How did Putin Convince Republicans to support RUSSIA


'Blackmail': Republican alleges lawmakers compromised by sex, drugs or 'whatever you’re into'

Story by David Badash
12/21/23
link


Afar-right Republican House lawmaker is alleging some members of Congress are compromised by “women, drugs, booze,” and suggested they are being blackmailed by Russia.

“This is how it works,” U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett(R-TN) told far-right podcast host Benny Johnson (video below). “You’re visiting, you’re out of the country, or out of town, or you’re in a motel or a bar in D.C., and some, whatever you’re, you’re into – women or men or whatever – comes up, and they’re very attractive, and they’re laughing at your jokes and, and they, and you’re buying them a drink, next thing you know you’re in the motel room with them naked.”

“And next thing you know, you know, you’re about to make a key vote and what happens?” Burchett continued. “Some well-dressed person comes up and whispers in your ear, ‘Hey, man, there’s tapes out on you,’ or, ‘Were you in a motel room, on, whatever with whoever?’ And then you’re like, ‘uh-oh,’ and [they] said, ‘You really ought not be voting for this thing.'”

Johnson described Burchett’s description as being “BLACKMAILED.”

READ MORE: ‘I Fought for It’: Republican Takes Credit for $650,000 in Federal Funds From Bill She Voted Against

“You got powerful people and they write the big checks,” Rep. Burchett said. “Let’s be honest and powerful people in this country, they write the big checks, and they, you know, they’re the ones out on the tarmac when the President comes and visits, and, whichever party they’re in, they’re always either out on the tarmac or in the private room. They’re the ones that write the big checks.”

“They don’t care who’s in, they hate this country, they hate what we’re about, but they love their portfolios and they love their money more than they do anything else,” Burchett continued. “And they protect it and they protect the people that do that and by doing so, you know, the old honeypot. The Russians do that. And I’m sure members of Congress have been caught up – why in the world would good conservatives vote for crazy stuff like what we’ve been saying out of Congress?”

“If it’s women, drugs, booze, it’ll find you in D.C. and in most elected offices, and that’s what people in power influence do. And it’s just, and I’ve been in this game my whole life has been 16 years in the state legislature in Tennessee and eight years as county mayor, and now I’m in my fifth year of Congress, but it’s just it. The stakes are higher but the with the game is still the same.”

In March Congressman Burchett made headlines when he stood on the steps of the Capitol and, speaking after another mass shooting infamously declared, “We’re not gonna fix it.”


“I don’t see any role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly,” Burchett added, in response to the Nashville, TN school mass shooting where three nine-year olds and three adults were shot to death by a shooter with two AR-15 style assault rifles and a handgun.

He instead suggested more thoughts and prayers.

“As a Christian, we talk about the church. I’ve said this many times, I think we really need a revival in this country.”

Burchett is the third House Republican to make similar claims about their colleagues. Earlier this year, now-former congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) alleged lawmakers he looked up to when he was growing up shocked him by inviting him to orgies where they did drugs.

More recently, another now-former congressman, George Santos (R-NY) alleged, “I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re gonna screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on, and sell off the American people, not show up to vote because they’re too hungover or whatever the reason is, or not show up to vote at all and just give their card out like f---ing candy for someone else to vote for them.”

“This s--- happens every single week,” he added.

READ MORE: ‘Pig’ Ted Cruz Roasted for Attacking ‘Angry’ Liberal Women, Pronouns, and ‘Weenies’

Congressman Burchett is a member of the far-right Republican Study Committee, which has strong ties to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

How did you come up with :"How did Putin Convince Republicans to support RUSSIA", from that article?

It's Russia season again.

Dupe me once? "Give me more!"
Dupe me twice? "More, more!!"

"Would you like us to dupe you again?"
"Yes, yes, I'm waay too stupid to think for myself!"

From the article above: “This is how it works,” U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told far-right podcast host Benny Johnson (video ).


Keep in mind, this is a Republican talking about the subject of "blackmail" on a REPUBLICAN Podcast.

Answer this question...

...Does Russian/Putin have any influence over the Republicans or Trump..?

It's election season, Arch. You just insert the word "Russia" everywhere until the brain dead repeat it like zombies.

Remember Russian collusion and how Trump used them to steal the election?

Remember the Russian disinformation laptop and how it was sequestered until after the next election?


"Russia, Russia, Russia"

That's all you're going to hear for the next eight months. Mark my words.

And StateTV will toe the line with every story. Russians will be spying in your window as directed by Trump. Russians will be putting cats in trees all over your neighborhood... and then they'll hack your Fire Department computers so they can't come save them. Russians will have a signed agreement with Trump exchanging a new Russian wife for our nuclear codes.

Yes, but only on DawgTalkers.

Luckily we have a new training regimen to avoid all injury. We learned it hiding under our desks in grade school.

If your claim is politicians of ALL parties are subject to this, ok. But your title is, uh, ...........well, a pathetic one. I think you missed the gist of the article. Typical, though.

It's a good thing France didn't say that during the Revolutionary war or we may still be under British rule. But Republicans are trying to gift Ukraine to Russia.

It all began with Trump soliciting Russia to go after Hillary.

Donny Boy has man-love for Vlad, remember Helsinki.

It all went downhill from there.

I guess we have a couple DTers who suddenly realized the source for this article telling everyone how the GOP gets it's self Blackmailed once they get to Wash DC...is one of their OWN Republicans.

They are hard to find but I guess U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) must love America more than many of his fellow GOPers who seem to be reluctant fess up why they suddenly love Russia and Putin more than they love the USA.

At least we know how some manage to get themselves compromised by some of the oldest Cons the world has known sex/women/men/drugs/booze.

It's funny how there were two parts to that investigation. The first part was did Russia interfere in the election. The second part was did trump have any ties to Russia interfering in the election. They always want to talk about the part that wasn't proven while refusing to mention the part that was proven. Russia interfered in that election to help trump.

Senate panel finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election

Senate Intel report confirms Russia aimed to help Trump in 2016

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...ussia-aimed-to-help-trump-in-2016-198171

Not only that, they tried again in 2020....

US intelligence report says Russia used Trump allies to influence 2020 election with goal of ‘denigrating’ Biden

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/16/politics/us-election-intel-report/index.html

And they have been and will continue to interfere......

Russia's Prigozhin admits interfering in U.S. elections

LONDON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday he had interfered in U.S. elections and would continue doing so in future, the first such admission from a figure implicated by Washington in efforts to influence American politics.

In comments posted by the press service of his Concord catering firm on Russia's Facebook equivalent VKontakte, Prigozhin said: "We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do."

The remark by the close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin was posted on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections in response to a request for comment from a Russian news site.

"During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once," Prigozhin said. He did not elaborate on the cryptic comment.
Prigozhin, who is often referred to as "Putin's chef" because his catering company operates Kremlin contracts, has been formally accused of sponsoring Russia-based "troll farms" that seek to influence U.S. politics.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russias-prigozhin-admits-interfering-us-elections-2022-11-07/

Of course they avoid that part as if it's the plague. All but the antivaccers. They invite the plague.

No, no. You have a millions of Republicans wise enough to realize it's Russia Season, maybe a few hundred Democrats as well, although most seem pretty gullible.

These articles will flood StateTV until the election. By next week we'll have Republicans kidnapping and eating babies and then selling the stem cells to Putin.

arch...this is not a "both parties do it" issue...

First, Putin had to have a "willing partner" that wanted to see Biden and Dems defeated in next elections...so "common sense" should tell you that he would find that willing partner with similar values in the GOP.

Knowing how "easy" it is to sway Republicans, with Trump being Putin's prime example...the GOP would be Putin's most logical choice to flip via Russia's old blackmail tactics.

One of the quickest ways for Putins scheme to be exposed would be to attempt to compromise a Dem.

It comes down to individual values.

Yes, factually the Republican House is gifting Ukraine to Russia. That's something we should all be hearing about. Only those who choose to be deaf on the issue will try to act as though it's someone elses fault.

"Don't talk about it!" lmao

But no, they haven't started eating babies.... yet.

You must have forgotten about the pedophile ring Hillary was running at that pizza shop basement in D.C. The one that guy took an AR15 into. You remember, the basement of a pizza shop that had no basement.

Just because he's a republican does NOT mean he's speaking of only republicans. Common sense for most, I know.

Watching Trumpians wiggle and worm when they know the guy they plan to vote for does or causes more controversy. Supporting Putin, supporting a traitor for POTUS, fascism, weaponized religion, bigotry, asinine conspiracy theories, low brow own the libs mentality… this is the state of the GOPer party and they are in shambles. They damn sure aren’t republican either… they are, whatever the hell they are… they don’t even know.

I don't really disagree that politicians on both sides are guilty of this. Yet he pointed the finger directly at Republicans in this case.


I think that's rather clear.

It's probably not going to work this time. But I give y'all an 'A' for effort. Besides what else do you have besides Sleepy Joe running into walls and falling up stairs?

Neat. He also said: "they’re the ones out on the tarmac when the President comes and visits, and, whichever party they’re in, they’re always either out on the tarmac or in the private room. They’re the ones that write the big checks.”

Which as I told you, I agree it happens in both parties. But some people on here try to pretend it only happens in one of them.

Aw. Another sleepy Joe whatabout.

Yes! Let go of democracy! That little thing standing in the way of far right asshats’ dreams of a fascist state.

Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder.

"It's a Threat to Democracy!!" Everything is a threat to democracy, especially actual democracy.

January 6th isn't what democracy looks like. Trying to pressure state officials to find you votes in an attempt to overturn an election isn't what democracy looks like. Appointing fake electors to try and overturn an election isn't what democracy looks like. You may need a refresher course in Democracy.

Exactly what a fascist threat to democracy would say.

It also makes no sense to call everyone an insurrectionist who doesn't agree with. Unless you're twelve... or have an IQ of 75... or both.

Wow, this actually explains a lot.


Nice try with you #fauxoutrage though. Gold star for you.

I'm sorry that someone has to explain to you that what you support is not what democracy looks like. Not so long ago such an explanation wouldn't have been necessary. Since you brought up IQ scores.

And as I've explained to you many times, I'm not outraged by it. I've grown to expect it and you never seem to disappoint.

My IQ is high 130s. I’m also older and wiser than you. And when I see posts like yours have read for quite some time. I see a guy who not only condones and supports all the crap MAGA is doing, including insurrection, but also justifies and applauds it OR provides cover for those who espouse it.

Insurrectionist is mild compared to the things traitors should be called.

I'm going to explain this in a civilized manner. Not for you because you'll just blow it off. Maybe even use a mindless meme in the process. However other people read this board so this is for them, not you. But this is actually where we are. I'm not a Joe Biden fan. I think he is a terrible candidate for re-election. I've taken heat for saying that before and probably will again this time. So I wanted to make that clear.

I'm left with one of two choices here. Neither are good ones. Trump or Biden. You will be left with these same choices as well in the end if you plan to vote for anyone who has a chance in hell of being elected president.

trump brought those people together claiming the election was stolen. He and his cronies who he had speak at that rally on Jan. 6th inspired what happened that day. They actually sent that that crowd to the Capital. trump has undermined the legitimacy of that election ever since and continues to until this very day. He actually called multiple states to try to get them to find him votes and refuse to certify their states electorates. There were several states who actually appointed fake electors to overturn the election. That is not democracy by anyone's standards.

So I have one of two choices here. To either spend my time undermining Biden like you have chosen to do which in effect supports the other side. It bolsters the notion that somehow he is the worse of the two choices. That he is unfit to be president while not questioning that trump is not unfit as well to be president.

So your posts do support those who orchestrated an insurrection. It supports the most anti-democratic man who has ever sat in The White House and his accomplices. I know you fully realize this no matter how much you play the denial game. So I don't count you as an insurrectionist. I count you as one who is working hard to get an insurrectionist elected to the presidency again by undermining the only candidate that can prevent that from happening.

I don't like the choices either. I'm not happy that both parties have given us the choices they have. I have chosen not to undermine the only person who can prevent a man who lacks the ability to know what democracy means, has proven time and time again that he doesn't give a damn about anything other than tearing this nation apart, playing the strong man role and stabbing democracy in the back.

You on the other hand have made a different choice.

I already told you who you'll be voting for, a year ago, you just haven't bought in yet.

They'll pull the plug on Joe pretty soon.

Don't worry, we'll have four more years of handouts to the rich and poor and a chainsaw to the middle class. Especially the dirty, dirty whites. At least this puppet will close the border.

Now if you could only commit yourself to undermining both of the current choices your post might be taken a little more seriously. As of now you seem to be undermining only one of the two choices that most everyone else will be voting for. I'm not fooling myself into thinking that voting for someone who has a zero chance has a chance to change the reality of the situation. I mean it's a great gesture of standing against the status quo of the two party system and all. But in the meanwhile attacking one side of the status quo while refusing to stand against the other side of it seems quite insincere.

And unless he can write immigration laws he can't close the border.

took a while, but KGB does what KGB always does: spy and infiltrate. There are no ex-spies.

I thought we were ALL made aware of that fact when a Russian woman who was heavily involved with the NRA was outed as a spy a few years ago.

I don’t get it, bro. I just don’t get it.

You’re a smart guy. Can I ask you, honestly, when you piece together the Russian interference, the fact Trump egg shells like crazy when it comes to Putin, Carlson, Vance, the resistance on providing Ukraine with funding, you can’t tell me you don’t have zero concern on this thread topic, do you?

I’ll even set aside the collusion and assume it didn’t exist in the least. All that other stuff though to me is frightening.

I’ll say that this does nothing to absolve the Dems of their ineptitudes and sure they’ll seize on it politically, but it doesn’t make it less concerning to me at all.

Oh, and whatnot whatnot whatnot whatnot.

The KGB does need a reliable partner to pull off their Blackmail schemes...

All it takes is one unfortunate accident to keep everyone in line...

The American political right’s complicated internal debate over Russia and Vladimir Putin is coming to a head.

17 Feb. 2024
link

Even as congressional Republicans this week were threatening to cut off Ukraine aid once and for all, former president Donald Trump floated the idea that he would encourage Putin to attack NATO countries that didn’t pay enough; Tucker Carlson set about what was effectively a pro-Russian propaganda tour in which he downplayed Putin’s killing of political opponents; and then top Putin opposition leader Alexei Navalny was reported dead in prison.

The confluence of events has suddenly led to some stark comments from the more anti-Putin wing of the Republican Party, which set about deriding any Putin apologists and Russian propagandists in their midst.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called Carlson Russia’s “useful idiot.” After Navalny’s death, he added: “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) urged fellow Republican and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to “spend less time pushing Russian propaganda.”A top political aide to Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) promoted Young’s denunciation of Navalny’s death by saying, “My U.S. Senator is not a venal Putin apologist, but I’m less sure about yours.”Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Navalny was killed by the “same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends.” Haley soon noted that, while Trump weighed in repeatedly on NATO this week and posted dozens of times on Truth Social on Friday, he hasn’t yet mentioned Navalny.Former Trump vice president Mike Pence posted, more generally, “There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin.”

Despite Pence’s contention, the events this week showed that’s not really the case with the broader right. In addition to Carlson’s comments about Putin’s killing opponents, former congressman Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) and conservative influencers quickly likened Navalny’s death to Trump’s criminal charges. Trump himself has frequently echoed Carlson’s reluctance to cast judgment on Putin, and his lack of comment Friday has been conspicuous — to say the least.

The thing about the Republican Party is that it’s not so much that it likes Putin or even thinks he’s an okay guy. Polling last year showed fewer than 1 in 10 Republicans had a favorable view of Putin or trusted him to do the right thing on the world stage, and Republicans said 76 percent to 16 percent that Putin is a war criminal. These are not in line with Carlson’s professed worldview.

But a significant and influential segment of the party has demonstrated a tendency toward a brand of moral relativism and even authoritarianism that creates an opening for giving Putin a pass.

A number I keep coming back to: Shortly after it was revealed in late 2016 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, an Economist/YouGov poll showed a sharp increase in favorable GOP views of Putin. Suddenly, 37 percent had a favorable view, and 47 percent had an unfavorable one. Just 14 percent had a “very” unfavorable view of him.


Early 2017 Gallup data echoed this. It showed 32 percent of Republicans suddenly liked the man who had just interfered in an American election.

As you can see from the above chart, the honeymoon didn’t last. Putin just as quickly fell out of favor even on the right. He then became a pariah in both parties after he invaded Ukraine in early 2022, ranking among the most disliked foreign figures in modern U.S. political history.

That remains the case.

But if anything, it suggested that much of the GOP’s views of Putin were malleable. Whether nearly 4 in 10 Republicans briefly liked him because they believed he had done Trump a solid or because of negative partisanship (“Democrats are attacking Putin and suggesting Trump’s election was illegitimate because of Putin,” the thinking might go), there was some real softness in its anti-Putin character.

Another poll I keep coming back to comes from Vanderbilt University last year. Even a year into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it showed a majority of MAGA Republicans (52 percent) said Putin was a better president than Joe Biden.

Maybe these Republicans just disliked Biden that much, or maybe they saw something admirable in Putin’s strongman mystique (a sentiment Trump has spent years cultivating). It certainly wouldn’t be the only evidence of Trump supporters flirting with the merits of authoritarianism.

Regardless, the data show how, when these loud voices on the right project softness on Putin or his invasion of Ukraine, there’s a willingness to hear that out — even if the base doesn’t actually like Putin. Influential voices on the right have spent years creating a permission structure for shrugging at things like Navalny’s death (see: Jamal Khashoggi). And there’s been little in the way of a desire to fight back against these noisy and influential forces — in part because that would entail going against the most powerful Republican and the onetime most influential conservative commentator.

Republican Russia hawks have increasingly lost the will to fight those battles, as their response to Trump’s NATO comments demonstrated just a few short days ago. We’ll see whether events from later in the week — and the very real threat of Ukraine being cut off — change that.



This post appeared first on The Washington Post

That encompasses pretty much every intuition, thought and concern I have had all boiled into one.

This is a real mirror moment for conservatives. Where do WE stand on the issue?

I want to see Russia pay and feel the might if our prowess. I want them to envy our political system and our politicians, not manipulate it/them. I still have pride in this country on the international stage. I still want to remain the beacon, not be subservient.

If you are conservative, this is a time/issue to voice your opinion. The current Republican front runner is compromised on this issue. It’s clear from just about every piece of evidence out there. His loyalists (Vance, Carlson, Trump Jr, et al) are compromised, based on a common sense review of their actions.

I’m obviously very passionate on this, and I probably struggle to express exactly why for a myriad of reasons, but if we had this kind of dynamic or this kind of opportunity during Reagan or Nixon or Eisenhower when it comes to despotic Russia, what would we have done? Be honest with yourselves.

Surely this band of people who call themselves Conservative (TM) have lost their way or are trying to manipulate the minds of those loyal to the brand.

True. They’ve obviously infiltrated the GOP.

We have heard all of this before and it turned out to be a hoax.

China is the enemy. The Black Swan is near.

China released Covid to see how the American public reacted....and it wasn't good.

I fully expect that China is planning a move on Tiawan before President Biden is swept out of office.

No, it did not turn out to be a hoax. Russia did and has interfered with our elections. It was found they interfered in 2016 to favor trump. The part that wasn't proven was collusion between Russia and trump. Russia did interfere in 2016 and U.S. intelligence found they interfered in 2020 as well.

US intelligence report says Russia used Trump allies to influence 2020 election with goal of ‘denigrating’ Biden

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/16/politics/us-election-intel-report/index.html

What also has not been proven is that "China released Covid to see how the American public reacted....and it wasn't good." Thus far that's nothing more than another one of those on a long list of conspiracy theories.

Was that a….. “Hey everyone, look over there”……while covering up for Russian aggression?

The question is..will republicans continue to allow themselves to be used as "Useful Idiots", blindly supporting Russia/Putin and Trump..?

Now that the GOP's star witness against the Bidens (Alexander Smirnov) has been exposed as a tool used by Putin and the KGB...will the GOP's Useful Idiots finally realize that no one is forcing them to play the role of followers for Putin...

No one is forcing GOPers to check their brain at the door and become followers of Putin and his anti-America agenda. Republicans will be forced to make a decision with their vote in Nov 2024. You either support America and democracy with your Nov vote or you support Putin, Russia and their "ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA"..!

Your choice...

If Trump is elected he will give China the green light ...to do what ever the hell they want with Tiawan...for a price/bribe.

I think that this is good on two fronts-get foreign ownership of our infrastructure and "hopefully" buy US manufactured parts.


https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-...ort-crane-maritime-cybersecurity-1872259




Biden Plans To Spend Billions Replacing China-Made Cranes at US Ports
Published Feb 22, 2024 at 6:23 AM EST
Updated Feb 22, 2024 at 6:24 AM EST



The United States will invest tens of billions of dollars to boost maritime cybersecurity around its strategic seaports, including by replacing China-made container cranes that officials believe could leave American infrastructure vulnerable to sabotage.

Foreign-manufactured ship-to-shore cranes, in particular those built by China's state-owned ZPMC, have been a national security concern for several years. The heavy industries company is the world's largest crane maker, whose machines account for nearly 80 percent of the lifting equipment used at U.S. ports, according to official estimates.

"By design, these cranes may be controlled, serviced, and programmed from remote locations. These features potentially leave PRC-manufactured cranes vulnerable to exploitation," said Rear Adm. Jay Vann, head of the U.S. Coast Guard's cyber command, referring to the People's Republic of China.

Cranes are part of the Marine Transportation System (MTS) that enable "critical national security sealift capabilities that enable the U.S. Armed Forces to project and maintain power around the globe," Vann said. "Any disruption to the MTS, whether man-made or natural, physical or in cyberspace, has the potential to cause cascading impacts to our domestic or global supply chains."


Vann's comments were made at a press call on Tuesday, a day before the White House announced President Joe Biden's plan to put $20 billion toward strengthening cybersecurity in maritime infrastructure, using funds from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal passed in 2021.




Port operators with ZPMC cranes will be asked to address specific software and hardware vulnerabilities, according to the White House. Officials declined to disclose further details on the cybersecurity requirements.

Vann said the directive was based on the prevalence of China-manufactured cranes "and threat intelligence related to PRC's interests in disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure."

A Chinese government spokesperson previously described the U.S. concerns as misleading and "complete paranoia." Its Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.


ZPMC, or Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., delivers its cranes fully assembled and supports their operations with Chinese engineers on site. Port operators say the equipment is of good quality and relatively inexpensive compared with that built by rival firms in the West.

icans, contribute $5.4 trillion to our economy, and are the main domestic point of entry for cargo entering the United States," Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said at the press call.

Biden's plan to phase out China-made port equipment will see crane production return to American shores for the first time in 30 years, she said, with part of the investment going toward a U.S. subsidiary of Japanese gantry crane maker Mitsui.


Neuberger told reporters the Biden administration was not exploring a "rip and replace" approach to the China-made cranes at U.S. ports. She and other officials did not elaborate on the existence of any timeline.

ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE READING
Classified and unclassified government studies suggest sophisticated crane sensors and the data they process could expose information linked to U.S. troop deployment, sustainment and logistics.

Vann said there are more than 200 China-made cranes at U.S. ports and other facilities.

"Our Coast Guard cyber protection teams have assessed cybersecurity or hunted for threats, as of today, on 92 of those cranes," he said.

ADVERTISEMENTSCROLL TO CONTINUE READING
Vann did not say whether the U.S. saw any evidence pointing to the cranes having been accessed by an adversary in the past, and did not specify how the machines might be exploited in the future.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, said the new cybersecurity measures would "protect ourselves from Chinese malware."

"Chinese cyber forces are attacking water, electricity, and other critical infrastructure in the USA, Europe, and countries in the Indo-Pacific," Emanuel said on Thursday. "The new measures are a recognition that secure infrastructure requires trusted partners, like Japan."

damn man, Biden really trying to get me to buy American and drop 6 figures on that Hummer EV *eagle cry*

Can't wait to hear how FOX 'news' will spin this as a bad thing.

It should be- 'entertaining', to say the least.

Bout time we have a President who "gets it"...

Businesses of all sizes need to realize that the best, most reliable work force on earth is located right here in America.

I tend to agree. To an extent.

I think the bigger issue is that citizens of the U.S. need to step up and BUY the more expensive products made in the U.S.

We all want to be paid more. But too many want to be paid more so they can buy the cheaper imported stuff.

I agree with you 100%. I grew up in a northern suburb of Dayton. At that time we had a Frigidaire plant, GM plants and a Chrysler air conditioning plant and a Delco plant which made GM parts. In those days the saying was "Buy What Dayton Builds".

And they did. They supported American jobs and products built in their own communities. Somehow America lost their way in that regard.

MAGA loves them some foreign far right strongmen… never even heard of this guy, but he’s at CPAC telling GOPers how to coup…

And there is more to this -Biden helped getting the Intel plant started outside Columbus-There is supposed to be more about additional grants for this at the State of the Union address in a couple weeks. We cannot have all of our chips manufactured in Taiwan and S. Korea. The intel plant is supposed to be a total investment of 20 billion to 100 billion-They are going to have a hard time finding enough trades in those locals around Columbus. I hear they are going to pull from as far away as Cleveland for trades for this.

Also, there is another project I have been quite busy with in northern WV. It is a factory that will build multi day long energy storage. That is also being built with some state and federal funds. The fed money is coming from Biden/DOE long duration energy storage and grid resiliency grants. It is supposed to be about 750-800 million total investment when we are all done and the average starting wage is around 63k and they are already having job fairs for the plant.

When all the infrastructure spending starts to hit local economies, the fears of a turn down will fade and we’ll have a little economic boom.

U.S. to reportedly announce billions of dollars in subsidies for advanced chips

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/27/us-...ars-in-subsidies-for-advanced-chips.html

This includes top chip manufacturers investing in several states.

It seems as though Biden is actively helping to MAGA.

Hardly, but I see what you did there.

GOP Sen. Tillis (NC) speaks out on ‘useful idiots’ of his GOP...


Sen. Tillis takes on ‘useful idiots,’ Tucker Carlson, leaders silent about Russia


Danielle Battaglia
February 17, 2024
link

Sen. Thom Tillis lashed out in a series of social media posts against “Russian sympathizers,” first taking aim Thursday at former Fox News reporter Tucker Carlson — and perhaps former President Donald Trump.

Carlson last week recently published a two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that even the foreign dictator criticized for being too soft, The New York Times reported. The former Fox News host Carlson, then caught Tillis’ ire, after he toured Russia and favorably compared the country to the U.S. That included a stop at a Russian grocery store where Carlson said he could get his normal groceries for $300 cheaper.

“Ah yes, Russia is so much better than the U.S. with all those cheap groceries and lavish subway stations,” Tillis chided on social media. “The Soviets had a term for people like Tucker: useful idiots.”


“Useful idiots,” is a pejorative political term, used by more than just the former Soviet Union. In Tillis’ context, it refers to Russia sympathizers who helped spread Soviet propaganda.

Tillis criticizing Trump?
But Tillis didn’t stop there.

The news of the death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic, drew Tillis to fire off another lengthy social media post. Many, including President Joe Biden, believe Putin had Navalny killed. This time in Tillis’ latest post he called out American leaders.

“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis posted. “Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”

Tillis’ second statement may appear to be directed toward former President Donald Trump, who over the weekend in Conway, South Carolina, announced he told the leaders of NATO allies that if they did not meet their defense spending targets he would encourage Putin to “do whatever the hell” he wants to those countries.

But a Tillis spokesman said Friday, that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t directed at a single national leader. And part of the tweet was directed again at Carlson.

Trump doubled down on that messaging in a Truth Social post after receiving backlash from national leaders, including his 2024 rival, Biden, who called his words “un-American” and “dangerous.”

Tillis on Ukraine, Russia
Tillis has faced his own Russia-related criticism after an early morning vote Tuesday that approved $95 billion in military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. That vote pitted him against North Carolina’s other Republican senator, Ted Budd, who voted against the package.

Many Republicans argue that money shouldn’t be sent to aid other countries until the U.S. secures its southern border.

Tillis, meanwhile, has fought for support of Ukraine since Russia first invaded the country two years ago.

“Why am I so focused on this vote?” Tillis asked from the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “Because I don’t want to be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away. You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble. You will ultimately see China become emboldened. And I am not going to be on that page of history.”

His floor speech also included his own criticism of Putin.

The bill passed the Senate 70-29, but House Speaker Mike Johnson called it dead on arrival in his chamber. And before taking any action on the bill he dismissed the House for a nearly two week President’s Day recess.

70-29 and it dies in the House. Insane.

Russians are weak, and Putin is so scared of critics he needs to have them killed by hit men. While GOPers kiss his feet and point at China. Pffft GOPers.

I think using sound bites from the likes of Madison Cawthorn and George Santos pretty much instantly tanks the credibility of whatever you're trying to say.

I do think you're kidding yourself if you think Russia doesn't have at least some politicians under its thumb. If you're safe making that assumption, then it's just a matter of which politicians ,consistently take the side that benefits Russia.

MAGA Is a ‘Russian Intel Op’: Experts Respond to Allegation GOP Using Kremlin Propaganda

Published on February 21, 2024 at 01:00 PM ET
By David Badash
link

Legal and political experts are responding to Special Counsel David Weiss’ allegations that a former top FBI informant, now under federal indictment, had, as one reporter explained, “high-level contact with Russian intelligence operatives,” and fed Republicans falsehoods from the Kremlin which they used to attack the Biden family and to try to build a case to impeach President Joe Biden.

“How many intel and legal findings and counter-espionage cases before people are willing to accept that the entire MAGA movement is a Russian intel op?” asks David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and author.

The bombshell allegations from the Special Counsel, a U.S. Attorney nominated by then-President Donald Trump, were published in his legal memo asking a judge to detain Alexander Smirnov, the defendant and former FBI confidential human source.

“Russia has fully infiltrated the Republican party. Nice going traitors,” alleged Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York office. He added: “Trump & @SpeakerJohnson et al are Putin’s ‘useful idiots.'”

U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), an attorney who served as the lead counsel for the first Trump impeachment, wrote: “The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start. The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected. Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?”

The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start.

The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected.

Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?

Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman, a frequent MSNBC commentator, points to a passage from the DOJ’s memo: “More from DOJ motion re Smirnov: ‘the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020 …He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Nov.'”

“This guy made be the sole reason for R’s Burisma obsessions,” Litman says.

Litman continues: “DOJ to court: ‘Smirnov transformed his routine & unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden] and [Hunter Biden], after expressing bias against Joe Biden.’ Was the entire R Burisma obsession based on phony intel?”

He adds: “And the big plot point to the Smirnov revelations from [Special Counsel David Weiss] is that the misinformation that Republicans have gone running — in fact galloping with –originates with, you guessed it, Russian intelligence. i.e part of overall Putin misinformation campaign that so distorted 2016.”

Attorney Blake Rutherford, in a social media post “retweeted” by attorney George Conway, wrote: “At what point will the broader American press, and I mean producers, editors, and publishers, wake up to very real fact that Russian propaganda is being normalized in today’s @GOP. They are all useful idiots. Putin knows it.”
Republican turned independent Tim Miller, a political strategist and author at The Bulwark, takes a look at recent events:

“To sum up: RUS/Putin have invaded their neighbor, assassinated the biggest domestic political threat, coopted one of the right’s biggest media stars, and seeded a fabricated story about the US President that was echoed by GOP congressional leadership & rightwing media en masse.”

But even before the Special Counsel’s allegations against the indicted former FBI informant, some were growning increasingly aware of Russia’s alleged penetration into the GOP.

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View,” last week wrote: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Russia is winning the information war within the US. GOP politicians – who know better – are amplifying Kremlin garbage. We are in deep, deep trouble.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

In other words….”Russian collusion” wasn’t a hoax.

Like donny, Putin loves the poorly educated. The GOP is full of rubes.

Gets off elevator...

"This is the floor with the thread for Russian Collusion, right?"


Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000
Federal Election Commission had investigated alleged misreporting of expenditure by campaign during 2016 election

Associated Press
Thu 31 Mar 2022 09.38 EDT
Share

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.

That is according to documents sent on Tuesday to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which had filed an administrative complaint in 2018 accusing the Democrats of misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending.

Trump, nearly six years after beating Clinton, alleges his 2016 opponent is guilty of ‘racketeering’ and a ‘conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood’.

The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as legal services.

“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.

The Clinton campaign and DNC had argued that the payments had been described accurately, but agreed, according to the documents, to settle without conceding to avoid further legal costs.

The Clinton campaign agreed to a civil penalty of $8,000 and the DNC $105,000, according to a pair of conciliatory agreements that were attached to the letter sent to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.

The documents have not yet been made public and an FEC spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said the FEC had 30 days after parties are notified about enforcement matters to release them.

The Steele dossier was a report compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by Democrats that included salacious allegations about Trump’s conduct in Russia and allegations about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Documents have shown the FBI invested significant resources attempting to corroborate the dossier and relied substantially on it to obtain surveillance warrants targeting the former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

But since its publication, core aspects of the dossier have been exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors. A special counsel assigned to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation charged one of Steele’s sources with lying to the FBI and charged a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Clinton’s campaign with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting in which he relayed concerns about the Russia-based Alfa Bank.

Trump, who has railed against the dossier for years, released a statement celebrating the agreement and once again denouncing the dossier as “a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign”.

Graham Wilson, the lawyer representing the campaign and the DNC, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The letter was first reported by the Washington Examiner.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ats-steele-dossier-settle-electoral-case

With such a small judgement they must not consider it very important. Must not have been much of a there, there. Let's see, 113k verses 355 million and 5 million dollar judgements. Things that make you go hmmmm for $500 Alex. Maybe this is why......

The Steele Report, Revisited

How much of the infamous document ended up being corroborated elsewhere? A whole lot.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...dossier-has-since-been-corroborated.html

But then that doesn't really have anything to do with the GOP House NOW supporting Putin's invasion of Russia does it?

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Pit exposes hypocrisy and corruption, uses it as evidence.


You can actually just use those two posts for how absolutely whack this entire conversation is. Good stuff!



"Russia, Russia, Russia!! They're coming to get us again. And only YOU can stop it. How, you ask? By voting for a corpse, whose family has more shady dealings with foreign nationals than any first family in American history!! But don't be concerned about that, it's Russia Season"

The main difference is now they are clearly supporting Russian's takeover of Ukraine. And you don't need a dossier to see how obvious it is. And you can't deny how accurate much of the Steele dossier actually was. Well I guess you can since you refuse to take those facts straight on. Instead you muddy the waters with your typical mindless rhetoric with zero substance. The Repugnantcan way.

The Trump crime family is in a partnership with Putin and the Russian oligarchs...and the GOP is an active wing of the Trump/Putin criminal enterprise.

A bit of a refresher for those who would like to forget about the history of the Trump criminal enterprise and the family's links to Dark Money.




A Panama tower carries Trump's name and ties to organized crime

The Trump Organization licensed its name to a luxury condo tower in Panama riddled with ties to drug money and international organized crime.

Nov. 17, 2017
By Aggelos Petropoulos and Richard Engel
link


PANAMA CITY — When Ivanka Trump flew here in 2006 to push her family’s latest business project — an oceanfront steel and glass tower called the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, shaped like a sail and designed to be one of the tallest buildings in Latin America — a Brazilian real estate salesman named Alexandre Ventura Nogueira says he was ready with a sales pitch.

Ventura, who said he only had a small real estate company at the time, said he told Ivanka Trump that he could sell condos in the proposed skyscraper for three times the price of similar units in Panama City. The reason: the Trump name, which would go on the building in a licensing deal even though the Trump Organization was not the building’s real developer.

Ventura says he and Ivanka agreed to a kind of challenge. If Ventura could sell apartments as easily as he claimed, and for those high prices, he’d become the main sales representative for the project.
"The agreement was, I had a week to sell 100 units," Ventura said in a recent interview with NBC News. "I said, 'I'm going to do better, I’m going to sell without telling (the buyers) the price."

Ventura did sell the initial units, and later hundreds more. He is now a fugitive. In May 2009, Ventura was arrested in Panama for real estate fraud, unrelated to the Trump project. Mauricio Ceballos, a former financial crimes prosecutor in Panama who investigated Ventura, said that dozens of complaints against Ventura crossed his desk accusing him of double- and triple-selling apartments, both at the Trump Ocean Club and other developments.

Ventura eventually fled Panama while out on bail. He denied having defrauded his clients but admitted to NBC News that he has participated in money laundering on behalf of corrupt Panamanian politicians, unrelated to the building project.

Ventura isn’t the only person associated with the building who has had run-ins with the law. An NBC News investigation into the Trump Ocean Club, in conjunction with Reuters, shows that the project was riddled with brokers, customers and investors who have been linked to drug trafficking and international crime. Ceballos, who investigated the project, went as far as to call the skyscraper “a vehicle for money laundering.”

The investigation revealed no indication that the Trump Organization or members of the Trump family engaged in any illegal activity, or knew of the criminal backgrounds of some of the project’s associates. But Ventura said that the Trumps never asked any questions about the buyers or where the money was coming from.

Legal experts contacted by Reuters said the Trumps should have asked those questions. Because Panama is “perceived to be highly corrupt,” said Arthur Middlemiss, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former head of JPMorgan’s global anti-corruption program, those who do business there should perform due diligence on others involved in their ventures. If they fail to do so, he told Reuters, they risk being liable under U.S. law of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

No one asked about the money
In the interview, Ventura admitted that some of his brokers and clients who bought and sold units in the Trump Ocean Club were connected to the Russian mafia and other organized-crime groups, including a convicted money launderer who moved cash for drug cartels.

“I had some customers with questionable backgrounds,” he said. “Nobody ever asked me. Banks never asked. Developer didn’t ask and (the) Trump Organization didn’t ask. Nobody ask, ‘Who are the customers, where did the money come from?’ No, nobody ask.”

The Trump Organization was not the actual developer of the Panama tower. Thanks in large part to the hit NBC television show “The Apprentice,” the Trump name was recognized all over the world and the Panama deal was structured to capitalize on that brand. For this deal, the Trump Organization would license its brand, operate the hotel and sell its expertise in managing the building, receiving a cut of every condo sale. The actual development, along with all of the risks involved, would be left to a local businessman with almost no real estate experience, Roger Khafif and other partners. Ventura said he was invited to the meeting as Khafif’s sales representative.

The interview with Ventura took place in a European city; Ventura agreed to meet NBC News along with Reuters, but asked that the specific location remain undisclosed and that he wear a disguise when appearing on camera.

According to the Trump Ocean Club’s bondholder prospectus, Donald Trump was projected to make $74.2 million from the project by the end of 2010. The disclosure forms Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics show that he continues to earn management fees and royalties from the Trump Ocean Club. In the last three years, the documents show, he was paid as much as $13.9 million.

Global Witness, a nonprofit anti-corruption watchdog that is often critical of businesses and their connections to government officials, said Panama offered Donald Trump a new way to make money at a time when his businesses were struggling. (The Trump casino empire filed for bankruptcy in 2004.) The group is publishing the findings of its investigation into the Trump Ocean Club on Friday.

“In the mid-2000s Panama was known as a money laundering hotspot,” said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. “At that time the Trump companies were in dire trouble. He changed his business model to license his name and his brand to other people’s developments, and very often they would be inexperienced developers, low-profile people who needed a name to sell their developments. So Trump would go into a licensing deal, which meant he invested nothing, but could make a profit from it.”

Ventura estimates his company, Homes Real Estate Investment & Services, sold 350 to 400 units, about $100 million worth of property. Ventura says he was such an effective salesman that he was invited to a 2008 celebration at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Ventura provided photographs of himself with Donald Trump at the event, and other photographs of him with Ivanka, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

The article above "continues"...



Links to drug trafficking

link

Links to drug trafficking
Ventura said the Trumps never asked about his clients, the people who were buying the condo units, and he never told them. To cite one example, he said that he sold seven to 10 units in the Trump Ocean Club to a man named David Murcia Guzmán, founder of a large Colombian marketing company.

Guzmán is now in U.S. custody, awaiting extradition to Colombia after being convicted by a U.S. federal court of laundering money for drug cartels, including through real estate. According to a Colombian news report, citing the police, Guzmán also had financial ties to the FARC, a paramilitary organization listed by the State Department as a terrorist group.

Guzmán isn’t the only link connecting drug trafficking to the Trump Ocean Club. One of the early investors in the project was a man named Louis Pargiolas. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in a federal court in Miami to conspiracy to import cocaine.

Ventura says about half of the units he sold at the Trump Ocean Club were to Russians. To help handle them, Ventura went into business with several Russian-speaking real estate brokers, who he admits have had checkered pasts, including one named Stanislav Kavalenka. According to Ontario court documents, Kavalenka was charged in Canada with a number of offenses, including “compelling” and “procuring” women to engage in prostitution. The case was withdrawn when the two women failed to appear in court to give evidence against him.

Another investor in Ventura’s firm was Arkady Vodovozov. According to court files cited by Reuters, he was convicted of kidnapping in Israel. A third representative of the brokerage firm, described by Ventura as an occasional buyer at the Trump Ocean Club, was Igor Anapolskiy, according to Ukrainian court documents. He was convicted in September 2014 by a court in Ukraine of forging travel documents, according to Global Witness.

The identities of all of the buyers and sellers of the building’s units is difficult to discover, however, because many of the units were bought and sold through anonymous shell companies, according to documents from the Panamanian office of public records. Ventura says he set up hundreds of those corporations, charging roughly $1,000 each.

Ceballos, who says he investigated transactions related to the Trump Ocean Club during his stint as an anti-corruption prosecutor in Panama, describes the building as a magnet for international organized crime, particularly from Russia.

“The majority of sales of this building were not to local residents, but rather to foreigners,” he said. “They bought initially as an investment, knowing that once the building was constructed you could legalize your money.”

He added: “We were able to find out that people with some kind of criminal history acquired apartments there.”

Ceballos said lax law enforcement in Panama made money laundering easy. To launder money, he said, buyers using anonymous corporations would bring dirty money to Panama, often in cash, use it to buy real estate with no questions asked, sell it, and deposit the proceeds into local banks, which would accept the funds, also without asking questions. The real estate purchases, Ceballos says, were solely a way to get the money into banks and into the global financial system; few buyers intended to live in the condos.

Lights off and hallways empty
During a recent visit by NBC News, the Trump Ocean Club appeared to be largely empty, with virtually no one in the restaurants at night. The hallways were consistently empty. The lights were off in many of the units after dark. Ventura said most of his clients never intended to live in the Trump Ocean Club.

Miguel Antonio Bernal, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Panama and a campaigner against corruption, said many buildings in Panama City were built specifically to be vehicles for money laundering; the Trump Ocean Club fits the mold.

“There are more than 500 buildings like this,” he said. “But this – the difference of this – is that this has the name of the actual president of the United States. And he keeps the name here.”

Ventura now lives under a new name, as do two other brokers who used to sell the building’s condos. He said he admires President Trump and doesn’t consider himself to be a detractor or accuser. Ventura said his job was simply to sell and not ask questions. As for Trump, he said: “It could be that he didn’t want to know… I believe that he didn’t know.”

Sarah Chayes, a corruption expert working with a group of lawyers trying to bring an unrelated case against the president for violating the Emoluments clause of the Constitution, said it was troubling that the Trump Organization seemed to pay no attention to the shady backgrounds of its partners and clients.

“Anyone who thinks that members of FARC, that drug dealers, Russian oligarchs who have been looting their own country, represent normal business partners,” she said, “doesn’t quite understand the free enterprise system that I think is central to a healthy America.”

Fate...so who you gonna lock up..?

If someone is guilty of a crime, put them in jail...pretty simple stuff.

But, GOPers might want to take a bit of care to find out if their witnesses are liars.

I'm just supporting #RussiaSeason with more Russia articles. We gotta get things things out there until people are saying "Russia" so much that they believe every sentence with the word in it. It's called media mind control the democratic process!


And oh yeah, "Everything's a threat to our democracy!", just ask Hunter lol.

Hunter Biden says democracy is at stake in his battle to stay sober

Hunter Biden should never be elected president again!

No wait, what?

Either should Vladimir Putin... or Alexander Smirnoff.... or (insert any name and just scream "Russia")

Can you explain how a private citizen has anything to do with the actions of elected politicians who control national policy and set our laws? No, you can't. You're grasping at straws.

Well, if he was selling his daddy's influence, remember, his daddy is president? But we all know that's not true because no #DNA.

Hunter gives the same answer as Donald Jr.,Eric, or Ivanka. I am a business person. There is nothing illegal with my activity. Go pound sand.

I'll always reiterate that if there is something Hunter did, lock him up and throw away the key. The guy is a scumbag. I don't think that's debatable.

But as far as Russia season goes, I'll fall back to what I said prior regarding the concerning behavior a lot of far right Republicans have when it comes to Russia, Ukraine and opposing Putin. It's unlike any phenomenon I have seen and there is really no logical segue as to why they have suddenly taken this diversion, unless it's nefarious. Just because Democrats - and actually a fair amount of Republicans - keep bringing up that notion repeatedly, doesn't make it any less concerning.

As an analogy, if I were to constantly hang out with a girl named Svetlana, who is historically my wife's enemy, and sometimes I side with Svetlana over my wife, I don't think I could get away with telling my wife "Svetlana, Svetlana, Svetlana! That’s all you ever talk about!” Meanwhile, my best friend is always bragging on about Svetlana and her baked bread, telling everyone if they just knew Svetlana, they would hate my wife. 😉

There are a lot of concerning data points that add up into an overall very concerning picture when it comes to Putin and Russia tied into the far right wing.

Didn’t trump sit in a closed door meeting with Putin? Now that’s a National security breach. Considering trump rums his mouth like Godzilla.

How so?

Does "Svetlana, Svetlana, Svetlana!" just come along once every four years as well?

If so, I can say with confidence that my wife and I would both roll our eyes and say "Looks like Svetlana season again".


While we enjoy her delicious Kartoshka.

They taste almost as good as liberal outrage. 😉

Lol...no. Svetlanta has been a continuous problem going back to I'd say roughly 2018. Her and her friend Mira, from Hungary. There's also Darja from Belarus, but she's more of a third wheel. Everyone knows Svetlana is the ring leader, though. Anyways, me and my boys have been spending a lot of time with all three.

Are you serious?

He's serious, he thinks Hunter is a good guy and the media is just out to get him -- strangely, they're doing it with Hunter's own material. Poor Hunter.

Yeah, what exactly makes him a scumbag? Just asking.

Weird, because she's only really in the news when there's an election taking place.

She's like the 'baby daddy' who always shows up in mid-February to make amends. No one really understands until they stop and give it some thought. They all think it's just Valentine's Day.

And next time you see Mira, snag me some of that Kolachi Roll.

Maybe it's me, but I haven't gotten that impression. It may take a back burner to other things that the news seizes to be more important on the day-to-day, but the one very consistent thing, going back years now into the last administration, is the rhetoric concerning Russia (and Ukraine) from the previous admin and all those who are tied to him is very concerning. Whether that's siding with Russia over the NSA, Carlson (as we've talked about ad nauseum), Vance's misinformation, comments on NATO, digging dirt on Hillary, defending Putin to Bill O'Reilly, those with concerning ties who were closely affiliated with the administration (Manafort, Flynn, et al), Trump Jr. going out of his way to disparage Zelensky (which seems completely insane to me), etc etc etc.

On top of all that, I fall back to my original comment, which ties into Trump defending Putin in front of O'Reilly...watch him when he talks about Putin. It's baffling to me. This is a guy who has gone to great lengths to personally disparage those who are closely tied to him (Rubio, Cruz, DeSantis, etc) but when it comes to Putin, never once have I seen Trump walk on egg shells the way he does when Putin is the subject. It's not just during election years, it is literally every time the subject comes up at any point going back to the start of his own administration. The cronies seem to follow suit.

I doubt you're just asking, but I also don't want to distract too much from the discussion at hand. We can get into it more in another thread, but hell, dude, just read his Wikipedia page or Google him.

That being said, I think if there's an effort to tie him to Biden - as there has been, seemingly failed in the House as of late - then - drawing this thread back to the original topic - it would also be fair to look at the chart of potential Russian ties to the previous administration that Rep Eric Swalwell has on his website.

https://swalwell.house.gov/issues/russia-trump-his-administration-s-ties

And how did he "sell daddy's influence"? Do you mean relatives of powerful people often times get jobs they're not qualified for? Yes that often times happens. Sometimes even their daddy gives them such jobs. Just ask Ivanka and Jared. Sometimes you people really crack me up. No actual evidence but you keep beating that same broken drum. Meanwhile......

The GOP caricatures Hunter as a bubbling crack-head living off of daddy's namesake.

The truth is his is a Yale Lawyer, and is able to put some sentences together.

The real truth is that even if daddy was assisting him, there would never be a bank paper trail. Let's just say he would take the Fani Willis approach, and not the Don and Stormy/Karen approach.

String a sentence together? What's that?

Much has been made of his habitual drug use and its effects (ex. he was in the Navy for a cup of coffee, got discharged due to failed drug test).

Yes, he's a lawyer... and as a lawyer, he should know better and have his affairs in order. Dude has had tax issues resulting in charges. Then there's the gun charge he picked up. By themselves, these are nothing-burgers, but together they begin to paint a picture.

I'll pause here to make a quick statement. The GOP dogging Hunter has failed largely because their ultimate goal was to tie Hunter's douchebaggery to Joe in a legal/criminal manner. They haven't been able to make that last connection due to lack of hard evidence which has (IMO) kinda started the feeling that Hunter is being unjustly targeted. Hunter deserves all the smoke.

Hunter had an affair with his dead brother's widow. Yuck.

Then there's all the smoke related to Burisma, the laptop, and other foreign business relationships. Much has been made of this, but I think the main reason those weren't successful is that the main intention was to tie all this back to Joe Biden vs just pinning Hunter to the wall.


Some of what I said above is my interpretation/opinion, but some isn't. I think I've made it clear which is which. Even if you ignore my opinion there is still plenty there to establish that Hunter is a grade A dbag.

He has done things dug addicts do. None of it good. I do find it odd however that people who can seem to forgive trump as well as support him considering all of his nastiness and indictments point their fingers at Hunter as if he is the reincarnation of Satan. Someone who has never been elected or even ran for public office. Things that make you go hmmmm for $500 Alex.

Agreed with everything. Facts are Facts. The fact that he is not the first to use his family linkage for personal benefit goes way back when, even before Billy Beer.

Tale as old as time.

Song as old as rhyme

I guess it's not just me who's noticed...

Ex-World Leader Cringes At 'Really Creepy' Thing Trump Has For Putin
Lee Moran
Thu, February 29, 2024 at 3:56 AM CST·1 min read



Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described former U.S. President Donald Trump’s fascination with Russian President Vladimir Putin as “really creepy.”

“The Republican Party under Donald Trump, and particularly the right wing of the Republican Party, are very sympathetic to Vladimir Putin,” Turnbull, who led Australia from 2015 to 2018, said on Australia ABC’s “Q+A” town hall show.

“I mean, I’ve been with Trump and Putin. Trump is in awe of Putin,” Turnbull continued. “When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. ‘My hero!’ It is really creepy. It’s really creepy.”


During the same broadcast, Turnbull slammed Trump as a “bully” who is “attracted to dictators and tyrants” and warned of the effect a second Trump term may have on Australia’s national security.

Trump has repeatedly sided with Putin over U.S. government intelligence agencies. Earlier this month, Trump said he’d encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who don’t spend the promised amount of 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-world-leader-cringes-really-095617966.html

And another brick...Also, I am no fan of McConnell...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-freedom-caucus-mocks-mcconnell-225209626.html

House Freedom Caucus mocks McConnell as ‘(D-Ukraine)’ after retirement news
Lauren Sforza
Wed, February 28, 2024 at 4:52 PM CST·2 min read



The House Freedom Caucus mocked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after he announced his retirement from his leadership position Wednesday, suggesting that his stance on Ukraine aligns with his Democrat colleagues.

“Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine). No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader,” the House Freedom Caucus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

McConnell, who turned 82 this month, announced Wednesday that he will step down from his leadership post in November. He said he plans to serve the remainder of his term, which ends in 2027.

“I’m not going anywhere any time soon. However, I will complete my job my colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January,” he said.

McConnell has supported approving more aid for Ukraine, which marked its second anniversary of fighting Russia earlier this month. He faced a difficult challenge earlier this month after mustering up enough Republican support to back a package approving more aid to Ukraine and Israel — a measure that lacks movement in the House.

McConnell urged Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to take up the Ukraine funding bill after the upper chamber had passed the legislation in a predawn vote earlier this month.

“We’ve heard all kinds of rumors about whether the House supports Ukraine or doesn’t. It seems to me that the easy way to solve that would be to vote,” McConnell told Politico at the time. “And I hope the Speaker will find a way to allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid and the other parts of the bill, as well.”

Far-right members of the House and the Freedom Caucus have largely grown skeptical of approving more funding for Ukraine, prompting GOP infighting over the issue.

Some Republicans seemed to celebrate the news that McConnell was retiring from the leadership position, suggesting they can vote a more conservative Republican into the position. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said “better days are ahead for the Republican Party” after McConnell’s announcement.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) should be the next leader of the Republican conference in the upper chamber. Scott had challenged McConnell for the leadership role in 2022.

“Mitch McConnell stepping down provides a great opportunity for true conservative leadership in the Senate. @SenRickScott would make a great Republican leader,” Good wrote on X.

In a statement on X, Scott said McConnell’s retirement “is an opportunity to refocus our efforts on solving the significant challenges facing our country and actually reflect the aspirations of voters.”

My wife seemed quite excited hearing McConnell was retiring and stepping down. Immediately I explained to her that while I disagreed with McConnell on several policy issues, he wasn't nearly as extreme as what I felt his replacement would be. That I believed his stepping down may make the Senate just as, if not more dysfunctional than the House and this wouldn't end well.

Here is how the Freedumb Caucus have shown their respect to McConnell for his time in office supporting the Republican agenda.....

House Freedom Caucus mocks McConnell as ‘(D-Ukraine)’ after retirement news

The House Freedom Caucus mocked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after he announced his retirement from his leadership position Wednesday, suggesting that his stance on Ukraine aligns with his Democrat colleagues.

“Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine). No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader,” the House Freedom Caucus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

McConnell, who turned 82 this month, announced Wednesday that he will step down from his leadership post in November. He said he plans to serve the remainder of his term, which ends in 2027.

“I’m not going anywhere any time soon. However, I will complete my job my colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January,” he said.

McConnell has supported approving more aid for Ukraine, which marked its second anniversary of fighting Russia earlier this month. He faced a difficult challenge earlier this month after mustering up enough Republican support to back a package approving more aid to Ukraine and Israel — a measure that lacks movement in the House.

McConnell urged Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to take up the Ukraine funding bill after the upper chamber had passed the legislation in a predawn vote earlier this month.

“We’ve heard all kinds of rumors about whether the House supports Ukraine or doesn’t. It seems to me that the easy way to solve that would be to vote,” McConnell told Politico at the time. “And I hope the Speaker will find a way to allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid and the other parts of the bill, as well.”

Far-right members of the House and the Freedom Caucus have largely grown skeptical of approving more funding for Ukraine, prompting GOP infighting over the issue.

Some Republicans seemed to celebrate the news that McConnell was retiring from the leadership position, suggesting they can vote a more conservative Republican into the position. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said “better days are ahead for the Republican Party” after McConnell’s announcement.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) should be the next leader of the Republican conference in the upper chamber. Scott had challenged McConnell for the leadership role in 2022.

“Mitch McConnell stepping down provides a great opportunity for true conservative leadership in the Senate. @SenRickScott would make a great Republican leader,” Good wrote on X.

In a statement on X, Scott said McConnell’s retirement “is an opportunity to refocus our efforts on solving the significant challenges facing our country and actually reflect the aspirations of voters.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/...vfHrBaLHUGP5qxuQADIAelo_YdqX0dSwbCKpiBic

This is how they are willing to treat anyone, even in their own party, who is willing to stand up to Putin by supporting Ukraine. It seems Putin has a party in America who willingly support his goal of taking over Ukraine.

At this point, we should just assume all GOPers are on Putin’s payroll, at least until we prove otherwise. IMO, the entire party should be shown the door and chucked into the muddy waters they created..

It mentions the border in the headline, but the real discussion has more to do with the disinformation across the board. It seems readily apparent that it appears to be working in wide swaths, given how the rhetoric has changed amongst both politicians and constituents.

Russian disinformation is about immigration. The real aim is to undercut Ukraine aid
DAVID KLEPPER
Fri, March 1, 2024 at 7:00 AM CST·6 min read
64


FILE - Phill Cady holds a sign during a "Take Our Border Back" rally on Feb. 3, 2024, in Quemado, Texas. Online actors tied to the Kremlin have begun pushing misleading and incendiary claims about U.S. immigration in an apparent bid to target American voters ahead of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WASHINGTON (AP) — For Vladimir Putin, victory in Ukraine may run through Texas' Rio Grande Valley.

In recent weeks, Russian state media and online accounts tied to the Kremlin have spread and amplified misleading and incendiary content about U.S. immigration and border security. The campaign seems crafted to stoke outrage and polarization before the 2024 election for the White House, and experts who study Russian disinformation say Americans can expect more to come as Putin looks to weaken support for Ukraine and cut off a vital supply of aid.

In social media posts, online videos and stories on websites, these accounts misstate the impact of immigration, highlight stories about crimes committed by immigrants, and warn of dire consequences if the U.S. doesn't crack down at its border with Mexico. Many are misleading, filled with cherry-picked data or debunked rumors.

The pivot toward the United States comes after two years in which Russia's vast disinformation apparatus was busy pushing propaganda and disinformation about its invasion of Ukraine. Experts who study how authoritarian states use the internet to spread disinformation say eroding support for Ukraine remains Russia's top priority — and that the Kremlin is just finding new ways to do it.

“Things have shifted, even in the last few days," said Kyle Walter, head of research at Logically, a tech company that tracks disinformation campaigns. While experts and government officials have long warned of Russia's intentions, Walter said the content spotted so far this year "is the first indication that I’ve seen that Russia is actually going to focus on U.S. elections.”

This month Logically identified dozens of pro-Russian accounts posting about immigration in the U.S., with a particular interest in promoting recent anti-immigration rallies in Texas. A recent Logically assessment concluded that after two years spent largely dedicated to the war in Ukraine, Russia’s disinformation apparatus has “started 2024 with a focus on the U.S.”

Many posts highlight crimes allegedly committed by recent immigrants or suggest migrants are a burden on local communities. Some claims were posted by accounts with tiny audiences; others were made by state media sites with millions of followers.

This week the accounts seized on the recent death of a Georgia nursing student and the arrest of a Venezuelan man who had entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case. The killing that quickly became a rallying cry for former President Donald Trump and other Republicans who suggest that migrants commit crimes more often than do U.S. citizens. The evidence does not support those claims.

The content, crafted in English, has quickly found its way to websites and platforms popular with American voters. Footage of a recent anti-immigration protest broadcast by Russian outlet RT, for example, was racking up thousands of views this week on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and prompting angry replies from other users.

The Russian outlet Sputnik ran a story this week about growing calls to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, a priority for Trump, who failed to complete the job as president. An analysis of other sites that later linked to the Sputnik piece shows than half were in the U.S., according to data from the online analytics firm Semrush.com. Overall, Americans make up the English-language Sputnik's largest audience.

U.S. officials have warned that Russia could seek to meddle in the elections of dozens of countries in 2024, when more than 50 nations accounting for half of the world's population are scheduled to hold national votes. While Russia has a strategic interest in the outcome of many of them — the European Parliament, for one — few offer the opportunity and the prize that America does.

For Russia's bid to conquer Ukraine, this year's U.S. election stakes couldn't be higher. President Joe Biden has pledged to fully back Ukraine. Republicans have been far less supportive. Trump has openly praised Putin and the former president has suggested he would encourage Russia to attack America's NATO allies if they don't pay their fair share for the military alliance.

More than half of Republicans believe the U.S. is spending too much on Ukraine, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that found Democrats to be much more supportive of additional aid.

Soon after the war started, Russia mounted a disinformation campaign designed to cut into support for Ukraine. Claims included wild stories about secret U.S. germ warfare labs or Nazi conspiracies or that Ukrainian refugees were committing crimes and taking jobs from people who had welcomed them.

That effort continues, but Russia also has shifted its attention to issues with no obvious tie to Moscow that are more likely to create cracks in the unity of its adversaries — for example immigration, or inflation, high-profile topics in the U.S. and Europe.

“They're very savvy and understand the right buttons to push," said Bret Schafer, senior fellow and head of the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit. "If your ultimate objective is to reduce support for Ukraine, your inroad might be talking about how bad things are on the southern border. Their path to win this thing is to get the U.S. and the E.U. to stop sending weapons and aid to Ukraine.”

A message left with the Russian Embassy in Washington wasn't immediately returned.

America’s election may also be a tempting target for other authoritarian nations such as China and Iran that, like Russia, have shown a willingness to use online propaganda and disinformation to further their objectives.

The online landscape has dramatically shifted since Russia sought to meddle in America's 2016 presidential race won by Trump. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have banned many Russian state accounts and built new safeguards aimed at preventing anyone from exploiting their sites. In one recent example, Meta, the owner of Facebook, announced last fall that it had identified and stopped a network of thousands of fake accounts created in China in an apparent effort to fool American voters.

Other platforms, including X, have taken a different approach, rolling back or even eliminating content moderation and rules designed to stop disinformation. Then there is TikTok, whose ties to China and popularity with young people have set off alarms in several state capitals and Washington.

Artificial intelligence is another concern. The technology now makes it easier than ever to create audio or video that is lifelike enough to fool voters.

Social media is no longer the only battleground either. Increasingly, Russia and other disinformation spreaders use encrypted messaging sites or websites that masquerade as legitimate news outlets.

“A lot of their activity has moved off the major platforms to places were they can operate more freely,” said John Hultquist, chief analyst at Mandiant Intelligence, a cybersecurity firm monitoring Russian disinformation.

Walter, Logically's research director, said he is most concerned about disinformaton on X and TikTok this year, given their lack of controls and their popularity, especially with young voters. TikTok's ties to China have raised national security concerns.

He said that while election years tend to highlight the dangers of disinformation, the most effective information operations are launched years in advance. America's adversaries have spent a long time studying its politics, building online networks and cultivating domestic divisions.

Now comes the payoff.


https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/russian-disinformation-immigration-real-aim-130026275.html


“They don’t need to put a ton of effort into causing disinformation," Walter said. "They’ve already laid the groundwork leading up to 2024.”

The Trump Family just grifted an entire political party to Russia with Putin as the new leader of the GOP.

GOPers still don't get it, Trump and his family never cared about your political party and saw you gopers as nothing more than fools that he and his family could con and milk dry of funds to further his personal and family style of life.

You GOPers need to keep sending those donation...Putin is going need them.

Trump CONNED you again...

Trump had a chance to crucify Putin in 2016, instead he chose to embrace him. Putin is is public enemy #1 on planet earth. Roll back that footage.

Just like hate groups in tUSA, trump empowers them. It’s pathetic.

I just saw that a little bit ago. I'm sure Putin will be sending trump a thank you note along with this video....

Donald John Trump is a traitor to his country.

Just like all Russians, GOPers are weak. They need guys like Putin and trump to guide their lives and tell them what to do and when to do it. Weak.

Well we’ve seen they have no spines for 8 years now…

OCD..Trump is more than "a traitor" ..! Just to mention a few of Trumps

Trump is an "adulterer"...poking around a porn star while his wife sat at home taking care of his/her "newborn".
" ...is a "rapist according to the judge overseeing the E. Jean Carroll case ...
" ...is a habitual "liar"...if his mouth is moving, he's lying..!
"... is a thief, stealing money from anyone he can con..such as college students, the American taxpayers.
" ...is a "criminal" charged with obstructing justice...
" ...is a "tax fraud"...
" ...is a "coward"...who threatens others with his thumbs and mouth.
" ...is a "CON-man" who uses others to carry out his dirty work...
**(For example, the Jan 6 fools who got conned by "the coward" and now sit in jail after believing Trumps words.. (we're going to walk down to the Capitol,  — and I'll be there with you... )


Trump is all this and so much more..!


The worst part is, some GOP voters believe Trump is setting a good example and they are raising their children to be like Trump. Talk about destroying the moral fiber of this great nation..the damage being done to Generations Z and  A by the self-proclaimed moralistic GOP radical right can only divide our country for years and decades to come...

You forgot draft dodger

jes...yep, Trump is also a draft dodger...

Folks, feel free to add to the list...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ple-draft-deferments-vietnam/5809482002/

Fact check: Biden, like Trump, received multiple draft deferments from Vietnam

FYI.

Sadly, military service apparently only matters AT TIMES.

I remember W running, and the Dem's went all buffalo about him having only served in the air national guard, and what a travesty it was.

But, with Clinton, service didn't matter.

With Obama, service didn't matter.

With Trump, it matters.

With Biden - it doesn't matter. His school exemptions seem fine. His asthma exemption is fine.

Hmmm............

I see you have no idea how things worked then. College deferments were perfectly legal exemptions for serving in the military........

Changes From Vietnam to Now

Before Congress reformed the draft in 1971, a man could qualify for a student deferment if he could show he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress in virtually any field of study. He could continue to go to school and be deferred from service until he was too old to be drafted.

Claiming you have bone spurs while being able to complete 18 rounds of golf on a regular basis isn't the same thing.

You seemed to miss that the asthma accusation was just that. An accusation. The fact finding part said it was student deferments. The draft was over long before Obama was of age to serve. The issue has never been about "serving". It's been about fabricating a story to dodge the draft. It'd odd how his bone spurs never got in the way of 18 holes of golf.

It was an accusation only?

Perhaps you should read the article I quoted?

I mean, a grown man such as yourself can read, correct?


"Biden received five student draft deferments, first as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University.

And after a medical exam in April 1968, he received the "1-Y" classification, which meant he could only be drafted in a national emergency.

Biden released his Selective Service records to the Associated Press in 2008. At the time, a spokesperson said he was "disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," per The News Journal."

Trump: (from the same article mind you. USA Today) "Trump received four student draft deferments and a medical exemption

Born in June 1946, Trump was also a member of the generation called up to serve in the Vietnam War. Like Biden, he never did.

He received four student draft deferments while an undergraduate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

And in the spring of 1968, he, too, received the "1-Y" classification — for bone spurs in his heels, per The New York Times."

Again, I ask.....what's different?

Oh, the party they are from.

Then trump went out and played 18 holes of golf.

And before you keep getting carried away with yourself, let me remind you that not only did trump go to military school, he also played tennis and squash in his first two years at Fordham where he went to college.

arch...did Biden ever call American soldiers "suckers and losers"...

According to Trump's fellow GOPers, Trump looked down on those who sacrificed everything for their country, making disparaging comments about our bravest soldiers.

Biden ever do that...?

What's different you ask..? EVERYTHING is different...from their personal values to their morality...

Trumps sees Putin as his hero while Biden sees Putin as the ENEMY..!

Ah, changing the goal posts, eh?

Go back and read my second post on this. It only matters what initial is behind the name.

To be honest, I could care less about the deferments. I would ask you and others how they support a man that degrades those that served and the one that died or were injured?

For me, there are few things worse that you can do! JMO however.

arch...it's all linked, imo..Russia, Putin, Trump and your GOP.

You can claim that Biden and the Dems are no different but that would a flat out lie, wouldn't it..?

How did Putin convince Republicans to turn their back on the USA and support Russia?

So how do you play tennis and squash in college with bone spurs again?

Maybe the same way you play football in college with asthma?

Let's go back: Trump was called a draft dodger.

He got 4 deferments for school.

He got a medical deferment, for a fifth deferment.

Biden got 5 deferments for school.

He also got a 5th deferment for a medical deferment. But he's not a draft dodger?




If one is a dodger, the other 1 is. If 1 is not, the other one isn't, either.

Now, if we want to discuss how wealthier people were able to get deferments, let's do that.

Sure! Kids and teens with asthma can play sports as long as their asthma is managed and under control. Being active, working out, and playing sports can help kids with asthma stay fit and maintain a healthy weight. It also can strengthen their breathing muscles to help the lungs work better.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=people+can+play+football+with+asthma

Can you be a professional football player with asthma?

For many athletes, an asthma diagnosis does not have to be career-ending news. In fact, these football players, track stars, and swimmers have been able to manage their condition and break records.

https://www.healthline.com/health/famous-athletes-with-asthma


How about playing tennis and squash with bone spurs? I know you would just love to gloss over this but that isn't going to work. You keep trying to make it sound as if the two are the same thing. They're not.

David Beckham, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Greg Louganis, Jerome Bettis, and other athletes have played as well as excelled at their sports whom all have asthma.

Bone spurs by contrast have sidelined many athletes. But please, do go on.

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...en-didnt-use-health-excuses-dodge-draft/

https://www.businessinsider.com/don...s-common-at-the-time-vietnam-war-2018-12

The thing that you are talking about is the Dr that said Trump had bone spurs was later deemed to be unreliable.

This reminds me of the time that stated that George W. Bush was kind of a dummy (I voted for him twice by the way) and I was immediately told he had an Ivy League education. What he had was the diploma but was that earned or bought. There are different rules for the wealthy.

So to they are the same just doesn't fit well with reality.

He must have forgotten that unlike trump, Biden didn't come from a wealthy family.

NOPE. You were allowed to get a deferment for college and those kids got a break. I’m sure Papa Trump just paid for Donny’s medical excuse and deferment. There is no reality where these two are the same unless you are stuck on stupid.

Just another data point…

Again, find me one time he stood up to Putin. Just one.

It really stinks to high heaven.

Those who choose to live in denial concerning Putin/Russia's take over of the GOP...you might want to listen to your Republicans complain about how the GOP is already infected and supportive of Putin/Russian propaganda...so much so, that some elected RWers openly repeat the Russian propaganda on the floors of Congress.

Key Republican reps: Russian propaganda has ‘infected’ much of the GOP

When powerful Republican committee chairs start complaining about their party being "infected" with Russian propaganda, it's clear the GOP has a problem.

April 8, 2024, 8:44 AM EDT
By Steve Benen
link
On Capitol Hill, there are a small handful of prominent Republicans who have a reputation for occasionally breaking party ranks and showing a degree of independence. GOP members such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, has been rather bold about expressing her dissatisfaction with the GOP’s direction under Donald Trump’s direction.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, however, are not exactly known as Republican “mavericks.” They’re both longtime conservative partisans whose views tend to dovetail nicely with GOP orthodoxy. When Democrats search in desperation for potential Republican moderates who might be willing to work on bipartisan compromises, Turner’s and McCaul’s phones do not ring.

With this in mind, their latest rhetoric about their party and Russian propaganda is generating a lot of interest, and for good reason. NBC News reported:

GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even “being uttered on the House floor.” “We see directly coming from Russia ... communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Ohio Republican didn’t name names, though he added, in apparent reference to members of his own party, “There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not.”

The Intelligence Committee chair isn’t alone. Just five days before Turner’s on-air comments to CNN, McCaul was surprisingly candid in comments to Puck News’s Julia Ioffe. “I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” the Texan lamented.

McCaul added, “There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what Russian audiences hear from state-run media] — on our airwaves.” The Republican went on to admonish those who “read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”

There can be little doubt that these powerful GOP committee chairmen are correct. Their party has a “Putin wing“; it’s loud; it’s growing; and it’s having a dramatic impact on the party’s base.

All of which makes it all the more notable to see leading Republican voices such as McCaul and Turner push back. What’s more, as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake explained, there are some other recent examples, including Republican Sen. Thom Tillis warning his GOP colleagues not to become Putin apologists.

The North Carolinian didn’t call out any Republicans in particular, though it’s not difficult to come up with plenty of compelling examples.

As this lengthens the list of intraparty GOP fissures, House Speaker Mike Johnson is poised to move forward with plans for an aid package for Ukraine — which will be targeted with a vengeance from far-right members whose views echo the Kremlin’s agenda. Watch this space.

House Intelligence Committee chair says Russian propaganda has spread through parts of GOP

By Avery Lotz, CNN
2 minute read
Updated 10:30 PM EDT, Sun April 7, 2024
link

video:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/07/politics/mike-turner-russia-ukraine-propaganda-gop-cnntv/index.html

CNN- House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has “absolutely” seeped its way to Congress, saying some of his Republican colleagues have repeated false claims on the chamber’s floor.

“It is absolutely true we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” the Ohio Republican told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Turner’s comments come after House Foreign Affairs chair Michael McCaul’s told Puck News last week that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk” of the GOP base.

Turner, who has been an outspoken advocate of passing additional aid to embattled Ukraine, said Sunday: “There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not.”

“To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle,” he added.

The Senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill that included assistance for Ukraine and Israel in February, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose future as a leader in the party remains uncertain following Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s move to oust him from the speakership, refused to immediately bring the package for a vote.

Turner said Sunday he does not believe Johnson is at “any risk” of being ousted by the “chaos caucus,” pointing to members “who are seeking attention for themselves and trying to stop all of the important work in Congress.”

It's time for the GOP leadership, such as Michael McCaul and Mike Turner to start naming names of those elected Republicans who serve thanks to their American voters but have sold out America in favor of Putin and Russia.

With the Nov 2024 election coming up, the voters need to know if their elected officials support American values or Russia/Putin values and vote accordingly. The American voters have the power to change what is wrong with the GOP.

Jc

How did Putin get republicans to support Russia?

Easy, through the NRA. Republican voting men are the biggest simps in the world. Place some young redhead from Russia who loves guns into NRA events, whisper some sweet nothings, and you got yourself an entire party.

This article author definitely has an axe to grind, but it is important to distinguish the quotes from Mike Johnson and what he says. He's definitely setting forth and hammering something that goes against his self-interest in potentially remaining speaker. Generally, when people profess something that goes against their self-interest, it has a high likelihood of veracity. Anyhow, here is the article. I'm glad he called out Vance as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mike-johnson-shockingly-pro-ukraine-100100484.html

It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.

Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive attention. But I want to highlight an aspect of it that’s been overlooked because it’s an important tell about the true state of MAGA ideology and what it’s demanding of Republicans these days.

“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said, in a moment that became a mini-speech. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland, or one of our NATO allies.” If so, he added, we might find ourselves sending troops to defend allies from Putin later.

Did we really hear the speaker say that he believes what our intelligence services have told him about the long-term consequences of cutting off aid to Ukraine?

This is a direct challenge to the MAGA worldview in multiple ways. Johnson is treating Putin as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and acknowledging his broader imperialist designs, which is heresy to some MAGA Republicans. But he’s also flatly declaring that on these matters, the deep state is very much to be believed.

A big MAGA conceit is the idea that a nefarious deep-state network of senior federal bureaucrats, nongovernmental experts, and technocratic and managerial elites lurks behind the push to fund Ukraine—and that it’s making up lies about Russia’s war to create a pretext to fulfill a broader set of sinister globalist aims. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently tweeted this:

The Ukraine scam is up.

If our Republican majority in Congress funds Joe Biden’s war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine (because he’s a puppet on strings) then Republicans are tools of the foreign war loving deep state.

This is probably MAGA’s most elaborate exercise in up-is-down totalitarian-style propaganda of all: Biden is being manipulated by a deep-state “scam”—i.e., the idea that Ukraine is worth defending—to carry out a war against Russia, which has been magically transformed from aggressor to victim.

The horrible atrocities against Ukraine the world has witnessed, Putin’s declarations that the sovereign democracy of Ukraine isn’t a real country and shouldn’t exist, the consequent effort to erase it with murderous conquest—all of that disappears in this fog of MAGA propaganda. This sort of thing is why even some senior Republicans suggest that a number of House GOP lawmakers are operating under the influence of Russia.

Johnson’s affirmation that he believes our intelligence services on these matters is a direct rebuke to those MAGA tendencies.

The bills that GOP leaders have introduced—which are scheduled for votes on Saturday—are also surprisingly faithful to the intel agencies’ apparent understanding of this geopolitical moment. They include $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, funding for Taiwan, and humanitarian assistance, including for victims in Gaza, which is essential to winning the support of Democrats who will be needed when right-wing Republicans oppose the package.

Greene had threatened to hold a motion-to-vacate vote to oust Johnson if he moved forward with Ukraine aid. If so, there are signs that Democrats will vote to save Johnson if Ukraine aid passes. Either way, Johnson appears prepared to brave MAGA’s fury—and the word of U.S intelligence services is a key reason for it.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism of what our intelligence services are saying. That’s reasonable. After all, they contributed to whipping up the ultimately false assertions about weapons of mass destruction that helped justify the Iraq War.

But reasoned skepticism is not what MAGA Republicans are offering. Instead, they’re pushing carefully choreographed propaganda that seeks to entirely erase Russian agency from the story of the conflict and to transform Ukraine’s allies into the true warmongers here.

Greene’s effort at this is obvious. Then you have Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted that the aid bills will “hurt my father’s ability to negotiate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine” if he’s reelected president, whereas “globalist” Republicans who support the package want indefinite war.

But that’s absurd. As international relations professor Nicholas Grossman shows, the idea behind rhetoric like this—a ruse that other MAGA Republicans regularly employ—is to recast our choice as one between “peace” (which we’d attain by refraining from aiding Ukraine) and “war” (which we’re facilitating with Ukraine aid). In reality, withholding aid is not antiwar at all; it merely makes Russian conquest more likely to continue and succeed (which is perhaps the whole point of this framing).

Even supposedly shrewder MAGA Republicans play a version of this sleazy game. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance recently wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that Ukraine is losing and our aid won’t give it what it needs in equipment (or soldiers) to prevail. Democrats have effectively rebutted those claims. But Vance also slips into his piece the idea that in providing aid, “we”—meaning the United States—would “prolong a long and bloody war,” and suggests the primary obstacle to peace is President Biden’s unwillingness to negotiate toward it.

But how does Vance himself envision the war ending? Couldn’t it mean Russia gobbles up much or even all of Ukraine? Vance doesn’t say, beyond insisting we should forget about Ukraine regaining all of its stolen territory. Thus he too frames the choice as one between peace (ending aid) and war (continuing it). Presto: Opposing the package suddenly becomes the antiwar position, and being for the package becomes the pro-war one. That’s slippery, dishonest rhetorical trickery that you’d think is below Times standards.

This is the sort of deceitfulness that Johnson has effectively taken on. By affirming what abandoning Ukraine would really mean, and stressing that the deep state is telling lawmakers the truth about it, Johnson has for the time being taken a stance against one of MAGA’s most cherished—and most toxic—propaganda tropes. No wonder Greene is beside herself with rage.

Marg Green...a Trumper and maga follower who has no idea...

"It appears" that Mike Johnson may have realized that he is #2 in the line of succession and he represents ALL AMERICANS...not just the radical right wing of the gop.

If Johnson needs Democratic support to pass Ukraine aide, it looks as though he will have that needed support.

House takes key step forward on foreign aid bills with Democratic support, setting up final vote Saturday

The House voted Friday in a bipartisan manner to advance a key foreign aid package, a significant step in sending aid to Ukraine and Israel and setting up a final vote as soon as Saturday.

In an extraordinary move, more Democrats (165) supported the measure than Republicans (151). The Democratic votes were necessary to overcome opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson’s right flank, who will likely only increase their calls to oust him.

The fight over the bills – and the potential for right-wing members of the GOP to attempt to oust Johnson over it – adds up to the most intense pressure that the speaker has faced over his future in his short time in the role. Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday said he would co-sponsor Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate, which would boot Johnson from the speakership if it passed, leading the speaker to defiantly tell reporters that he would not be resigning.

Greene left the US Capitol on Friday following the vote without moving to oust Johnson.

The GOP-led House Rules Committee late Thursday night also used Democratic support to advance the bills.

The move is likely to further inflame conservatives who are against additional aid to Ukraine and have threatened Johnson’s job over the issue.

The committee activity capped off another contentious day on Capitol Hill as the renewed push to send foreign aid to Ukraine has divided House Republicans. The right wing of the GOP conference has come out against the plan and vented their anger over a separate effort to change House rules regarding the process for removing the speaker – a rule change Johnson said Thursday he would not make.

Three Republicans – Massie, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas – voted against the foreign aid legislation in committee Thursday night, but all Democrats on the panel voted for it.

Three bills in the foreign aid package would provide aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region, with the latter intended to help deter Chinese aggression in the area. A fourth bill includes other House GOP priorities, including sanctions on Iran, the seizure of frozen Russian sovereign assets and a measure that could lead to a nationwide ban of TikTok.

The three House aid bills add up to about $95 billion – the same amount the Senate bill included – with an adjustment that $10 billion in Ukraine economic assistance is in the form of a repayable loan, CNN has reported.

The three assistance bills are similar to the foreign aid legislation that passed the Senate in February. The fourth House bill was not part of the Senate package.

Johnson, appearing on Newsmax, suggested the timing for a vote on the package would be “early Saturday.” He did not elaborate, and his office told CNN exact timing is still being worked out.

According to the rule, if the bills pass the House, they will be combined into one amendment before being sent to the Senate.

Earlier Thursday, the House Freedom Caucus took an official stance urging House Republicans to oppose the procedural vote, arguing “to secure the border we must kill the rule.”

“The House Freedom Caucus will vote NO on rule for the ‘America Last’ foreign wars supplemental package with zero border security, and urge all House Republicans to do the same,” the group said in a statement posted on X.

With Republicans controlling the House only by a razor-thin margin, Johnson will have to rely on a significant number of Democrats to get the bill through procedural hurdles, especially with a growing number of hardliners upset about border security provisions.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/18/politics/foreign-aid-bills-house-rule-vote/index.html

Gosar becomes third House GOP member to back effort to oust Johnson from speakership

Rep. Paul Gosar on Friday signed on to the effort to remove Speaker Mike Johnson from his job, the Arizona Republican announced in a news release, becoming the third member to do so.

Gosar huddled on the House floor earlier in the day with GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, the other two co-sponsors of the motion to vacate the speakership.

They have not taken steps to force a floor vote on the resolution.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/politics/paul-gosar-mike-johnson-house-gop/index.html

Mike Johnson decided to stand up to Putin. GOP hardliners won't stand for that.

Dang, now they have a rational moderate on board.

He never says anything crazy either.

How did Putin convince Republicans to support Russia? Sent a box of sex toys to the last Epstein tribute at the RNC? Allowed Donald and Marge to fondle his junk? Your guess is as good as mine for why traitors become traitors. MAGA DTers should answer this question.

Now you know they don't confront anything like this. It's not important enough to them it seems.

They are too stoopid to know that they are being played.