Back to the Mueller investigation, rightwing nutjobs can take solace that it’s apparently not real:
‘None Of This Is Real’: Conservative Media React To Mueller Indictments
Obviously compromise didn’t work in the end. The point is, it’s not offensive to hypothesize that it might have, as it did with every other disagreement and crisis the country faced.
Foote presented Lee and other Confederate fighters as largely driven by motives other than preserving human property,
This is false; Foote explicitly describes Southerners as seceding in order to preserve ‘their property,’ meaning their slaves, in one segment of the documentary. And, though he does have a soft spot for his ‘Southern heroes’ (in his defense, Nathan Bedford Forrest was absolutely a badass, as was Otto Skorzeny), it’s extremely reductionist to characterize his views as ‘bullshit.’
Given the intractability of Southern fire-eaters, most likely none, as we now know in hindsight. The point I’m trying to make is that people seem to be attacking Kelly for bringing up the very concept of compromise, when compromise was all that was being discussed in multiple forms from 1820 right up until Fort Sumter, not to mention individual state proposals to phase out slavery. They included all manner of variations, from the Crittenden Compromise (which would have constitutionally enshrined slavery) to Lincoln-advocated compensated-emancipation plans in the border states.
his analytic framework is a disaster. Burns relies heavily on Shelby Foote
Again, false: Shelby Foote contributes very little to the documentary’s ‘analytic framework,’ which can be seen in its writing and its choice of emphasis. For one thing, an entire episode called ‘The Cause’ is dedicated to describing the institution of slavery in considerable detail. Foote amounts to color commentary; Burns put so much of him in because he’s so entertaining, but he hardly overrides the vast swathes of David McCullough-voiced descriptive segments that establish slavery as the proximate cause of secession.
Is anyone in this thread arguing that slavery was not the primary cause of the Civil War?
Miramon
5474
Everyone knows it was economic anxiety.
ShivaX
5475
I don’t know is Kelly in this thread?
I don’t remotely get where you’re coming from with this.
Definitely. The prospect of working sucks.
- Manafort currently has three US passports, each under a different number. He has submitted 10 passport applications in roughly as many years, prosecutors said.
- This year, Manafort traveled to Mexico, China and Ecuador with a phone and email account registered under a fake name. (The name was not disclosed in the filings.)
- Both Manafort and Gates were frequent travelers to Cyprus. “Extensive travel of this nature further evidences a risk of flight,” the prosecutor’s filing said.
- Manafort wrote on loan applications and other financial documents that his assets were worth between $19 million in April 2012 and $136 million in May 2016.
- In some months, like while he served as Trump’s national campaign chairman in August 2016, Manafort’s assessment of his total worth fluctuated. In August 2016 he said his assets were worth $28 million, then wrote he had $63 million in assets on a different application.
- Gates “frequently changed banks and opened and closed bank accounts,” prosecutors said. In all, Gates opened 55 accounts with 13 financial institutions, the prosecutors’ court filing said. Some of his bank accounts were in England and Cyprus, where he held more than $10 million from 2010 to 2013.
I obviously am not qualified to be rich. If I was worth $10s of millions, the last thing I’d be doing is borrowing money.
Yeah but remember: you owe the bank ten thousand dollars, the bank owns you. Owe the bank ten million dollars, you own the bank.
Cyprus is where the Russians do all their money laundering.
Exactly. And that same Bank of Cyprus is where Trump found Wilbur Ross, our sec. of commerce. Swamptastic.
It’s a weird, counter-intuitive thing, but the obscenely rich (or even just filthy rich) often have very little in the way of liquid assets and end up getting loans for practically everything, including spending money.
The deal is that they can get loans for less than the rate of inflation, probably half or even a third of the rate that common scum like you or I would have to pay. Today, that means about 1% or even less. They (or rather their accountants) then make the payments from dividends… or else simply take out a new loan to pay off the old one. Since their assets are appreciating at a rate greater than the interest that they are paying, they’re typically actually making money on the deal.
Take Zuckerberg - in 2012, he bought a $6M house. Obviously he could have paid cash for the thing if he had just checked his couch for spare change. But he got a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage… for 1.05%. Right now, the house has appreciated in value at greater than 1% per year, but if the prime rate fluctuates to such a degree that his loan rate goes up to, say, 2.5%, he can just sell off some stock and pay it off in full.
Nice to have such choices.
One person close to Dina Powell and Gary Cohn said they’re making sure to leave rooms if the subject of Russia comes up.
Ianucci come back. (related, very excited for when The Death of Stalin hits the streams)
Skipper
5484
I love the writer of this article for tidbits like this:
Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb has been advocating the view that playing ball will lead to a quick resolution (Cobb did not respond to a request for comment).
Mueller moving on WH officials.
President Donald Trump’s longtime aide and current communications director, Hope Hicks, is scheduled to speak with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in mid-November, following the president’s trip to Asia, multiple people familiar with the schedule told POLITICO.
Mueller’s team is also expected to interview three or four other current White House officials as early as this week, according to an administration official.
Mueller’s team already has interviewed former aides, including Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and former press secretary Sean Spicer. But the latest round of interviews appears to mark a new phase of the investigation — hauling in current administration officials for daylong depositions.
I missed that wonderful tidbit, good catch.
Evidence suggests Sessions perjured himself in his confirmation hearings, even if he did the right thing during the campaign:
Senator Al Franken, “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” Sessions responded: “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have—did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”
But George Papadopoulos’s guilty plea indicates that there were attempts in the Trump campaign to arrange a meeting with Putin, and that Sessions was aware of them.
More info @ the Intercept:
It’s part of a pattern that began early for Sessions. He initially denied categorically meeting with Russians during the campaign, but was forced to walk that back when it emerged he had met at least twice with then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He then claimed that the meetings had focused purely on foreign affairs and his senatorial duties, a claim rebutted by Kislyak himself, who told his superiors that he spoke with Sessions about the 2016 campaign.
IIRC when he was testifying, and it might have been when he gave that reply to Franken, he said something about no contact with Russians and then quick looked over his shoulder as if he knew he had just goofed.
Uh… that sounds a lot like treason.
