4505

Can you send Trump to Afghanistan and leave him there?

4506

The better deal is the one where he gets more money from them without having to worry about committing treason.

4507

What a nin-cow-poop

4508

Death by… Renaissance festival?

4509

I translated the Russian text for you:

When you play the game of sanctions, you win or you die!

4510


4511

He’s not wrong.

4512

Why go halfway though, just go ahead and say Trump has a teeny weeny peeny.

4513

Trump is gonna explode in 3…2…1…

4514

Well, he knew Google translate would have trouble with the Russian idiom equivalent of “Ha ha, you got Putined!”

4515

Also just came across this article on Slate that says that Trump’s griping about how the new bill is unconstitutional may be correct.

4516

Yeah, the Constitution is ill-equipped to handle a President in debt to a foreign adversary.

4517

I’m with Timex here. It is sad that Imperial presidency has become so entrenched the intelligent folk thinks that the Presidency has carte blanc to act unilaterally in conducting foreign affairs.

On occasions like negotiating a trade deal, Congress can give the Presidency fast track authority to negotiate the specifics and then have an up or down vote.

FDR applied sanctions to Japan, but only after he was authorized to do so by Congress.

The fact that most Presidents in recent generations have generally skipped get Congressional authorization before imposing sanction doesn’t make it right.

4518

CBS News’ Jeff Pegues reports that a congressional source says there is “high interest” in obtaining cell phone records and phone records in general around the meeting, which Trump Jr. had agreed to because he had been led to believe that the lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

And there is also interest in the email accounts of all of those involved in the meeting. In addition to Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort also attended the gathering. A congressional source says “we want all relevant documents” connected to the people in the meeting. Investigators would want to know all that was discussed between the parties, before, during and after the meeting.

4519

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-attorney-subpoenas-kushner-cos-over-investment-for-visa-program-1501717119

Kushner Cos., the New York property development business owned by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, has been subpoenaed by New York federal prosecutors regarding its use of an investment-for-immigration program, according to people familiar with the matter.

The subpoena concerns at least one Jersey City, N.J., development financed in part by a federal visa program known as EB-5: twin, 66-floor commercial-and-residential towers called One Journal Square, said a person familiar with the subpoena.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment. The Kushner Cos. general counsel, Emily Wolf, said in a statement that “Kushner Companies utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information.”

The subpoena, received by the company in May, was a document request that included a demand for emails, according to a person familiar with it.

4520

Those parts of the signing statement were obviously written by real lawyers. This is likely to go to court.

4521

Which just keeps Russia front and center in the news. Hah.

4522
  • A new website is attempting to track the spread of Russian propaganda and themes on Twitter in real time.
  • The project is an attempt to undermine Russia’s disinformation campaign in the United States and the West more broadly.
  • Researchers are continously monitoring roughly 600 Twitter accounts “selected for their relationship to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns.”

[…]
The project will attempt to monitor and illustrate the themes that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Americans to be thinking and talking about — namely, “the break up of the European Union, the dissolution of NATO and the failure of democratic governance in the United States specifically and in the West broadly,” the site says.

One of its objectives is to help journalists get better at recognizing disinformation and propaganda — especially given how fundamental Twitter is to many reporters’ daily work.

4523

Really nice site.

4524

Russian propaganda is just fine, don’t get in their way so we don’t make them angry with us. ISIS too. We have money to counter them but governing is hard and learning how to State Department is really hard so give us a few years to get started.

“the secretary is in the process of working through disagreements with Russia, and this is not consistent with what we’re trying to do.”