The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The people I quoted and referenced are not in my bubble.
    Everybody following the Mueller investigation knows.
    Sillier and sillier. He was hired as Trump's campaign manager for such connections.
    They were Ukrainians. You said so yourself - they voted in the Ukrainian elections.
    See how goofy you must become to defend the indefensible.
    They cannot annex territory without violating international law.
    They did it in America.
    They were not indicted for expressing opinions.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It was over when China and Russia were fighting each other independently of America. When India acquired nukes. When Brazil and China cut deals outside US hegemony. Old news.
    Fascists always determine personal dominance hierarchies. That's how they roll.
    The details of how Putin disciplines his organization are no doubt fascinating, if you are fascinated by the workings of organized crime. Trump is likewise well known for his tactical humiliations, and he is small time compared with Putin.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
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  5. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    The Republicans?
     
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  7. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Nice try, the point is not some fascination, but that "close Putin associate Oleg Deripaska" is nonsense. Deripaska is one of the most powerful Yeltsin time oligarchs, with a family connection to the Yeltsin clan, so, an enemy from the start. One who has accepted Putin's offer which Berezovsky and Chodorkowski have rejected - to give up political games, to follow the law, and to pay taxes, in exchange for not being punished for their crimes during the Yeltsin time. And, no, power games among mafia leaders are not shown on TV and are not about forcing an oligarch who did not pay his workers to pay them all the arrears of wages immediately.

    And you know this because Trump has told you this. Laughable. The other connection Manafort - Putin goes via Yanukovych. Manafort supported Yanukovych, and Yanukovych is presented in the media as supported by Putin. Which is simply wrong. Putin supported Timoshenko against Yanukovych. This support was not official, but not really a secret (here an article in Russian about this https://glavcom.ua/publications/114967-belkovskij-timoshenko-–-kandidat-kremlja.html ) and Russia even officially sided with the West against Yanukovych when he arrested Timoshenko.
    It is you who defends the indefensible, namely that a Russian becomes a "Ukrainian" with a Ukrainian passport. This may be natural for America, where there is no ethnicity of "American" and so you count as "American" once you have citizenship. But "Russian" and "Ukrainian" name ethnicities, not citizenship. (The Russian language has two different names for this, российский for citizenship, русский for ethnicity, google translates both into Russian, but translates Russian only into русский).
    And they did not annex any territory. The decisions made in Crimea about separation from Ukraine and the referendum to join Russia have been made by the parliamentarians elected before, under democratic elections under Ukrainian law, and it was a plausible and reasonable decision in a situation where the legal rule no longer existed in Kiev but existed yet in Crimea, and the remains of the legal government in Crimea had no chance to reestablish the legal power in Kiev.
    No, they did it in Ghana. Their tweets were posted in Russia, and visible everywhere, in Ghana as well as the US, this is the reality of the internet. Either there remains something from the sovereignty of states - in this case, what counts is where it is done. Or, alternatively, everywhere. So if you write something negative about the king of Thailand, you violate the law, of Thailand, but you have done this in Thailand, once it is on the net. Do you want this? No? Ok, Then, your "they did it in the US" means all the world has to follow, with all its internet postings, US law, and all the law of other states is irrelevant. Do you want this? Obviously. Ok. But this would be the unipolar world in its extreme - US law everywhere, for everybody. But, it seems, you don't even recognize what is behind your claims - it looks like you see this as something natural, it has always been so or so. The unipolar world, much more extreme than in reality, is a fact in your mind.
    But unconscious, as can be seen from this denial:
    The claims are nothing but funny. So, according to you there was never a unipolar world. The split between China and Russia happened after the death of Stalin. During Soviet time, there has been even a small scale military conflict. It is now much better than at that time, simply because both recognize that to survive alone against the US would be very hard. India's nukes are irrelevant for the number of poles, they play a role locally, against Pakistan, a little bit against China too, that's all.

    In fact, this is a natural effect of the perspective. Those opposed to the power see it clearly: military bases of the only power worldwide, the most important and richest states as their vassals, and no big power openly opposing the US, this was the world from 1990 to 2007. From that time up to now, there started to appear some resistance. But the military bases of the only power worldwide, the most important and richest states as their vassals are reality today too, and will remain so for many years to come.

    Those on the side of the power see, instead, all those places where their rule is not yet perfect. So that they tend to think that their world is far from being unipolar yet, a lot of work is yet to do to reach this, a lot of governments have to be replaced by more obedient vassals. And, of course, a lot of laws of all those other states have to be replaced by the translations of US laws.
    Let's remember:
    Got it? Corrupting Russian, Chinese or whatever elections does not matter at all. The US is doing this all the time. But corrupting American elections should be illegal everywhere. Ups, not should - but is normally. That means, where it is not, this is not normal, it should be changed, immediately, because it is obviously evil.
    The same problem with the perspective can be seen here:
    But, no, it will never work. Unification works only if there is an enemy. This makes a unification of the whole world impossible. The unipolar world we have seen after 1990 was the maximum what is possible. And it immediately started to create common enemies for the mankind as a whole - first pedophiles, after 9/11 terrorists. And now the enemy is Russia.

    Of course, not. Laws which make the expression of unwanted opinions illegal are always formulated in a different way. So, those in the GULAG were indicted for
    An equivalent modern version of this would look like this:
    You will, I'm sure, find some important differences. (Or not? Let's see, present them, I would like to learn how important they are, I don't know the details of US law.) But, whatever these differences, they were not indicted for expressing opinions too.
     
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    You do know that the term unipolar is an "absolute" don't you?
    Anything that isn't an absolute unipolar must be multi polar....

    What you're pissed over is that the multi polar world had a distinct emphasis on one nation, that being it's most successful one.. the USA. To claim that is being Unipolar is absurd.
    It is true that for the UN to function properly the USA needed to reduce it's dominance and give other members some breathing space and responsibility... This I believe is essential for the UN to ultimately fulfill and evolve it's charter.
    To claim the USA is a unipolar global totalitarian regime leaves you wide open to problems of credibility.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2018
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Actually ...uhm... I have to admit a mistake... in my previous post. I did some research and I am mistaken in my belief that unipolar is an absolute term in a political context.
    My apologies Schmelzer!
     
    Schmelzer likes this.
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    No. I would not have any problems with the US simply because it is successful. I would also not have a problem with the natural consequence of such success, namely that many other countries try to copy some of the elements of this success to become successful too. And I also have no problem with American admirers of this success traveling around and propagating elsewhere to take over one or another part of the American way of life. I would even support this, I have learned a lot reading American authors like David Friedman, Rothbard, Spooner. Even if what they propose is not what is in the US today, for many things they propose the closest thing to a realization is or was the US.

    So, I have no problem either with success itself or with the emphasis which follows from such success in a civilized multi-polar world order.

    I have a problem with a nation of some 4% or so of the population of the world, which invests into weapons almost 50% of the world, and fights wars almost all the time, spends a lot of money to terrorists, for terrorizing other countries, and have military bases all over the world. Because this is uncivilized, barbarian behavior.
    I don't have to care about my credibility among propaganda victims. If I would care about it, I would not attack their Holy Beliefs. I like argumentation, I like arguments. Because I'm not afraid of arguments which prove me false. Because, if they prove me false, I change my position. I have started as a Marxist, by education (I have read Das Kapital at the age of 10, and it impressed me), have read during communist time all anti-communist samizdat literature I could get, participated in the foundation of the social-democratic party in the GDR, with free access to Western literature I switched sides again and became an anarchist. But I also understood that anarchism has a serious problem - defense against the military of states, thus, accepted that until a solution is found to this problem, people cannot avoid being robbed by states. And I will remain open to further modifications of my positions based on good arguments.

    And I also have learned that there are many people without arguments, who start personal attacks. Initially, I was optimistic that they will lose influence in the age of the internet. In fact, at that time it was easy to handle them - a few argumentative responses, in non-abusive language, were enough. I was wrong. Those in the net initially were people from universities, and, moreover, not the humanitarians, but those with a technical background, a quite small part of humanity, and the part most educated to care about (to understand, to think about) arguments.

    But it is one thing to acknowledge that the power of the argument is much weaker than I hoped based on my internet experience in the 90's, and a completely different one to care about what those who do not care about arguments think about me. That means I do not care at all about my credibility. I care about arguments and counterarguments, that's all.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, you don't. Not any more.
    You've had your life's conversion experience, created your bubble and it's filter, and no longer register in your awareness actually conflicting arguments. You defend against them, instead, by any means necessary, without giving them their due. If you had started out rightwing capitalist libertarian, and seen through its illusions and deceptions to the cogent analysis of Marx et al, you'd be a tiresome Marxist now and just as firmly planted.
    This is common human nature: to see through the massive deceptions and global illusions inevitable to childhood- and whatever is seen then, take on as a firmly set and ineradicable reality. Most long-lived tribal human cultures formalized this transition, made a ceremony of it - and made sure that what was newly seen would be the adult culture and worldview of the tribe. You've been neglected, on that score - de-tribalized.
    It has much larger and more immediate problems than that, from piracy to digging wells, from childrearing to the Tragedy of the Commons.
    People won't go back to what the State freed them from unless you put a gun to their heads - which is basically what you are doing, btw, when you advocate for the Putins and Trumps of this world.
    Says the guy who posts the media feed of US agitprop pros on this forum. As argument!

    Specialized ignoramuses, in other words: shallow-water suckers who knew little or nothing of politics, history, anthropology, sociology - or even technical matters pertaining to biology, ecology, game theory, child development, civil engineering. Or girls, for that matter. Look at your handling of global warming, for example - you couldn't be a more foolish patsy for the "arguments" of Koch-funded agitprop if you'd hit yourself on the head with a hammer.

    (Evolution's a big one: We see a lot of creationists from this crowd - it's not just Schmelzer: they all have trouble with serious arguments outside their fields, even fairly basic stuff). People who imagined a computerized world in which even the computers themselves just sort of, like, happened. Science fiction politics - and not the good stuff, either: not Ursula Le Guin, say, but Ayn Rand. There are Randites among your little box of rightwing anarchists, almost as a subcult - but not UKites. Her recent death is mourned, not by you guys, but by those "humanitarians" you think cannot handle sophisticated arguments. Feh.

    You're children, tribally. The lot of you. A guy like Putin can wrap you around his little finger. And so the material subject to the grind of the law, the causes and circumstances and consequences of the behavior Mueller is step by ratcheting step documenting and organizing for its confrontation with the US courts, is simply invisible to you.
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Sometimes I register some arguments here. Seldom, because there is too much ad hominem. Even you have had, in the past, a lot of them, you remember, the discussions about child labor and the Civil War.
    It is quite natural that different people have different opinions about which due some arguments deserve.
    No.
    The problem with the military is an example of a common good problem. That you, as an etatist, think that there are more problems which can be solved only by the state I already know.
    Certainly not. Putin, as well as Trump are etatists and support a strong state.
    Says a guy with a diploma from a top university, in mathematics, who has worked a lot of time in applied mathematics (programming) and who is now an independent physicist with a quite acceptable number of published papers, who does not care about namecalling and ad hominems (like "this has been said by some US agitprop pro"), but cares about the content of the arguments.
    ??????????? Am I a creationist now? LOL. The other meaningless babble disposed of. Your style of presenting yourself as a teacher may be satisfactory for you. Who knows, maybe you really are a teacher, in this case, poor kids, given that you seem to have a mental problem which you solve presenting you as a teacher and your opponents as children to be teached (this is not the first time you show this behavior).
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    There isn't, actually. You are unable to recognize ad hominem arguments, to differentiate them from insults or similes or even the opposite direction of implication.
    That last is one of your major defects in argumentation here, btw - you keep getting the direction of implication in other people's arguments muddled, even backwards. That might be a language glitch - but I have pointed out specific instances of that several times to you, without you being able to correct yourself or (apparently) even register the problem.
    And your's are poorly reasoned, on this forum. You don't argue competently, unless you know what you are talking about.
    No, it isn't. Not in this context. And so what if it were?
    btw: You have never yet - not even once here - made sense with a sentence that had the term "common good" in it.
    Aside from the misleading implication of friendship, what's wrong with it? He's in the gang, after all. Close enough.
    Your arguments here are garbage, especially the content. You keep trying to argue stuff without information.
    Also: If you were paying attention to content, you wouldn't screw up every time you try to paraphrase.

    I don't give a rat's ass about your credentials - you are a gullible sucker for professional rightwing American agitprop: that shit is not sound argumentation, and you can't tell the difference.
    Dunno. I was illustrating by comparison.
    Your arguments are of equivalent quality, whenever you are ignorant - global warming, racism in the US, politics in the US, anything biological or ecological, etc. And this is typical of narrowly educated and specialized experts in engineering, physics, or math - as I illustrated with the example of the disproportionate number of creationists with your background who have wandered through here. Like global warming deniers, like Jim Crow deniers, they are quite happy posting genuinely stupid arguments they think must be sound because they themselves are smart people.
    You have it backwards again - it's not that I'm a teacher, it's that a common flaw in your posting here is apparent ignorance, naivety. Responses to what appears to be ignorant gullibility must perforce include instruction, information, or at least some dealing with that hole in your posting - this is forced. The alternative is accusation of bad faith and hidden agenda. It's either that or not respond.

    The Mueller investigation, for example, is presenting early findings and indictments, preliminary and auxiliary to its central focus, possibly tactical moves. When you type "If {whatever} is all he has - - - - " you betray either ignorance of this, or an agenda of willful misdirection. Example: You posted disparagement of his indictments of the 13 Russian trolls, without appearing to register the role such indictments could play in Mueller's major efforts (they abet "discovery" filings on the banks involved, for example), or even the fact that they are preliminary to the major consequences of this investigation.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2018
  14. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    ...and in 10 years or so from now (and so on) other investigations will be carried out on the events of today and the immediate past and future...

    It is not like it will all go away as soon as you turn the TV off.

    Trump is making history whether good or bad. If he or his family is making money from being POTUS it will eventually be revealed. If there has been collusion then that too will eventually be revealed. ( IMO)

    There will be other special councils that will investigate well beyond the current Mueller brief. I think this is guaranteed.

    Putin is 65. In just a few years his influence will be just a memory and someone else will be calling the shots. Trump the same...
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    The Business Insider has a nice article about the troll farm, which more or less supports the main points: It is, first of all, for money-making, simply business, nothing personal. That the trolls follow the political preferences of the owner, who wonders? This is typical for all privately owned media. But about all what the owner doesn't care about, they are free to support what they like themselves, or simply what promises money. Some support gays, the other gay hating, some black racists, other white racists. An interesting point is:
    In other words, there is no evidence even for the Kremlin paying for this. Of course, one cannot exclude this, they can postulate some Kremlin conspiracy behind this:
    Cheap, businessmen are friendly to Putin only because they "owe the Kremlin favors", and not because Putin has changed a lot of things, like lowering taxes, destroying the mafia so that they no longer have to pay protection money and simplifying bureaucracy, which the businessmen like.
    But even if true, what would be the problem with this, given that this is exactly the game played in all Western democracies, where the "free press" is controlled by a few oligarchs, which have their political connections and owe them a lot, else they would not pay for lobbying? Except, probably, it is the elected president who rules over the oligarchs and not the oligarchs ruling the president?

    Another one is that Prigoshin is doing the same thing (internet trolling to make money with click bites) in Russia too. So, how much of the 1.25 mio \$ per month has been spent for the US filial, how much is shared with all other countries, including Russia? The real political impact of this is probably near zero:
    A hypothesis about when all this started in Russia is at least plausible:
    IOW, the Russians have seen how the West works with the internet and learned the lecture. Which is, indeed, a common point in many things - Russia looks very careful what the West is doing. While the Russians, in general, prefer asymmetric answers (in part, they have to, simply because they cannot afford symmetric one), they certainly think about copying them, if this is not too expensive or too amoral.

    So, for example, they have copied the management (political control) of the media from the West. The ownership structure is quite similar (some owned by the state, many by oligarchs), and the ways of control (via informal connections with the oligarchs) are quite similar too. The Western propaganda presents this as "no freedom of the press", but there is as much freedom of the press, and what the West whines about is not that there is no freedom, but that the West no longer controls the Russian press. (They have media they control and can write there whatever they like, but they do not control the large majority as elsewhere.)

    And the funniest thing:
    It appears that this is the same old troll firm in Olgino or so everybody knows about since 2015. LOL. This almost looks like that 1 mln per month click bite firm is already a large part of the Russian "industry", given that two independent attacks against this industry, one in 2015, one now, hit the same firm.

    Iceaura starts with the usual boring claims (without arguments or evidence, simply claims) that I'm stupid, and which I have disposed of.
    Of course, you can claim that every big businessman in Russia is in the same gang. That's not unexpected given the anti-Russian hysteria - it is sufficient to find out that he is Russian, that means, enemy.
    Learn elementary logic. It displays awareness that he may have much more yet hidden. Therefore, I clarify that what follows after the "if (...) then" depends on this assumption. The assumption itself is a quite normal one, given that we neither have information about possibly existing but yet hidden results nor can we know about them. We can speculate about them, that's all.

    My impression is that Mueller was under some pressure to present at least some results. What he has presented was essentially nothing but cheap side results. Prigoshin's troll firm, and Manafort doing illegal things in cooperation with some Ukrainian oligarchs, that's nothing.
    LOL. I have described several times what I think about US methods of investigations, and fully aware that such criminal indictments against people close to Trump for whatever, given the American plea bargain system, can be used to gain something against Trump. One forces the accused to "cooperate", and this can mean a lot of things. I know, of course, that the FBI investigators would never, never try to give the accused some hints that some, hm, accusations against Trump could be very helpful even if they cannot be proven.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    So, it is obvious that Trump is far from being out of danger.

    But this is not my point. My point is the anti-Russian hysteria based on the actual results.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Of course. That's the basis of the accusations, that's part of Mueller's case.
    Irrelevant.
    Now that's funny. I'm looking forward to the day the Trump voters find out everybody knew about this except them.
    No, it's a Fox Question designed to suggest that his investigation is trivial. It's not logic, but propaganda techniques, that one would need to learn.
    And so your follow-up is completely predictable:
    The main question here is whether you sincerely believe that - which would indicate you have no idea what Mueller is doing in general - or whether you have some other agenda for trying to disparage Mueller's investigation, damage its public image.
    In your world outside of your specialty there is no reality - only competing propaganda lines. That's how you became so gullible.
    You're right about the FBI, as far as you go - but not sufficient. Nothing follows from that. Why? Same old problem:
    You are missing important aspects of this situation - certain realities. Information you have dismissed as propaganda.
    One is that accusations would need to be proven, in this case, in open court, with the dice loaded against the prosecution. Manafort's depositions would have to be backed by an enormous amount of corroborating evidence. There's a real question whether even that would be enough.
    Another is that this is a formal Congressional investigation, not the FBI looking for a criminal or a crime on its own.
    Once again with this line. You keep trying to talk about these preliminary indictments as if they were the "results". That's a propaganda line - do you really believe it?
    And your usual ignorance is on display: the striking aspect of the American reaction has been its lack of anti-Russian hysteria.
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Fine. Thanks for admitting this. What is, then, the point of this? Some dubious Russian oligarch has used methods to make money in Russia to make money in Amerika too?

    ??????????? Seems, you have not got the point why I think this is funny.
    ????????????? What Fox? What has been presented is trivial. The firm itself was already known for making money out of internet trolling.
    LOL. You think I have to care about what a US cop is doing in general? I couldn't care less. I have another "agenda" - I wonder about the anti-Russian hysteria which I see in connection with this non-news.
    ???????? There would be not even a point of dismissing any of this because this is irrelevant for me. Nothing in these indictments sounded implausible for me. Neither Manafort bribing European politicians and avoiding taxes nor Prigoshin making money with such a marketing scheme. And if the Congress pays for doing such investigations, fine. As if I would care if they would start a formal Congressional investigation of false parking.
    ?????????? These preliminary indictments are not all the results presented to the public up to now?
    Ok, let's hope we will never see an American reaction which even iceaura would characterize as hysteria. A pogrom of Brighton Beach with hundreds of deads would be necessary for this, not?
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Mine's funnier. Reality based stuff is usually funnier.
    The person of greatest interest would be the buyer, not the seller, of troll services. And with these indictments on file, formal discovery can commence - bank records, etc. Remember that Russian oligarchs like to stash their money in foreign banks, launder their deals through foreign real estate and investments (That's why they care so much about the sanctions - last I checked, the ratio of Russian offshored wealth to Russia's total official GDP was about 1/1.35) and Mueller has access to most of that if he has legal warrant.
    No, I don't. Nothing you have posted about Mueller's investigation indicates any interest in the reality of Mueller's investigation.
    There's you posting according to your agenda - repeatedly describing news of Mueller's investigation as non-news.
    I know. Information is irrelevant for your methods of analysis - you established that long ago.
    The investigation Congress is paying for is still in progress. Results - if is allowed to continue, and not interrupted by political events - are expected sometime next year. That's way ahead of normal scheduling, for this kind of investigation - obviously these investigators are working hard.
    Or the case is easy.
    They are preliminary. They are presented as preliminary.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2018
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The common reaction among Republicans in America at any time in the past sixty years until Trump launched his campaign would qualify.

    What do you think happened to it?
     
  20. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Now ....that is a million dollar question....
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    And now that Mueller is starting to close in, Trump is losing it. His latest target? Obama.

    "Obama was President up to, and beyond, the 2016 Election. So why didn't he do something about Russian meddling?"

    In other words, why didn't an adult stop me from colluding with Russia?
     
  22. douwd20 Registered Senior Member

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  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    and it is a lot more serious and pervasive than merely Trump colluding with Russia than you realize....
    example: Trump can not normally persuade millions of people to act contrary to historical anti Russian sentiment. yet it appears that he has...
    So Trump does the impossible....
    which of course is not possible...
     

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