Mega-Thread: Mueller investigation

[Draco-Onis]

Valid. But Trump's been distancing himself. There is a damn near zero percent chance he does something as stupid as helping Manafort flee the country. Hell, I don't even expect a pardon...until he's leaving office.

Never underestimate Trump's stupidity, I have learned that lesson.

[Vankrys]

i wonder if Mueller could be in danger, if a hit on him is completely outside the realm of possible. He is going after the wealthy and powerful after all.

[Skroe]

So this is happening.



https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...igation-244370



Clovis, by the way, was Papadopolous' supervisor mentioned in the guilty plea.

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i wonder if Mueller could be in danger, if a hit on him is completely outside the realm of possible. He is going after the wealthy and powerful after all.

They won't do it. It won't stop the investigation. If anything it'll embolden it. This is also why, with a guilty plea in hand, Mueller is also firing proof.

Mueller is a front man for a team. Let's say over the next 2 years this nabs Donald Trump and sends him to jail for the rest of his life. Will Mueller's job be done? No. He is charged with investigating the entirety of Russian interference in our electoral system in 2016, whose cousin is the larger question of foreign meddling in our democracy stretching back decades.

This is an investigation that will stretch years after Trump, and whose long term ramifications are more important than Trump. The United States, as the richest, most powerful country in the world, has been blithely delusional as to it's supposed invulnerability for many years, to the point that it takes for granted threats from nation states that, while not wanting (or even capable of) dominating it, of "nudging" it in desirable directions to advice their own interests. This includes, Democrats and their China friendship in the late 1990s, Republicans and Saudi Arabia stretching back decades, and in the past decade, hard right Republicans and Russia.

So consumed with Terrorism and ISIS and all sorts of other non-existential threats, the US has become, that it has ignored the kind of intelligence operations that countries have always done against each other. Counter Intelligence experts laments that the US's once world class CI has gone to ruin since the 1990s.

Mueller will one day hand off the investigation to a successor, and the investigation may branch out. It's that big. The end result though, beyond Trump, must be that the US build up its counter-intelligence defenses.

[Jeezy911]

Or maybe he just wasn't such a shitastic president?

Again, why don't you actually address an issue rather than your constant whining?

Ok name his top 3 accomplishments without laughing.

[Felya]

Ok name his top 3 accomplishments without laughing.

Remember how Obama invited both the professor and the cop for a beer at the White House? Why do you think the press reporting that, didn’t seem as bad as the press reporting Trump calling NFL players sons of bitches and demand they be fired?

But, you want Obama’s accomplishments, to know why Trump is treated like shit. Maybe once you make through previous 44 presidents, you’ll finally arrive at your reason. Maybe not...

[Breccia]

i wonder if Mueller could be in danger

No.

Besides the fact that he likely travels with armed FBI agents at all times, making him into a martyr would only make the investigation stronger. Worse, it'd make the entire intelligence community very, very motivated -- see also, furious.

And there's no reason to False Flag that, because the people who would do so, think Trump is guilty, and would just let that be proven.

Killing Mueller would be the single worst mistake anyone in his sights could do.

[Grapemask]

Ok name his top 3 accomplishments without laughing.

You realize literally anyone can name dozens of these, other than viewers of deeply conservative media? Even conservatives who don't watch said media. The entire website of Whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com sprang up in response to you loons that have absorbed so much propaganda that you have no ability to acknowledge what the guy did.

[Felya]

You realize literally anyone can name dozens of these, other than viewers of deeply conservative media? Even conservatives who don't watch said media. The entire website of Whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com sprang up in response to you loons that have absorbed so much propaganda that you have no ability to acknowledge what the guy did.

Why he asked is worse. He didn’t ask in a sense of saying Obama accomplished nothing. He is asking why Trump is treated so poorly, by asking what Obama accomplished to be treated better. They voted and celebrated that Trump was an abrasive asshole and are now asking why establishment candidates were not treated the same. They expected Trump to just roll over people, the way he did due to his wealth. Completely not realizing that Trump is just a whiny baby, where if his money cannot get him out of trouble, he whines like a little bitch. They mistakenly thought Trump’s bravado was due to his manhood, because they ignored the part of Billy Bush groping tape, when Trump starts with... “When you are a rich celebrity...”

[Jeezy911]

You realize literally anyone can name dozens of these, other than viewers of deeply conservative media? Even conservatives who don't watch said media. The entire website of Whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com sprang up in response to you loons that have absorbed so much propaganda that you have no ability to acknowledge what the guy did.

Ok so it should be easy to name his top 3 then. Not a hard question.

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Remember how Obama invited both the professor and the cop for a beer at the White House? Why do you think the press reporting that, didn’t seem as bad as the press reporting Trump calling NFL players sons of bitches and demand they be fired?

But, you want Obama’s accomplishments, to know why Trump is treated like shit. Maybe once you make through previous 44 presidents, you’ll finally arrive at your reason. Maybe not...

Never said he was a bad guy, I'm sure he would be cool to have a beer with. Name his top 3 accomplishments as president.

[Felya]

Ok so it should be easy to name his top 3 then. Not a hard question.

Why are you even asking? The reason Obama was so nice on his last day with that reporter, is because they have worked together since Obama’s time working in Illinois. They reminisce about it during the video. Trump has never been in the same position, while his acclamation to a new roll, included insulting every journalist, calling news fake and bitching how they are losing ratings\clicks.

This has nothing to do with Obama’s accomplishments. This is you wanting your support of an abrasive asshole back, but not having a spine to admit it. The reason why Trump is treated like he is, is the same reason you voted for him. You should be saying fuck media, not whining like a cuck... right?

[Eviscero]

Never said he was a bad guy, I'm sure he would be cool to have a beer with. Name his top 3 accomplishments as president.

Here are 50, take your pick.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazi...complishments/

And I don't mean "take your pick" of the 3 you think are bullshit to somehow prove that Obama was a piece of shit to justify your racism.

[Felya]

Never said he was a bad guy, I'm sure he would be cool to have a beer with. Name his top 3 accomplishments as president.

You are changing the subject and I refuse to let you. Just because you are spineless to admit that this is what you voted for, doesn’t mean this thread needs to validate a former president. You voted for Trump because he is an ass hole, why are you questioning treating him like an asshole?

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Here are 50, take your pick.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazi...complishments/

That’s not the point he is making... he is now distracting from what he is talking about. Trump is treated like an ass hole by the media, because he is an ass hole.

[Skroe]

Ok name his top 3 accomplishments without laughing.

I'll give you five.

(1) Carefully manging the economy's recovery from the 2007 financial crisis, avoiding Great Depression II (Great Recession instead, small price to pay), and turning it into the longest sustained period of growth in American history.

(2) Continued the post-2006 repair job started by Bush and then expanded the US's rebuilding and modernizing of it's relationships with it's allies around the world. It's hard to understand how deep in the hole the US was with its allies in 2006. It was a serious problem in getting things done. Bush started digging us out in 2007 and 2008, enough that the coordinated initial response to the Financial Crisis was possible. Obama radically expanded this. In 2009 I was dismissive and scornful of Obama's "America is back" sales line. I thought it patronizing and bullshit. In retrospect, I didn't understand (until way later), the damage that US actions between 2002 and 2006 had done to it's global power. Obama rebuilt these, then expanded them. How well done a job was it? At the time of his exit, he held Russia sanctions in place with a unified anti-Russia front in Europe for over two years. Nobody gave it more than 6 months when the sanctions were put in place. It was a historic triumph.

(3) NewSTART. START I was expiring and needed a replacement. With NewSTART, which is a profoundly successful bipartisan treaty, Barack Obama managed to get the desperate Vladmir Putin to agree to utterly ridiculous terms in a treaty that is mindboggling favorable to American interests (namely in what and how it counts as and qualifies as launchers). START I was a treaty between equals. NewSTART is not. The US took Russia to the cleaners. The irony of NewSTART is how well it compares to the terrible Iran Deal and Climate Change treaty. NewSTART is foreign policy that disproportionately benefits America done right (historically so, on a critical issue).

It will be difficult for the US to get a successor of NewSTART with Russia as favorable. That's the magnitude of the absurd deal Obama got out of Putin.

(4) Began the Third Offset Strategy. If you've read my military posts, you'll commonly see me saying things like lamenting how Obama cut US Army combat power by about a third, tried to retire a carrier, and used the sequester to cut the defense budget without getting its finger prints on it. You'll see me calling Obama a liar for renegging on the Gates' 10 year Pentagon budget plan. All true. All damning. All mistakes. But here's the irony: in the long run, it might not matter at all. Why? Because in response to the deterioriating global security situation, in 2012, Obama authorized the beginning of the Third Offset Strategy, which, beyond 2025, will continue to keep the US Military by far the world's most powerful for another generation. This is akin to the First and Second Offset Strategies. The latter, the Second, came in the wake of Vietnam and created the modern high tech US Military that saw it's "premier" in the Gulf War. It took over 15 years to get going. The Third Offset Strategy is doing that again to give the US a leg up over China and Russia in decades ahead. It's already seen significant milestones, like the B-21 Raider bomber program, and rapid procurement of next-generation anti-ship missiles. It has a ways to go, but the end of the "Iraq War" era necessitated, like after Vietnam, a reboot Obama initiated. And that will make, like post-Vietnam, eventually the cuts he authorized meaningless.

(5) The "Pacific Pivot". The specific strategy was amorphous, inconsistent, occasionally maligned, but there can be no doubt - Obama shifted US interests firmly to Asia, away from the middle east, which when you consider where US economic and political interests largely lie, is the way it always should have been. Compared to Asia-Pacific, the Middle East is an irrelevant minnow.

The most significant long term effect of the Pacific Pivot will be the budding US-Indian strategic relationship, that will create a democratic ally that is a regional counterweight to China (think Asia-Pacific's bigger Saudi Arabia, vis-a-vis Iran). It also saw a tightening of our relationship with Japan, South Korea and Australia. And although defeated for now, TPP locks China into a system of trade we control. TPP will return. It must return.

All this Russia stuff... all this ISIS crap... it's irrelevant. In the 22nd century, historians will frame the 21st century largely in the enormous geopolitical competition between the US and China. Russia and ISIS, the Iraq War and 9/11... "things that came before" the main event. The Pacific Pivot, broadly speaking, lurches the US to preparing for the chief geopolitical struggle of the century. There is far more to do, but Obama deserves enormous credit for being the first to take the step and translate US interests to Asia where they belong - at the very top of a pile.

I am not an Obama fan. I have wrote thousands of words condemning significant, specific foreign policy and domestic policy actions of his. His mistakes were whoppers. But his successes were truly transformative. Is it a very mixed record? Of course. He hit well below .500. But he nailed grand slams when he made contact. The Pacific Pivot? Even screwed up and malformed, it is the right idea. Third Offset? Essential... what is more crucial than keeping America strong and safe? NewSTART? A monument of artful diplomacy that doesn't get nearly enough credit for how hard it screwed the Russians and benefited America. The foreign policy repair job? Essential, and kept China and Russia weaker than expected for years. And we had no Great Depression II.

I was glad Obama was gone. I used to joke about driving with moving boxes to help him get out of the White House. I think he was deeply full of shit on many issues. I think he had his priorities deeply warped by politics in many places. But where he got it right, boy did he ever.

Trump Aside, I don't think the next three Presidents would be able to wrack up a list that impressive. It was luck + skull + timing, as always. His successors, Democratic and Republican, will get to reap the rewards of the Third Offset, Pacific Pivot and so forth.

He left the country in a far, far better place than he found it. I deeply resent him and his administration's approach to almost everything, and I still say that.

[Jeezy911]

Here are 50, take your pick.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazi...complishments/

And I don't mean "take your pick" of the 3 you think are bullshit to somehow prove that Obama was a piece of shit to justify your racism.

Lol did you just use the race card. Thanks for proving my point, you can't name 3 good accomplishments of Obama without diverting to ridiculous claims. I want his best 3 accomplishments and now I am a racist.

[Vankrys]

Lol did you just use the race card. Thanks for proving my point, you can't name 3 good accomplishments of Obama without diverting to ridiculous claims. I want his best 3 accomplishments and now I am a racist.

these days, i wonder if being able to to speak complete sentences count as accomplishment.

[Noxx79]

Lol did you just use the race card. Thanks for proving my point, you can't name 3 good accomplishments of Obama without diverting to ridiculous claims. I want his best 3 accomplishments and now I am a racist.

You didn’t answer my question from yesterday. Why wouldn’t fox report all time highs for trumps approval ratings?

[Machismo]

Ok so it should be easy to name his top 3 then. Not a hard question.

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Never said he was a bad guy, I'm sure he would be cool to have a beer with. Name his top 3 accomplishments as president.

Personally, his ending of DADT, the legalization of gay marriage, and reducing of immigration restrictions. All of those things meant more freedom and less government.

[Jeezy911]

I'll give you five.

(1) Carefully manging the economy's recovery from the 2007 financial crisis, avoiding Great Depression II (Great Recession instead, small price to pay), and turning it into the longest sustained period of growth in American history.

(2) Continued the post-2006 repair job started by Bush and then expanded the US's rebuilding and modernizing of it's relationships with it's allies around the world. It's hard to understand how deep in the hole the US was with its allies in 2006. It was a serious problem in getting things done. Bush started digging us out in 2007 and 2008, enough that the coordinated initial response to the Financial Crisis was possible. Obama radically expanded this. In 2009 I was dismissive and scornful of Obama's "America is back" sales line. I thought it patronizing and bullshit. In retrospect, I didn't understand (until way later), the damage that US actions between 2002 and 2006 had done to it's global power. Obama rebuilt these, then expanded them. How well done a job was it? At the time of his exit, he held Russia sanctions in place with a unified anti-Russia front in Europe for over two years. Nobody gave it more than 6 months when the sanctions were put in place. It was a historic triumph.

(3) NewSTART. START I was expiring and needed a replacement. With NewSTART, which is a profoundly successful bipartisan treaty, Barack Obama managed to get the desperate Vladmir Putin to agree to utterly ridiculous terms in a treaty that is mindboggling favorable to American interests (namely in what and how it counts as and qualifies as launchers). START I was a treaty between equals. NewSTART is not. The US took Russia to the cleaners. The irony of NewSTART is how well it compares to the terrible Iran Deal and Climate Change treaty. NewSTART is foreign policy that disproportionately benefits America done right (historically so, on a critical issue).

It will be difficult for the US to get a successor of NewSTART with Russia as favorable. That's the magnitude of the absurd deal Obama got out of Putin.

(4) Began the Third Offset Strategy. If you've read my military posts, you'll commonly see me saying things like lamenting how Obama cut US Army combat power by about a third, tried to retire a carrier, and used the sequester to cut the defense budget without getting its finger prints on it. You'll see me calling Obama a liar for renegging on the Gates' 10 year Pentagon budget plan. All true. All damning. All mistakes. But here's the irony: in the long run, it might not matter at all. Why? Because in response to the deterioriating global security situation, in 2012, Obama authorized the beginning of the Third Offset Strategy, which, beyond 2025, will continue to keep the US Military by far the world's most powerful for another generation. This is akin to the First and Second Offset Strategies. The latter, the Second, came in the wake of Vietnam and created the modern high tech US Military that saw it's "premier" in the Gulf War. It took over 15 years to get going. The Third Offset Strategy is doing that again to give the US a leg up over China and Russia in decades ahead. It's already seen significant milestones, like the B-21 Raider bomber program, and rapid procurement of next-generation anti-ship missiles. It has a ways to go, but the end of the "Iraq War" era necessitated, like after Vietnam, a reboot Obama initiated. And that will make, like post-Vietnam, eventually the cuts he authorized meaningless.

(5) The "Pacific Pivot". The specific strategy was amorphous, inconsistent, occasionally maligned, but there can be no doubt - Obama shifted US interests firmly to Asia, away from the middle east, which when you consider where US economic and political interests largely lie, is the way it always should have been. Compared to Asia-Pacific, the Middle East is an irrelevant minnow.

The most significant long term effect of the Pacific Pivot will be the budding US-Indian strategic relationship, that will create a democratic ally that is a regional counterweight to China (think Asia-Pacific's bigger Saudi Arabia, vis-a-vis Iran). It also saw a tightening of our relationship with Japan, South Korea and Australia. And although defeated for now, TPP locks China into a system of trade we control. TPP will return. It must return.

All this Russia stuff... all this ISIS crap... it's irrelevant. In the 22nd century, historians will frame the 21st century largely in the enormous geopolitical competition between the US and China. Russia and ISIS, the Iraq War and 9/11... "things that came before" the main event. The Pacific Pivot, broadly speaking, lurches the US to preparing for the chief geopolitical struggle of the century. There is far more to do, but Obama deserves enormous credit for being the first to take the step and translate US interests to Asia where they belong - at the very top of a pile.

I am not an Obama fan. I have wrote thousands of words condemning significant, specific foreign policy and domestic policy actions of his. His mistakes were whoppers. But his successes were truly transformative. Is it a very mixed record? Of course. He hit well below .500. But he nailed grand slams when he made contact. The Pacific Pivot? Even screwed up and malformed, it is the right idea. Third Offset? Essential... what is more crucial than keeping America strong and safe? NewSTART? A monument of artful diplomacy that doesn't get nearly enough credit for how hard it screwed the Russians and benefited America. The foreign policy repair job? Essential, and kept China and Russia weaker than expected for years. And we had no Great Depression II.

I was glad Obama was gone. I used to joke about driving with moving boxes to help him get out of the White House. I think he was deeply full of shit on many issues. I think he had his priorities deeply warped by politics in many places. But where he got it right, boy did he ever.

Trump Aside, I don't think the next three Presidents would be able to wrack up a list that impressive. It was luck + skull + timing, as always. His successors, Democratic and Republican, will get to reap the rewards of the Third Offset, Pacific Pivot and so forth.

He left the country in a far, far better place than he found it. I deeply resent him and his administration's approach to almost everything, and I still say that.

Ok fair enough, but outside of the economy those seem like rather minuscule accomplishments when we are talking about legacy over 8 years. And listing leaving the country in a better place as well as diverting military resources away from the the Middle East as an accomplishment is debatable at best. We are still dealing with a major global Refugee problem since those decisions all coming from the Middle East. But credit for not giving some bullshit answer.

[cubby]

these days, i wonder if being able to to speak complete sentences count as accomplishment.

Lol, did you see Huckabee fucked the pig yesterday and appeared to claim JFK and Kennedy were two different presidents?

We've come so low at this point it will take decades to restore the class and dignity the Presidency demands.

[Jeezy911]

If only ignore worked for quotes as well...........

This is what most do when they can't handle even the most civil of debates. I get called a racist, Hitler, Nazi, White supremacist on a daily basis over in enemy territory and yet I have never ignored anyone. No respect for weakness.