DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Presidential Election Campaigns 2016 part 2

CNN holding the Libertarian Town Hall right now.

Total breath of fresh air. I wish these guys could win some how.

Well that was a pretty good look at the Libertarians. I think I like Weld better than Johnson, but they are both much more likeable that Trump or Clinton.

I've read their issues and answers on their website and heard them speak and they are in the running for my vote if they can make the debates. As of now I've eliminated Trump permanently from contention for my vote, I'm almost there with the Green party too because not crazy about the duo or their chances. That leaves Hillary (holding my nose) or Johnson/Weld (if they get to the debates) as my choices. We'll have to see.

Trump must be stopped at any cost though, IMHO.

The simple fact is that Trump is media gold. He complains about it but uses it to his advantage for media exposure. Who need to buy commercials when you can get it for free? In the time of 24 hours "news as entertainment" on at least 3 channels, it becomes easy pickings.

It like passing a car wreck on the other side of the road. You gotta look at it, and you wind up getting into an hour backup when for something that should have never slowed you down, and then curse the others for someting that you looked at as well.

Trump sucks the oxygen out of the room. Other Republicans complained that they could get no exposure, He is so outrageous, so unpredictable and the ratings go through the roof.

You want a serious discussion on policy, taxes, education or something that really matters... No way... his latest outrageous statement will fill the airwaves instead. He is the beast that we created, and now he will take advantage of it to the fullest extent.

He has always been that way, that was part of his business model. If he wanted to build a building and it was zoned for something under 45 floors, he would design a 50 story building and then make a big news story about how he was being oppressed by local laws and regulations.. tons of free press for him and whether the building ended up being 45 or 50 floors didn't matter.. it was the most talked about construction project around for a long time. He won.

It was an easy fight too because it was him, private businessman being held down by overly regulated government bureaucracy that was preventing him from doing business the way he wanted. Most people sided against the government, even if they didn't like Trump.

Problem is that now he's running to be part of the government.. against a candidate that the media likes a whole lot better than him..

As a businessman, that makes sense. It is easy to demonize the government. We see it all the time out here with developers who want absurd levels of population density in properties, and fight any development outside of the property lines..

And we wind up with congested streets and people complaining about roads that are insufficient for the amount of traffic being dumped upon them.

So now the GOP is getting worried about Trump hurting the down ticket candidates... the drama builds. Rumors that his campaign is going to hold an intervention... lol OMG

3rd_and_20 posted this in the other thread which has since been locked, but this is some crazy stuff right here..

Speaking of Trump, I found this story odd and interesting. Was this guy a hitman?

Link which didn't copy the first time

'Deceased FBI Agent Found At Trump Tower With Silenced Pistol - arrested for trespassing illegally carrying pistol with silencer'

Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Wed, 08/03/2016 - 23:18

A source within the NYPD has reported that an armed 62 year old man tried to sneak in to the Trump Tower late Tuesday night. Interestingly the suspect who was found with a semi-automatic handgun fitted with a silencer has been identified as Barry Lee Bush, a former Newark NJ FBI agent who has been dead since 2007.

A Secret Service agent discovered Bush after he had circumvented a security partition on the bottom floor of the Trump Tower. Questioned by Secret Service at the scene, Bush who initially identified himself as Barry Franklyn, remained silent offering no explanation for why he broke security at the Trump Tower.

According to the NYPD source, Bush was arrested for trespassing and for illegally carrying a pistol fitted with an illegal silencer. During his booking at the NYPD Jail, Bush’s fingerprints were submitted to the National Crime Information Center, which immediately reported Bush’s true identity.

“I wasn’t sure if our system had malfunctioned, so I rescanned his fingerprints to confirm that our system was working correctly. There was no system error. The man we have in custody was reported deceased in 2007 after being shot in an attempted bank robbery, “one source speaking on anonymity said.

The New York Times reported on April 6, 2007 that Barry Bush, a veteran F.B.I. agent on a bank-robbery detail was fatally wounded apparently when another agent’s weapon accidentally discharged during a confrontation with three gunmen outside a bank in a quiet town in central New Jersey.

Speaking about the weapon found on Bush, the NYPD source stated, “We don’t find hardware like this on the streets–that Glock was never stamped at the factory [serial number]—those pieces are reserved for people with a lot higher pay grades than me.”

According to a spokesman at the Newark FBI field office, Bush was killed in the line of duty in April of 2007. Coincidentally, five minutes after we got off the phone with him, a page honoring FBI agents who were killed in the line of duty, went down on the FBI’s website.

It is not clear what Bush’s intentions were for sneaking around security to presumably access the service elevators at the Trump Tower, however it does not take much imagination as to why Bush was carrying a silenced pistol at the time of his arrest.

Trump is in Florida today for rallies in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville. Trump has informed us that he was not at the Trump Tower yesterday evening and did not have any information about the incident, other than an armed man had been arrested at his building and that it was not clear about what Bush’s intentions were.

Mr. Trump seemed to take the news that an armed dead person was found at his NY building, with a grain of salt. Fortunately for his family and supporters, Mr. Trump is still around to try to sort out this interesting incident.

This really is weird. I wonder if they'll find ties to the Dems or the Repubs?


Waterboard him!

Wow! What a crazy story. Sounds like something the late Robert Ludlum would write.

So far only obscure websites are running the story so it's either not true.. or the mainstream media is all in on the cover up that stuff like this happens...

Thats nuts!

Imagine all the stuff that happens we never hear about.

Doesn't surprise me at all, I said all the Big Boys were going after Trump this week and next, they all have a lot to lose if the Donald gets in office, no one controls him.

This is probably a Trump leaked story to get the headlines off of the Kahn debacle.

Yeah............it's probably not true.

I'm kinda disappointed. LOL....I love espionage story.

Trump dropping out is rumored on news today? Really? Everything is swell, right? Just an odd and unpredictable parade of events. We have, what? About 90 days to go. I am unable to imagine the campaign that far down the road.

Big floppy red shoes and red noses are not off the table.

That's some seriously odd stuff right there.

Yup! I love it when the establishment people dislike someone. That most likely means their little kickback, hidden agendas and special interests are no longer going to occur or be met.

Not sure if it's good for the people or not either though.

After quickly dispatching reports of disarray within his campaign by vowing his organization has "never been so well united," the Republican nominee turned to slamming President Barack Obama and the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, over a report that the US shipped $400 million to Iran at about the same time Iran released four American prisoners.
"America's been humiliated in so many different ways," proclaimed Trump, who rallied his supporters as usual without a teleprompter, although he did appear to glance at notes on his podium.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/donald-trump-message-florida/

TRUMP GOOD FOR JEWS, ISRAEL AND AMERICA

Atlanta Jewish Times

"There are three major reasons why Donald Trump is the best candidate for Jews, Israel and America: He will secure the borders to stop illegal immigration, fight Islamic terror, and assist Israel in negotiating her own peace deal with Palestinians, not imposing a solution."

Donald Trump is dedicated to these three important issues, which is why he is the best candidate for us all. He will support Israel in negotiations and will make sure that their protection is secured just like it is in our country. Hillary Clinton supports policies that will compromise the safety of America and all her allies, not just for Jews, but for all Americans.

http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2016/08/trump-good-jews-israel-america/

Hell, I'm still waiting for you to tell me how you proved me wrong LOL

Oh, I know a lot of Jewish people, they all seem to hate Trump.

The $400 million were $400 million that Iran paid to the U.S. for weapons / military equipment in the 70s that never got delivered because the government got overthrown. Just so you know where it came from / what it was about.

That is very interesting but once again I TRUMP you with FACTS...

See my link above.

Open your eyes already, Obama sent Iran CASH on a plane, not a simple wire transfer as Iran released the hostages.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874

U.S. and European officials wouldn’t disclose exactly when the plane carrying the $400 million landed in Iran. But a report by an Iranian news site close to the Revolutionary Guard, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.

Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874

Yes, it's not a secret. There was a press conference about it. My eyes are open to it and it's public knowledge, not some dark secret. On NPR they said that cash was used "Because the United States doesn't have a banking relationship with Iran" which is necessary for a wire transfer.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-400-million-cash/index.html

The money was procured from central banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands, official said, and an unmarked cargo plane loaded with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies were flown to Iran.

"They were totally cut off from global banks and there was no other way to get them the money," one senior official with knowledge of the transaction said.

While the cash transaction took place the same day as the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and the other Americans, administration officials insist the payment did not constitute ransom and that there were was no quid pro quo for the payment. They said the agreement on the release of the prisoners dovetailed with the resolution of parallel negotiations over the dispute of the failed arms deal.

"It's against the policy of the United States to pay ransom for hostages," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

He described the payment as a "conscious strategic decision that was made on the part of the Obama administration as we were implementing the deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon to resolve other longstanding concerns we had with Iran."

"That included securing the release of five American citizens who had been unjustly detained in Iran, and closing out a longstanding financial dispute in a way that saved the American people potentially billions of dollars," he said.

In return for the US citizens' release, the US dropped extradition requests for 14 Iranian citizens and freed seven. Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, remains missing.

Earnest cast those using the new details about the palettes of cash as people "flailing to justify their continued opposition to the deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
The $400 million was Iran's to start with, placed into a US-based trust fund to support American military equipment purchases in the 1970s. When the Shah was ousted by a 1979 popular uprising that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic, the US froze the trust fund. Iran has been fighting for a return of the funds through international courts since 1981.

In announcing the agreement, Obama said that paying the $400 million -- plus $1.3 billion in interest -- was saving American taxpayers billions of dollars. The Iranians had been seeking more than $10 billion at arbitration.

"For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran," Obama said in January. "There was no benefit to the United States in dragging this out."

As it was making the January cash delivery, the US also imposed new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile testing. At the same time, the White House unfroze a larger pool of Iranian assets, estimated at $100 to $150 billion, as part of the nuclear deal, though administration officials cautioned that Iran would only pocket about $50 billion after legal claims.

Legal claims are one of the reasons the payment to Iran was controversial when Obama first announced it. The Clinton administration had agreed in 2000 to pay that $400 million to Americans who had won lawsuits against Iran in US courts.
These families and individuals had sued the Islamic Republic for damages after the deaths of loved ones or for being the victims themselves of Iran-backed kidnappings or terrorist attacks. At the time, US officials told those families the money would come from Iran.

With Obama's announcement, it became apparent that the payments had come from US taxpayers and not from Iran at all.
Stuart Eizenstat, the Clinton administration's deputy Treasury secretary, told Newsweek that Iran had filed a claim with The Hague, limiting the administration's ability to lay claim to the fund.

Critics on Wednesday were further incensed by Iranian claims that the cash amounted to a ransom payment for the four prisoners.

"That sort of ransom payment as part of the Iran deal is an outrage," said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
US officials conceded that the Iranian negotiators involved in the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to coincide with the release of the Americans to prove a deliverable for the exchange even as they argued against the characterization of it as a ransom payment.

"As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim at The Hague Tribunal were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the $1.7 billion payout that the $400 cast installment was part of.

"Not only were (the) two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of the Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years," he said. "The funds that were transferred to Iran were related solely to the settlement of a long-standing claim at the US-Iran Claims Tribunal at The Hague."

"It's not surprising that Iran would want to call this a ransom for domestic political reasons," another senior US official said. "But that is not the case. The confidence built during the Iran nuclear negotiations helped the negotiations in other areas, so it is true all these things came together at the same time as implementation day of the Iran deal. But this was not a ransom."

Oh yes there was a news conference about it AFTER they got caught!
Iran even says it was payment for the hostages.

Open your eyes already...
If it looks like a ransom,
and it smells like a ransom,
and the receiver of the ransom says it was ransom,
IT IS A RANSOM!

Obama and the Democrats have sold out the American People once again as the word gets out that American Hostages now have value!

Still waiting for how you proved me wrong.....

Sorry but that sounds like total BS.. they waited 40 years to get the money back and it just happened to coincide with the release of Americans being held in Iran?... Yea, I ain't buying that at all.

Yup. It's purely a story of convenience.
I think that it's pretty clear that we agreed to settle for this amount ($1.7B) and transfer the funds to secure their release. Otherwise, this would still be sitting around getting ignored by everyone.

If I'm trump, I'm doing less campaign trailing to keep from saying something stupid, and more intense preparation for the debates.

Eve nailed it by saying he HAS to look presidential up there.

He doesn't have to "win" the debates. He didn't win the primary debates.

He just has to look poised enough for the position to have a shot at taking this election.

If he can do that, he could very well be in the clear. But he has to do that for two debates. Not just one.

You are correct and at least one will have a very liberal moderator who is going to ask set up questions to try to get him off track and of course Hillary is going to bait him and try to get him ranting and she's very good at that.. she is a master baiter. He cannot come unglued and start ranting and making personal attacks or it's game over.

lol, master baiter.

Any word on the networks hosting these joints?

jc

ngl i hope the don calls hillary the b word during one of the debates. there's no way he'd be able to talk foreign policy with her, and if the past few months are any forecast for the future then the don will lack the policy that's necessary for a substantial debate. so, naturally, i hope that he just tries to attack his way to victory.

well, that's not as much fun, now is it?

Maybe this will be more fun for you...

Among the Americans currently being held are an energy executive named Siamak Namazi and his 80-year old father, Baqer, according to U.S. and Iranian officials. Iran’s judiciary spokesman last month confirmed Tehran had arrested the third American, believed to be a San Diego resident named Reza “Robin” Shahini.

Friends and family of the Namazis believe the Iranians are seeking to increase their leverage to force another prisoner exchange or cash payment in the final six months of the Obama administration. Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials have been raising their case with Iranian diplomats, U.S. officials say.

Iranian officials have demanded in recent weeks the U.S. return $2 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in New York in 2009. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the money should be given to victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks.

Members of Congress are seeking to pass legislation preventing the Obama administration from making any further cash payments to Iran. One of the bills requires for the White House to make public the details of its $1.7 billion transfer to Iran.

“President Obama’s…payment to Iran in January, which we now know will fund Iran’s military expansion, is an appalling example of executive branch governance,” said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who co-wrote the bill. “Subsidizing Iran’s military is perhaps the worst use of taxpayer dollars ever by an American president.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874

So, again... to be clear... the $400 million were not American tax dollars. It was money returned to Iran for goods paid for but not received.