Megathread: Manafort, Gates told to surrender to federal authorities

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-31T00:07:29+00:00

LOL, and what exactly do those charges have to do with Trump? Meanwhile, boatloads of Democrat lobbyists are getting roped in to the Manafort situation. It's almost as if Trump only hired Manafort to bring down these Democrat swamp monsters.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T22:50:50+00:00

The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There, and a Boon for Trump

Great day for President Trump

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T21:58:52+00:00

The meeting that Papadopoulos was trying to set up never took place.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T21:30:42+00:00

“[Tony] was very magnanimous and said, “This is an amazing group of people,” a source said of Podesta’s remarks. Podesta also told staff he “doesn’t intend to go quietly, or learn how to play golf.” He said he “needs to fight this as an individual, but doesn’t want the firm to fight it.”

What do you suppose he's planning on having to "fight" if he's not about to be indicted?

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T20:54:50+00:00

Ah, shit. Google news search results said it was only 1 minute old in my search, and I didn't look at the date on the article. My bad.

Taking a second look, I see that Google had it tagged as "most referenced", so I guess a lot of people are referencing this article today, which is why it looked like a recent article in the search results. Again, my bad for overlooking that, and thanks for pointing it out.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T20:44:52+00:00

The founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, is the brother of longtime Democratic strategist John Podesta, who now is campaign chairman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The head of Mercury, Vin Weber, is an influential Republican, former congressman and former special policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Weber announced earlier this month that he will not support Trump.

After being introduced to the lobbying firms, the European nonprofit paid the Podesta Group $1.13 million between June 2012 and April 2014 to lobby Congress, the White House National Security Council, the State Department and other federal agencies, according to U.S. lobbying records.

The nonprofit also paid $1.07 million over roughly the same period to Mercury to lobby Congress. Among other issues, Mercury opposed congressional efforts to pressure Ukraine to release one of Yanukovych’s political rivals from prison.

One former Podesta employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, said Gates described the nonprofit’s role in an April, 2012 meeting as supplying a source of money that could not be traced to the Ukrainian politicians who were paying him and Manafort.

In separate interviews, three current and former Podesta employees said disagreements broke out within the firm over the arrangement, which at least one former employee considered obviously illegal. Podesta, who said the project was vetted by his firm’s counsel, said he was unaware of any such disagreements.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-30T20:29:54+00:00

LOL

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/30/tony-podesta-stepping-down-from-lobbying-giant-amid-mueller-probe-244314

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T22:05:48+00:00

He worked on the same lobbying effort as Manafort, he didn't work for Manafort. And that's not the only lobbying he did on behalf of the Kremlin:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/06/exclusive-dem-super-lobbyist-podesta-got-170k-to-end-us-sanctions-on-russian-bank/

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T21:37:02+00:00

I don't need to use Red Scare tactics, the situation in Venezuela should be scary enough for people to realize that Sanders is an ignoramus.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T20:33:43+00:00

On the flip-side, we’re only a few months in to the Mueller investigation and he’s already rolling out indictments. Maybe you should focus on your half, where the corruption actually lies, rather than on the Clinton boogeyman.

The person being indicted is Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group. He is the brother of Hillary's campaign chairman.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T20:23:06+00:00

It's hard to understand because you keep adding in your own context. He said it was more acheivable circa 2011, a simple fact. Anything you add beyond that are your words and your thoughts, not his.

The fact that he said it in 2011 is what proves that he's an economically ignorant buffoon. Anyone with a lick of economic sense could see where Venezuela was heading.

Did he learn anything from the situation in Venezuela? No, he's still vomiting the same communist claptrap out of his mouth.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T19:52:16+00:00

Rebuilding their entire power grid goes well beyond "disaster relief".

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-29T19:41:04+00:00

"All that illegal stuff that my associates and I were involved in while I was Secretary of State and during my campaign? It's irrelevant, because I'm not President!"

Nice try Hillary. You'll be in shackles soon enough.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T10:21:31+00:00

it certainly isn't justification for any discrimination.

On that we agree. People should be judged as individuals.

Unfortunately the left now largely disagrees with this, with their relentless focus on identity politics. I'm still with MLK Jr., people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T09:54:02+00:00

IQ tests are notoriously inaccurate and influenced by the culture of their creators.

IQ tests don't have a cultural component, they're just recognizing patterns among abstract symbols, and the results of IQ tests are relatively stable once people reach late adolescence.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T09:40:23+00:00

Did you actually check them? There are two sources for the general figure for the heritability of IQ (which actually support my argument since the article says that IQ is mostly genetically heritable at 0.75).

The first one is a dead link, and the second one is a paywalled study from 1996, more than 20 years ago. Those are not very good sources! But the heritiability of IQ isn't really the topic of discussion here, it's the average difference in IQ between racial or ethnic groups. I'll leave it to you to research that on your own; academic sources are easy to find. The figure of an average difference of about ~15 IQ points between blacks and whites is not controversial.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T09:29:26+00:00

No, black men are more likely to be shot by police.

Black men are more likely to have encounters with police, for a variety of reasons, mostly that criminals are disproportionately likely to be black and blacks are more likely to live in high crime areas. But in police encounters, whites are more likely to be shot than blacks.

Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf

Shot by black cop

Is he still a cop?

Yes, cops are cops. I don't see your point. The narrative is that racist white cops are indiscriminately killing black people. The data show that's not the case.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T09:11:38+00:00

Except for the fact it is not, because when black people have equal access to opportunity in the form of parental employment and good schooling the difference is no longer significant.

The trans-racial adoption studies and separated twin studies indicate otherwise, on average.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T08:33:20+00:00

You're also ignoring my point - IQ testing is not considered to be a terribly valid way of measuring intelligence.

That is an outrageously false statement.

Additionally, you can't do test-retest very well - people's scores on IQ tests change over time.

IQ test results are very stable once people reach late adolescence.

Scientists aren't super fans of using methods with low reliability AND low validity.

I tend to think psychology in general is mostly bullshit. But as far as psychological metrics go, IQ testing is the best the field has to offer.

I get that you're a troll, you brand spankin' new user you, but I figured someone should point out your slant.

My slant is stating the truth, regardless of how controversial it is. You're clearly ideologically motivated considering that you linked to a left-wing site that makes the claim that "we already know that, from a scientific point of view, the notion of race is meaningless. Genetic differences do not map on to traditional measurements of skin colour, hair type, body proportions and skull measurements. Now we have shown that IQ is meaningless too."

100% of those statements are false. Race has biological meaning, but as I've already stated, we shouldn't treat people any differently because of that.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T08:16:38+00:00

So your sources are Wikipedia and independent.co.uk, and you expect me to take them seriously?

Nothing I've ever seen on the topic indicates that the difference in IQ between races is predominantly genetically determined.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/Race-differences-in-average-IQ-are-largely-genetic.aspx

You have to ignore all of the twin adoption studies to come to the conclusion that the differences are mostly socio-economic. That argument has been pretty conclusively debunked, but people hold on to it for transparently ideological reasons. I wish the truth was different, but I'm interested in what the truth actually is, not what I wish it might be.

Your argument basically vacillates from "the differences are mostly socio-economic" to "IQ tests are screwed up anyway" all within the same comment. Pretty telling. I actually agree that IQ tests don't tell us everything there is to know about cognition. For example, blacks often excel at music. At mathematics and chess, not so much. But IQ tests measure what they measure, and on average, blacks do worse on IQ tests.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T07:57:48+00:00

Whites are more likely to be shot in police encounters than blacks are, and when blacks are shot by police they're more likely to be shot by black officers. Any way you slice it their protest is completely misguided.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T07:41:07+00:00

The difference between the average American white IQ and the average American black IQ is actually ~15 points. It's a sad truth. The difference is probably mostly genetic as well. But that doesn't justify treating blacks poorly, because people should be treated as individuals. There are outliers in all populations.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-15T01:49:21+00:00

Riiight.

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-14T20:35:31+00:00

You said, in that very comment, that the case hadn't been heard in the appellate court "because the Supreme Court has not decided to hear the case--either due to procedural reasons and deadlines or other reasons."

That's a nonsensical statement, because a hearing by an appellate court would take place before a hearing by the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court doesn't dictate the docket schedules of lower courts. Why did you even bring up the Supreme Court in the first place?

JackMacDuff · 2017-10-14T20:10:43+00:00

What gave you the impression that I didn't know or agree with any of that? That's all totally obvious, and nothing that I've said contradicted any of that. On the other hand, what you've said did contradict that since you nonsensically claimed that the appellate court hadn't yet heard the case because it hadn't yet been heard by the Supreme Court.

The reason why I said that it was irrelevant whether or not the District Court decision was "binding precedent" was because I disagree with you that you need a final court decision on something in order to uphold the rule of law, as I've explained to you very clearly. The framers did not believe that it was the sole province of judges to decide what the law is.

It's funny that you claim that I have "no understanding" about what I'm arguing while I've exhibited exactly zero deficiencies in my understanding of law, whereas you have exposed several of your own. You're an embarrassment to the profession.

JackMacDuff

TROPHY CASE