Away all Goats posted:

Ariong posted:

The_Donald, the most garbage part of a website made largely out of garbage, is not reacting well to Donald Trump’s pro-gun reform comments today. Get it while it’s hot, which is to say before the moderators are done removing any and all dissent. Pretty soon all that will be left are the people insisting that this is all another move in Trump’s game of 4D chess.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/811gsu/rthe_donald_is_imploding_following_trumps_progun/

Hahah saying the words 'trump train' triggers a bot, leading to this:

Feonir posted:

https://i.imgur.com/BbOrzex.mp4

Kelly posted:

I think if I died, I would be upset if my long-time husband almost immediately started dating someone almost young enough to my granddaughter. That seems...unsettling.

Burt Sexual posted:

You’re dead.

Kelly posted:

well in my scenario I'm haunting him should've been more clear about that

get that OUT of my face posted:

robert kraft is a disgusting lich like most nfl owners

cuntman.net posted:

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/970113622063177729

quote:

Quebec’s potential as a Bitcoin-mining nirvana is starting to fizzle.

Earlier this week, Hydro-Quebec warned that there won’t be cheap power available for every company that wants to set shop in the province and suggested it may set a higher tariff for cryptocurrency miners. On Friday, the government — the utility’s owner — questioned the companies’ contribution to the province’s economy.

“If you want to come settle here, plug in your servers and do Bitcoin mining, we’re not really interested,” Premier Philippe Couillard said at a conference in Montreal Friday. “There needs to be added value for our society; just having servers to do transaction mining and acquire new bitcoins, I don’t see the added value.”

Couillard said he’s more open to companies that would help create “a real eco-system or a real technological transformation centered on blockchain,” even if they use cryptocurrencies to finance their project.

Intel&Sebastian posted:

We're still squarely in the middle of it but a former Trump aide got a subp asking for all his comms between him, trump and all of trumpland and in response he has downed a bottle of whiskey and started calling various cable news shows and telling them about all the crimes instead of Mueller....seemingly because he doesn't want to hand over certain emails between him and Roger Stone and thinks Mueller will just back off if he lets it all loose on TV rather than in an interview?

Nonsense posted:

This is the one of the best character introductions ever done

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

https://twitter.com/DelWilber/status/970770987959640064
https://twitter.com/DavidNakamura/status/970771774777516037
https://twitter.com/cushbomb/status/822504053057929218

Smirr posted:

At 4:50 in the Tapper interview, Nunberg calls Trump an idiot. SHortly afterwards, you can hear him slam a glass into the table. Lmao

e: all of those belches, lmfao. When he did the first call, he was already drunk, and then he kept drinking live on the air. Haaaaaaaaaaaa

Obsidianheart posted:

poo poo it's only Monday.

Solarin posted:

that's nunbergwang

Quotey posted:

wow, man, you uh really should have gotten to the 5th

Dumb Lowtax posted:

Awesome stuff

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/970789672317345792

Nebakenezzer posted:

Today was a good day, holy poo poo

What are we going to name this? Nixon had his Saturday Night Massacre, this is-?

StandardVC10 posted:

Mayhem Monday?

...just Monday?

Gum posted:

The Nunberg Rally

Gum posted:

To be followed by the Nunberg Trials

quote:

L’Affaire Kushner
A series of revelations about the White House princeling have added further credence to the key claim of the Steele dossier.

Jared Kushner had a very bad week. So bad in fact, it was hard to keep track of how many bad stories there were. The most publicized event, the White House senior adviser and presidential son-in-law losing his security clearance, was the least surprising. The more shocking—and potentially important—revelations are two stories about massive loans he’s sought and their links to Qatar and a third story about how special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating those links. While no crimes have been proven, the stories of Kushner’s loans line up remarkably well with one of the Steele dossier’s core allegations of Russian bribery. According to a report by NBC News on Friday, these dealings are also now a key line of inquiry for Mueller’s probe into Russia’s interference in our presidential election.

Kushner is currently facing potentially massive ramifications for a disastrous $1.8 billion real estate deal he struck a decade ago. The slew of new stories suggest that he may have orchestrated a foreign policy crisis to pressure Qatar to bail him out. Months later, a firm linked to Qatar gave him a staggeringly large loan. All of these events suggest how Russia might have delivered a possible quid—a potential payment from a huge oil sale through back channels—in return for a Trump administration quo—a reported promise of reduced sanctions.

Let’s start with the key sections of the first big story: On Wednesday, the New York Times reported:

[I]n November, [Private equity firm] Apollo [Global Management] lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper. Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show. …

Mr. Kushner’s firm has sought investments from the Chinese insurer Anbang and from the former prime minister of Qatar. …

One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.

Mr. Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That investment never materialized.

Now let’s look at the key sections of the second story: On Friday, the Intercept reported:

The real estate firm tied to the family of presidential son-in-law and top White House adviser Jared Kushner made a direct pitch to Qatar’s minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the company’s portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushner’s father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners’ signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City. …

The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatar’s neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff.

So: A Qatari fund acquires major assets from Russia. Kushner’s business seeks money directly from Qatar. The nation, though, does not deliver to Kushner. The U.S. changes its political posture against Qatar at Kushner’s urging, with the alarming possibility that the seemingly manufactured conflict could have escalated into war. (Fortunately, it did not.) Several months later, the Qatar-backed Apollo Group delivers $184 million to Kushner.

All of this should be considered an incredible scandal in its own right, worthy of serious congressional inquiry. Once you factor in, however, the portions of this that are consistent with some of the allegations in the Steele dossier, the stories potentially become even more explosive.

All of this should be considered an incredible scandal in its own right, worthy of serious congressional inquiry.
The Steele dossier alleges that Russians made a deal with Carter Page in the summer of 2016 to sell 19 percent of fossil fuel giant Rosneft, a multibillion dollar deal, and secretly transfer benefits to Trump officials. The dossier alleged that Page was a campaign intermediary to meet personally with Russians, and that Igor Sechin—the CEO of Rosneft and a close Putin ally—and Page had held a “secret meeting” to discuss “the issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” The dossier further alleged that Sechin offered Page the brokerage of a 19 percent stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Page has denied that this meeting with Sechin ever took place.

Page’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, however, confirmed that he at the very least discussed these general topics with key Russian figures at critical points in the Steele dossier timeline. For example, Page confirmed that he had spoken with Andrey Baranov, the head of investor relations at Rosneft and an employee of Sechin, when in Moscow in July 2016. He also acknowledged “briefly” discussing “a potential sale of a significant percentage of Rosneft” with Baranov. Finally, he would only say that he didn’t “directly” express support for the idea of lifting sanctions on Russia with Baranov.

Meanwhile, on Dec. 9, 2016, a month after the election, Russia made a deal with Qatar to sell 19.5 percent of Rosneft. Reuters reported at the time:

The privatization deal, which Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin called the largest in Russia’s history, was announced by Rosneft in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. Its success suggests the lure of taking a share in one of the world’s biggest oil companies outweighs the risks associated with Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Rosneft had been under pressure to secure a sale of the 19.5 percent stake to help replenish state coffers, hit by an economic slowdown driven by weak oil prices and exacerbated by sanctions.

The deal falls squarely in the middle of a time when Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Page were communicating with Russians in ways that would later prove very embarrassing and potentially suspicious. Here is that timeline, which I initially compiled for my blog in June:

Dec. 1: Just eight days before this oil megadeal, Flynn and Kushner met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Kushner proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. After it was revealed in the press and he was interrogated by congressional investigators, Kushner acknowledged that he was seeking to offer the Russians a “secure line” to the transition team. Congressional investigators would later be curious as to whether or not this back channel might have been intended for the purposes of finding someone to help bail out his family’s real estate company.

Dec. 8: Carter Page—as he later confirmed in his own congressional testimony—meets with Rosneft executives, and then flies to London to discuss new business opportunities in Kazakhstan with Gazprom officials.

Dec. 9: The “largest oil deal in Russia’s history” is announced.

Dec. 13: Kushner meets Sergey Gorkov, who chairs Russia’s government-owned VE Bank (VEB) and is Putin’s close confidant. Analysts have described VEB as Putin’s “private slush fund,” a source of money independent from official Russia budgeting. VEB is under strict U.S. sanctions.

Dec. 14: Gorkov reportedly immediately flies to Japan to meet with Putin.

Dec. 29: Obama orders new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference. On the same day: Flynn calls Kislyak five times about Russian sanctions. Trump tweets about Putin the next day, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions before Trump has had a chance to transition into office.

The Rosneft sale was right after Trump’s victory but before the inauguration. It was also right after Kushner’s push for a secret communications link to the Kremlin through the Russia embassy that U.S. intelligence couldn’t access, and right before Kushner’s meeting with Putin’s banker and confidant Gorkov.

Again, while Page has denied meeting with Rosneft boss Sechin, who is strictly limited by U.S. sanctions, he acknowledged he “had a brief lunch with Andrey Baranov.”

“Mr. Sechin is under sanctions, is he not?” Schiff asked Page during congressional questioning. “And as someone working on investor relations for a CEO who is under sanctions, would it be advantageous for that head of investor relations [Baranov] to see those sanctions go away?”

Here Page contradicted himself on whether sanctions were ever discussed. Page first said nothing Baranov “said to me ever implied or asked for anything related to sanctions.” In his very next breath, he confesses “there may have been some general reference” to sanctions.

Natasha Bertrand’s reporting on Page’s testimony lays out further how Page confirmed in his testimony some key elements of the dossier and demonstrated additional evidence for the dossier’s findings. Page, critically, had meetings with Rosneft officials in July 2016 in which those officials discussed both the massive sale of Rosneft and the Trump administration lifting sanctions on Russia. His testimony and his emails confirm that Page got advance approval from high-ranking Trump officials like Sam Clovis to go to Russia for that July trip, and he communicated with Trump officials immediately after the trip congratulating them for a stunning pro-Russia change in the Republican Party platform on Ukraine policy. Page then went back to Russia a day before the Rosneft megadeal was announced to meet with Rosneft executives, and then went to London to talk to Gazprom officials about new investment opportunities.

In considering all these new revelations and how they might connect to the old ones, it’s important to remember Jared Kushner’s business history. Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg Business News laid out that history beautifully in a June Trumpcast interview with Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg. O’Brien explained how, 10 years ago, a 26-year-old Jared Kushner made a terrible bet on Manhattan real estate. His father had just been released from prison, and Jared had taken over the family business. He was looking to make a big splash, so he sold off his family’s holdings in New Jersey in order to purchase a huge building in midtown Manhattan—666 5th Ave.—for $1.8 billion. Unfortunately for Kushner, this was in 2007. Markets subsequently crashed and Kushner had a financial debacle on his hands. He negotiated a deal to save the project from bankruptcy with a 10-year loan, but the creditors were set to call in their debts around now. (NBC News reported that $1.4 billion in debt was due in 2019.) About a year ago, Kushner reportedly had a deal with a Chinese bank in place to restructure the deal in a way that would offer a $500 million windfall, but it fell apart after public reporting.

The bottom line is that all this new Kushner news connects more dots in the Steele dossier’s core allegation: that there may have been a quid-pro-quo of Russian oil money for Trump policy change on sanctions. There are still obviously a lot of loose and unknown threads here and no direct evidence yet that Russia is behind any of the Qatari deals. Depending on which dots Mueller is himself able to connect, however, the latest evidence would also strengthen any possible charges against Kushner and a slew of Trump officials, as well as any potential case of obstruction of justice against the president himself. Finally, there is still the even more alarming question about whether the Trump family businesses’ conflicts of interest almost led the president to escalate a regional dispute to the brink of armed conflict. In light of the Steele dossier and how Qatar might implicate Russia, Kushner and Trump have even more to answer for.

quote:

Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier
How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.


...

In 2008, Steele informed M.I.6 that he planned to leave the service and open a commercial intelligence firm with Burrows. He left in good standing, but his exit was hastened, because M.I.6 regarded his plans as a potential conflict of interest. Launching the business was a risky move: London was filled with companies run by former intelligence officers selling their contacts and inside knowledge. To differentiate itself, Orbis, which opened its office in Mayfair, attempted to exploit Steele’s Russian expertise. The strategy appears to have paid off. According to people with knowledge of the company, Orbis grossed approximately twenty million dollars in its first nine years. Steele now drives a Land Rover Discovery Sport, and belongs to a golf club. He also runs a bit, but the feats that kept him in shape while he was a spy—he ran six marathons and twenty-five half-marathons, and competed in a dozen Olympic-length triathlon events—have been replaced by the carrying of a briefcase. His free time is devoted largely to his family, which includes three cats, one of whom not long ago replicated the most infamous allegation in the Steele dossier by peeing on a family member’s bed.
...

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.

As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him. There are plenty of domestic political reasons that Trump may have turned against Romney. Trump loyalists, for instance, noted Romney’s public opposition to Trump during the campaign. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump aide, has suggested that Trump was vengefully tormenting Romney, and had never seriously considered him. (Romney declined to comment. The White House said that he was never a first choice for the role and declined to comment about any communications that the Trump team may have had with Russia on the subject.) In any case, on December 13, 2016, Trump gave Rex Tillerson, the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil, the job. The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillerson’s business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them.

...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/06/politics/donald-trump-gridiron-north-korea/index.html posted:

President Donald Trump was referring to his South Korean counterpart on Saturday evening when he cryptically recounted a telephone call he'd taken about opening talks with North Korea.

The President's remarks came during an off-camera speech he delivered at the Gridiron dinner, a white-tie event for journalists.
"By the way, they called up a couple of days ago and said we would like to talk," Trump said during his remarks. "And I said, so would we, but you have to de-nuke. You have to de-nuke. So let's see what happens. Let's see what happens."
On Saturday evening and in the days after, White House officials declined to elaborate further on the remarks, leading to confusion about whether Trump was referring to North Korea, the country he's repeatedly pressed to abandon its nuclear program.
But on Tuesday morning, a US official said Trump was referring to a call he'd taken earlier in the week from South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
"The President was referencing his March 1 telephone call with President Moon," the official said.
During that call, Moon "briefed President Trump on developments regarding North Korea and inter-Korean talks," according to the White House.
"President Trump and President Moon noted their firm position that any dialogue with North Korea must be conducted with the explicit and unwavering goal of complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization," the White House said.

Crow Jane posted:

Oh hey, the Fyre Fest douchebro is in some pretty deep poo poo:

https://trib.al/7jbV3HY

Not directly Trump-related, but seeing rich fucks/grifters/both get in trouble is good for the soul.

quote:

Amazon Knows Alexa Devices Are Laughing Spontaneously And It's "Working To Fix It"

Dumb Lowtax posted:

https://twitter.com/BradfordPearson/status/971198127276544001/photo/1

I'm having a lazy day, can someone pick up the slack for me and find some uplifting stuff?

quote:

Nothing brings people together like the thought of a crying Martin Shkreli getting his rear end tossed into jail

Exultations rang out across the land this afternoon, as the news spread far and wide: Martin Shkreli, the smirking “Pharma Bro” who single-handedly ruined the United States Of America through his toxic mixture of arrogance, attention-seeking would-be supervillain antics, and a series of legitimately monstrous business decisions, has finally been sentenced to jail. Take the trackers off your babies and the locks off your doors, folks; we got the Bad Man, and now everything’s going to be okay.

MizPiz posted:

https://twitter.com/StopSpencerMSU/status/972948142592274440?s=19

Nebakenezzer posted:

Apoligies

Dumb Lowtax posted:

https://twitter.com/abc13houston/status/971593872039120896

quote:

We send a car to Japan, they analyze it for four weeks before they decide to send it back because it’s not environmentally friendly. … One of the car companies actually had a car made and it was the most environmentally perfect car, cost them a fortune. They spent a fortune. … But they wanted to see if they could get it in [to Japan]. And it, they were going crazy. Four days went by. Then five days. And they were ready to approve it and they said, no, no, we have to do one more test. It’s called the bowling-ball test, do you know what that is? That’s where they take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and they drop it on the hood of the car. And if the hood dents, then the car doesn’t qualify. Well, guess what, the roof dented a little bit, and they said, nope, this car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible, the way we’re treated. It’s horrible.

quote:

The implosion began at a TWP compound in Paoli, Indiana, where Parrott’s wife, Jessica, was allegedly having an affair with Heimbach—who is married to Parrott’s stepdaughter from a previous marriage.

Heimbach and Jessica told Parrott they’d ended the relationship, but Parrott and Heimbach’s wife were skeptical. They arranged to “set up” Heimbach and Jessica in a trailer on Parrott’s property to catch them having sex.

Parrott stood on a box outside the trailer and watched Heimbach and Jessica have sex inside, according to a police report. When the box broke under Parrott’s weight, he entered the trailer to confront them. Heimbach allegedly choked him and chased him into a house, where Parrott threw a chair at him. Heimbach hit back, choking him into unconsciousness, according to the police report.

Visidan posted:

https://twitter.com/EyesOnTheRight/status/974790889532022784

Nebakenezzer posted:

So I'm going to post this in the good news thread, who is this chud

Captain_Maclaine posted:

One of the alt-right's many flash-in-the-pan figures who's been widely speculated to be either a snitch or outright infiltrator as he improbably kept making bail on clear-cut weapons charges following various demonstrations he's been arrested at.

Qu Appelle posted:

Let's see what's going on with Based Stickman:

https://twitter.com/hfricken/status/973982832182915072

https://twitter.com/stylewylde/status/973983479527489536

HEY NONG MAN posted:

https://imgur.com/gallery/vVbzR

I can’t even comprehend how amazing this is. it’s pure strain.

aware of dog posted:

lmao

"DON'T WORRY EVERYONE, I'M DESTROYING THE EVIDENCE"

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

KillHour posted:

I like the part where the executive says "We're totally on the up and up. Like, we'd never send hookers to your opponents to entrap them, for instance. That's crossing a line." Then the CEO says "We'll DEFINITELY send hookers. Ukranian ones. Very effective - we've done it before."

QuoProQuid posted:

cambridge analytica appears to have had a novel strategy of combining people willing to commit international conspiracy with people who cannot stop bragging about committing international conspiracy

Dumb Lowtax posted:

An undercover reporter caught Cambridge Analytica in some hilariously illegal admissions and it aired on TV

https://twitter.com/C4KylieM/status/975807101628026886

https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/975818564652486656

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/975810330474397697

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/975809115174854656



https://twitter.com/gavinsblog/status/975816384390328322

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/975816438933049344

Other stuff:

https://twitter.com/srl/status/975782737629065217

https://twitter.com/GregStohr/status/975813284757688320

https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/964575838418227200

https://twitter.com/gapingmaws/status/975358764109856769

cuntman.net posted:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/976154907165233153?s=21

SKULL.GIF posted:

things that happened today:

• facebook failed bigly at trying to drop serious news over the weekend and now they're being summoned before congress. zuck lost billions and is still worth 99 billion
  
• tech stocks are trending down sharply and taking banks with them. dow closed 1.5% down and everyone's spooked
  
• austin had a 4th bomb go off and it's pretty much a terrorism being done but no one in the msm will talk about it
  
• turkey seized 1.4kg of radioactive californium that's used to kickstart nuclear reactors. the only places in the world it's made is USA and Russia
  
• canada is pumping bigly money into border security because so many americans are doing a refugee
  
• robot cars are murdering people and uber froze operations to deal with it
  
• trump banned bitcoin from venezuela
  
• trump is dropping $60 billion tariffs on china on friday
  
• cambridge analytica was blackmailing loads of politicians and facebook was in on it and was trying to delete data and got kicked aside when the government raided C.A.
  
• trump org was paying millions to C.A. to mindhack the election and their CEOs were caught on tape explaining how they're responsible for the election victory and how they blackmail politicians into doing what they want
  
• pennsylvania gerrymander was struck down and we'll have a fair map for the 2018 midterm in PA
  
• paul ryan is terrified of the iron stache and might not run in november and that becomes more likely every day
  
• california is about to be hit by a megastorm that will create megamudslides everywhere
  
• there is a donald trump dick photo and we're going to see it before we die
  

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

shot

https://twitter.com/RepMcSally/status/974390109033426945?s=20

chaser

https://twitter.com/SchottHappens/status/975809841519149056?s=20

quote:

Facebook's slide cost Mark Zuckerberg $6.06 billion in one day

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg lost a whopping $6.06 billion in Facebook stock value on Monday, amid a flurry of bad news.