Mueller Investigation

Um ... you realize that you're describing Trump's tactics to a T?

What he said. Yes, Sanders would have won, he would have won by double digits, and all the polls said so. Hillary lost because Hillary was always the single worst candidate the Dems could have run. Everyone with at least half a brain knew it as long as they paid attention so remember that next time Hillary shills like @Ancalagon try to pontificate on something. They have bad records.

Hell, Trump and the Republicans have been doing it all week.

We know why Hillary won the nomination. The primary was rigged by Hillary insiders from start to finish and the DNC repeatedly acted to help Hillary and harm Sanders in extremely blatant ways.

Were you asleep all throughout the primary process? Did you get hit on the head and lose your memory? Anyone who is not an absolute partisan Hillary hack like @Ancalagon long ago acknowledged these truthes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41808227

More details on the direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. This is the guy ho turned state's evidence. At the very least this "Senior Campaign Advispr (not the low level campaign official which Trump claimed) will be able to tell Mueller who ordered him to keep trying to make contact with the Russians for purposes of collusion. Mueller will climb that chain.

Word is that Trump has gone from relieved that none of the crimes Manafort and Gates have so far been charged with were directly related to the Russian collusion to fuming over 'over reach' due to these crimes just being old financial ones and should be outside the scope of the Special Investigation.

I believe that because it fits his past pattern. He probably isn't smart enough to figure out that Mueller is climbing the chain and pressuring lower monkeys into flipping. Sometimes I honestly think he believes his own bull shit; talk about self deceiving.

Hell, at least publicly, he does not seem to understand how having his former senior campaign advisor plead guilty will effect him. The guy specifically admitted guilt to lying about the campaign's attempt to contact Russia for the purpose of colluding. That is going to be the key thing because that proves both the intention to collude and will eventually lead to who ordered the collusion. Mueller is in a much stronger position than O thought due to flipping this giy to state's evidence; that is the crack in the wall Mueller can use to climb higher.

Absolutely. But when there's nothing to flip it doesn't pay off. And it's not going to stop Prez from doing what's best for the country.

the mainstream news as been quite clear in the many reports I've heard today that the Manafort/Gates charges are not specifically related to campaign activities. I can't speak for Fox, last I heard they were covering the cheeseburger emoji or something.

Papadopoulos OTOH....

An analyst I heard on NPR today made a good point: Mueller is smart enough to charge both Manafort & Gates with an identical slate of charges...then let them stew paranoid bout the other guy flipping and them being hung out to dry.

You're really not very good at this...

it's also relevant to note that Trump Org has been fined before for money laundering and there's a high likelihood that all those3 failed Trump properties were just that. Filing charges that parallel Trump's own behavior has to be unnerving for PUS

a lot of analysis that given he was arrested in July, and sealed - even after the deal was reached - that he's been wearing a wire for them for up to 3 months

Yup.

Trump is all like "DO SOMETHING!" while he and his lackies can't get it through their heads that there's nothing there TO do because even with all their power the GOP can't find anything to charge Clinton with - all they can do is what they have done for 25 years, toss red meat to the ill-informed deplorables.

which is a nice way for Mueller to answer the "partisan witch hunt" claim. By all means, if he can find criminality on Podesta get him too

by manipulating gullible and ill-informed right wingers mostly, but also co-coordinating WikiLeaks dumps with campaign events (no surprise that one came hard on the heels of the pussy-grabbing tape going public.

Possibly other as yet undocumented co-ordination

Well, I'd wager that 25 years of demonization by the right wing media machine could make Jesus Christ a pariah, because the sheep follow where they are led and the moderates them become susceptible to doubt. After all, five congressional investigation into Benghazi (for just one example) produced no actual wrongdoing, but it did create a persistent cultural myth that she did something horrible. Add hat to Vince Foster and the supposed body count and a dozen other bullshit stories\ and it's really easy to figure out why "people don't like her"

ETA - of course the DNC nominated her knowing about all that so there's still some fucking up in play, but there's not anything she could do anymore to make herself widely popular. The mythology is too fixed at this point

technically her campaign manager fucked it up, but she stuck with him and she was the candidate so it ultimately goes back to her

Does Mueller have tapes? https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/30/george-papadopoulos-wear-wire-mueller/

lndeed. But the irony of it is that in a vacuum, she's NOT all that bad a choice, she had a long solid resume and perfectly reasonable, if left-of-center positions and the demonstrated skills to get at least some of it passed.

It's mostly not her fault she's been so demonized, and not her fault really that the party believed in her. Basically Robby Mook fucked up the campaign and she didn't catch it and adjust and THAT is on her...but ever how good she was, the baggage existed even if it largely wasn't her doing. In a fair world, it was perfectly reasonable to consider her the obvious candidate.

but the world is NOT fair and the DNC failed to adjust for that reality.

well, honestly, because they split the non-insane vote too many ways. Take that race and run, say, 4 or 5 guys instead of 17 and you likely have a much different outcome

Not one attempt yet to answer the second part of 14thDoc's query, which is - if Trump could've been beaten by a used condom, how is it that none of the other GOP primary candidates managed to take him down?

You are really blind, aren't you?

Just stop.

Confession Time:

All this talk of "George Papadopolous" and I was sitting here thinking, "what the heck did Webster's dad have to do with any of this?"