Indeed. And so if the US must be somehow compared to Russia, it is not as though American is not an oligarchy.

Russians may actually feel quite free in their own country. I haven't heard of a demand for Russians to immigrate to the US. They may not even be subject to vaccination regimes and propaganda there.

Is the US more free than Russia? I don't know. Maybe not.

They were already at the table, because the US, with the new president Trump, insisted on renegotiating NAFTA. The Trump administration threatened to impose the tariffs on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum if a deal was not reached by a self-determined, and unreasonable deadline. The tariffs were applied June 1. The pretext which allowed the tariffs to be applied under the existing NAFTA convention was "national security is threatened". This was taken as an insult by the Canadians. The US already has extremely high prices for aluminum and steel, and this is a contributing factor to America's loss of auto manufacturing, which is a key issue in the NAFTA renegotiations. — Metaphysician Undercover

I guess we'll just have to see whether a tactic will work or whether there should never been such a tactic.

The hidden tax is the tariffs. When there is tariffs on the raw materials, it rolls into the price of the product. The product is more expensive to the consumer because there is a hidden tax within, the tariff. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah. Right. I didn't see them as hidden. Thought it was obvious.

I don't expect agreement you tin-foiled shill. I expect arguments and evidence. — Benkei

My, my. Temer temper.

I would vote for Trump 2020, but I can't get past the way he flirts with racists.

Isn't Finland already part of Russia? — frank

Is Finland racist?

For that matter, what's the relevance to guilt/innocence? — Relativist

Guilt of what?

The meeting was not arranged by the Democrats, so who is it that was trying to entrap him? — Relativist

The Hillary's pedocrat party paid Fusion GPS for a "dossier". The Russian he met, Natalia Veselnitskaya, worked for Fusion.

AND his son’s meeting with Russian operatives in the Trump Hote — Wayfarer

That was set up. Typical entrapment attempt by opposition which had, and was only designed to be, for media optics.

Mueller is tasked with investigating the Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 elections. — Jeremiah

It became diluted to that when the "collusion" conspiracy theory began disintegrating.

They were hacked. — Jeremiah

Is this a case that if you repeat it enough it will become true?

I understand the phenomena of emotional investment in this belief.

It started with someone you didn't want to win winning.

Along with you came millions of others supported by the presstitutes.


Such a shame it is, and will continue to, unravel. Well, a shame for you.

numerous indictments have now been made as a consequence of this inverstigation — Wayfarer

Please do not accept jury duty for the sake of justice.

An accusation does not automatically equal guilt.

An example of the danger of stupidity.

"The private cyber security company, Crowdstrike, which was, and is, employed by the DNC, refused to hand over the server to the FBI."

The question as to why?

A protection racket.

The DNC servers were hacked. — Benkei

Not actually technically possible due the their density. "Leaked" after downloaded to a hard-drive is the greater probability.

British former diplomat, Craig Murray, appears to have may been the go-between (between such a DNC insider, the murdered Seth Rich, and Wikileaks).

Seth Rich was on the Bernie Sanders campaign, which was nefariously derailed by Hillary's lot, and who's donated funds were slipped from their intended destination to the Hillary camp (just for context as to general election corruption)

The private cyber security company, Crowdstrike, which was, and is, employed by the DNC, refused to hand over the server to the FBI.

you're bloviating without the ability to give details. Whether it's taxes or this. You're a terribly boring person to talk to since there's nothing after scratching the surface. — Benkei

I don't have some adolescent expectation of agreement. I think your avatar is very suitable, discriptive imagery, by the way.

(Still existing distracting lines remain stubborn, however. I have no idea why they appeared)

(Distracting lines removed, although this comes before last post)

This means Mueller et al claim that WikiLeaks received the DNC files from Russian parties which had hacked into DNC(-related) servers. Something Julian Assange has always denied. Now, remember that the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former US intelligence professionals, as well as others, have said that the speed with which the files were downloaded from the server(s) indicates that they were not hacked, but put onto a hard drive.

The person who is supposed to have done that is Seth Rich. Who was murdered on July 10 2016. Kim Dotcom has long claimed to have evidence that Seth Rich was indeed the person who provided the files to Assange. Today he said on Twitter that his lawyers warned him about exposing that evidence, citing his safety and that of his family.

(Seeing if I have removed distracting lines)

Half a year after Rich’s -never solved- murder, in the first months of 2017, the US Department of Defense was involved in negotiations with Assange in which the latter was offered -temporary- ‘safe passage’ from the Ecuador Embassy in London where he is holed up, in exchange for Assange ‘redacting’ a batch of files on the CIA known as Vault 7.

These negotiations were suddenly halted in April 2017 through the interference of James Comey -then FBI chief- and Mark Warner, a US Senator (D-VA). In the talks, Assange had offered to prove that no Russians were involved in the process that led to WikiLeaks receiving the files.

Today, of course, Assange is completely incommunicado in the Ecuador embassy, so he cannot defend himself against the Mueller accusations. Mueller really doesn’t have to prove anything: he can say what he wants. Comey and Warner prevented Assange from providing evidence exonerating ‘the Russians’, and Assange has been shut down.

Let me repeat once again: Assange is fully aware that the smallest bit of non-truth or half-lie would mean the end of WikiLeaks. It is based on ultimate trust. Nobody would ever offer a single file again if they wouldn’t have full confidence that Wikileaks would treat it -and them- with the utmost respect. So the American approach is to smear Assange in any way possible, rape allegations, collusion with Russian agents, anything goes.

And ‘the Russians’ can be ‘freely’ accused in a 29-page indictment released on the eve of the first summit President Trump is supposed to have with his Russian counterpart a year and a half into his presidency, where his predecessors all had such meetings much earlier into their presidencies. With many lawmakers calling on him to cancel it.

The indictment of the 12 Russian intel officers brings a few questions to my mind. Apologies if they are premature, exaggerated, or have already been mentioned in this thread. — 0 thru 9

Authord by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose task it is to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and ‘Russians’, that was released yesterday by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, raises so many questions one has to be picky.

Many people have already stated that the report contains no proof of anything it claims, and that Mueller doesn’t have to prove a thing, because the 12 Russians he accuses will never show up in a US court. Many of course also have at least questioned the timing of the release, 3 days before the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki, of information Mueller and Rosenstein have allegedly been sitting on for months.

THE MUELLER REPORT: the role of WikiLeaks (labeled “Organization 1”). Mueller very much focuses on both Julian Assange -though he doesn’t get named and is not indicted- and his presumed links to the indicted Russians, who -allegedly- posed as Guccifer 2.0:

Use of Organization 1

47. In order to expand their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to Organization 1. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1 to heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

a. On or about June 22, 2016, Organization 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to “end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.” On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 added, “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.” The Conspirators responded, “ok . . . i see.” Organization 1 explained, “we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.”

b. After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email with an attachment titled “wk dnc link1.txt.gpg.” The Conspirators explained to Organization 1 that the encrypted file contained instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had “the 1Gb or so archive” and would make a release of the stolen documents “this week.”

48. On or about July 22, 2016, Organization 1 released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators. This release occurred approximately three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Organization 1 did not disclose Guccifer 2.0’s role in providing them. The latest-in-time email released through Organization 1 was dated on or about May 25, 2016, approximately the same day the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server.

49. On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign that had been stolen by LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators. Between on or about October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately thirty-three tranches of documents that had been stolen from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign. In total, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.

This means Mueller et al claim that WikiLeaks received the DNC files from Russian parties which had hacked into DNC(-related) servers. Something Julian Assange has always denied. Now, remember that the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former US intelligence professionals, as well as others, have said that the speed with which the files were downloaded from the server(s) indicates that they were not hacked, but put onto a hard drive.

The person who is supposed to have done that is Seth Rich. Who was murdered on July 10 2016. Kim Dotcom has long claimed to have evidence that Seth Rich was indeed the person who provided the files to Assange. Today he said on Twitter that his lawyers warned him about exposing that evidence, citing his safety and that of his family.

Half a year after Rich’s -never solved- murder, in the first months of 2017, the US Department of Defense was involved in negotiations with Assange in which the latter was offered -temporary- ‘safe passage’ from the Ecuador Embassy in London where he is holed up, in exchange for Assange ‘redacting’ a batch of files on the CIA known as Vault 7.

These negotiations were suddenly halted in April 2017 through the interference of James Comey -then FBI chief- and Mark Warner, a US Senator (D-VA). In the talks, Assange had offered to prove that no Russians were involved in the process that led to WikiLeaks receiving the files.

Today, of course, Assange is completely incommunicado in the Ecuador embassy, so he cannot defend himself against the Mueller accusations. Mueller really doesn’t have to prove anything: he can say what he wants. Comey and Warner prevented Assange from providing evidence exonerating ‘the Russians’, and Assange has been shut down.

Let me repeat once again: Assange is fully aware that the smallest bit of non-truth or half-lie would mean the end of WikiLeaks. It is based on ultimate trust. Nobody would ever offer a single file again if they wouldn’t have full confidence that Wikileaks would treat it -and them- with the utmost respect. So the American approach is to smear Assange in any way possible, rape allegations, collusion with Russian agents, anything goes.

And ‘the Russians’ can be ‘freely’ accused in a 29-page indictment released on the eve of the first summit President Trump is supposed to have with his Russian counterpart a year and a half into his presidency, where his predecessors all had such meetings much earlier into their presidencies. With many lawmakers calling on him to cancel it.

ndictment alleges Russia "on or about July 27, 2016" started trying to access emails "used by Clinton's personal office."
Notable because that's the same day Trump proclaimed: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," — Michael

Yes. Those 30,000 emails, eh?

Nearly all of Hillary Clinton's emails on her homebrew server went to a foreign entity that isn't Russia. When this was discovered by the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), IG Chuck McCullough sent his investigator Frank Ruckner and an attorney to notify Strzok along with three other people about the "anomaly."

Four separate attempts were also made to notify DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to brief him on the massive security breach, however Horowitz "never returned the call." Recall that Horowitz concluded last month that despite Strzok's extreme bias towards Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump - none of it translated to Strzok's work at the FBI.

In other words; Strzok, while investigating Clinton's email server, completely ignored the fact that most of Clinton's emails were sent to a foreign entity - while IG Horowitz simply didn't want to know about it.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found an “anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s emails going through their private server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails, every single one except four, over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list,” Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said during a hearing with FBI official Peter Strzok. -Daily Caller

Gohmert continued; “It was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia.”

Strzok admitted to meeting with Ruckner but said he couldn't remember the "specific" content of their discussion.

“The forensic examination was done by the ICIG and they can document that,” Gohmert said, “but you were given that information and you did nothing with it.”

Meanwhile, “Mr. Horowitz got a call four times from someone wanting to brief him about this, and he never returned the call,” Gohmert said - and Horowitz wouldn't return the call.

And while Peter Strzok couldn't remember the specifics of his meeting with the IG about the giant "foreign entity" bombshell, he texted this to his mistress Lisa Page when the IG discovered the "(C)" classification on several of Clinton's emails - something the FBI overlooked:

“Holy cow ... if the FBI missed this, what else was missed? … Remind me to tell you to flag for Andy [redacted] emails we (actually ICIG) found that have portion marks (C) on a couple of paras. DoJ was Very Concerned about this.”

Internal Pushback

In November of 2017, IG McCullough - an Obama appointee - revealed to Fox News that he received pushback when he tried to tell former DNI James Clapper about the foreign entity which had Clinton's emails and other anomalies.

Instead of being embraced for trying to expose an illegal act, seven senators including Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) wrote a letter acusing him of politicizing the issue.

"It's absolutely irrelevant whether something is marked classified, it is the character of the information," he said.

McCullough said that from that point forward, he received only criticism and an "adversarial posture" from Congress when he tried to rectify the situation.

"I expected to be embraced and protected," he said, adding that a Hill staffer "chided" him for failing to consider the "political consequences" of the information he was blowing the whistle on.

The tariffs on steel and aluminum are because these are luxury items? I thought Trump deemed Canadian metals as a threat to national security and this was the premise which gave him the right to impose such tariffs, overruling existing trade conventions. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I understand it tariffs imposed were to bring negotiators to the table to possibly eliminate tariffs at both ends.

Replace the overt tax with a hidden tax, causing insult, annoyance, and possibly chaos in the international community by reversing the convention. That sounds more like madness to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

What hidden tax?

feel free to answer my question first. — Benkei

I had answered. You simply appear to have not liked my answer.

Me; "The second is that it will embolden support for Trump and blow back into the face of London’s mayor"
You; "How And why?"
Me; "By revealing hypocrisy and immaturity of Khan."

It was hardly a nuanced or detailed question. My answer reflected that.

You want fries with that?

I'll indict a feta/spinach omelet. Verdict: guilty. Sentence: death by chewing — frank

It'll just turn to shit in a few days. The same way Mueller is going.

I explained this. The increase in income is lower than the increase in price. — Michael

The increase in income is steady. The increase of price impacts "occasionally". Non-essential or luxury items (electronic "toys, etc) are not bought by low income earners in consistent timing with arrival of income.

Essential purchase of (non-taxed essentials) will, of course, time correlate with income.

Consumers without good sense because they feel cushioned by "get now - pay later" credit schemes is not something that successfully sustains economies but merely perpetuates boom and bust economic outcomes.

much fewer people will be able to afford these new goods — Michael

Their income would be higher + they spend less on essentials therefore can afford non-essentials occasionally.

For a low income earner "occasional" purchases of non-essentials is and was always the case, unless they are bad at understanding credit.

The indictment of the 12 Russian intel officers brings a few questions to my mind. Apologies if they are premature, exaggerated, or have already been mentioned in this thread. — 0 thru 9

As the saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich,

In other words, an indictment is not a verdict of guilty.

It's political strategy for sheep-public consumption. Publicity of Strzok testimony needs a distraction. Also the often used strategy of such announcements on Friday for infusing into sheeple brain processes. It is known that critique requires immediacy which is diluted over a weekend when the feeble minds of sheeples are thinking of beer and sports.

Or it is just that the past has already happened and our senses haven't caught up.

Feel free to provide an example or anecdote of your kid strategy.

that isn't an answer. How does it show his immaturity? When admonishing my kid I sometimes have to talk like a kid to make her understand. That doesn't make me immature. — Benkei

You admonish your kid with baby talk?

Al I can say is that it was never my strategy with my kids.

I think Trump's comments on how immigration has "ruined European culture" should have received a lot more outrage and news coverage, at least more so than his criticisms of May. As if it weren't obvious before, he's a white nationalist. — Maw

So many “non-white” people love the richness of many European cultures.

You appear to be discriminating against “non-white” people who choose to stay in or move to European countries.

A culture that has European roots does not make it “white”.

Skin pigment is not a culture.

You are paying tax on the food you buy and food has elevated price because of the tax on the businesses who grow the food, the businesses who store the food, who package the food and sell the food.

So how is not having to pay 10-24% in income tax going to mean that you have more income to buy things that are 30-40% more expensive? — Michael

Because 40% tax are for new goods deemed luxury and non-essential.

And every one of those same goods can be bought without paying any tax. They are usually referred to as being “second hand” or “recycled” or “up cycled” or “made with your own hands”.

People need incentive to be inventive and incentive to be wise, instead of just acting as demanding, spoilt brats.

How? By revealing hypocrisy and immaturity of Khan.

Why? By revealing hypocrisy and immaturity of Khan.

New trade deals have yet to agreed to or instigated which could impact those statistics.

Taxes were an initial step, it seems to me. Turning around an economy should theoretically, and historically, take a far greater time than what has passed to date.

There are two things I like about the balloon.

The first is that it is a well designed cartoon on an artistic level.

The second is that it will embolden support for Trump and blow back into the face of London’s mayor.

I guess if you're just a dull white dude who doesn't really care about others, then yeah I can kinda imagine not seeing the harm that Trump inflicts — Maw

I’m assuming from this comment that your skin color does not fall under a category popularly referred to as “white”.

Is it somehow an added virtue to not be of this “white” category thereby elevating commentators of “non-white” status within in some opinion hierarchy?

trickle-down/supply-side economics don't work — Michael

There is always trickledown. There is nothing wrong with it. It is natural.

the problem with making things more expensive is that less people will buy them — Michael

You will have more income to buy things.

The thing is that there would be more choice. There is no choice if every worker has to pay tax on income.

Whereas there IS choice as to whether to buy a taxed something or not.

It makes no sense to limit choice.

Limiting choice is limiting freedom.

This notion that the poor are poor because they're not trying hard and have no reason to do better is nonsense. — Michael

There is not one reason for being poor.

And some who appear poor to your eyes may be secretly quite happy, relatively, comparatively. What, for instance, are the suicide rates for the "upwardly mobile"?

I better help you out because it's clear now you don't have any numbers or even a vaguely clear idea of what they are.. Excise and sales taxes currently bring in less than 7% of government tax revenue and individual income tax brings in about 50% of tax revenue in the US*. But you think raising sales taxes can turn that less than 7% of revenue into more than the 50% of tax revenue that you would lose by charging zero income tax. And you think just paying an extra 40% on goods like laptops etc would close that gap. Do you realize how hare-brained that is and that you'd actually have to raise sales tax so much and make everything so expensive to theoretically close that gap that in practice no-one would be able to afford the goods and therefore no-one would buy them and sales tax revenue would actually go down if you attempted that? — Baden

Not everything more expensive. And we would throw away less. We may want to produce less new junk. We may want to chase our tails less. We may want to just cook and eat good food.

When we chase our tails less we will less want useless new shiny stuff which we use to try to numb our violated senses - violated from chasing our tails - numbing our sense of insecurity.

Less stress from paperwork related to bureaucracy around job systems.

We all can be like undocumented workers where we work for the pay we get - straight cash.

Straight cash means less government which means less government taxpayer's expenses.