your throat...
