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(10-29-2020, 09:41 PM)bfine32 Wrote: ![[Image: Elh7OrxXIAAD30N?format=jpg&name=small]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Elh7OrxXIAAD30N?format=jpg&name=small)
I knew he had the black lesbian vote. Which is a shocker
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(10-29-2020, 11:40 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I knew he had the black lesbian vote. Which is a shocker
![[Image: giphy.gif]](https://media0.giphy.com/media/1kwsTjL8BNqlszNtnCE/giphy.gif)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/us/politics/trump-erdogan-halkbank.html
Quote:New details of the Justice Department’s handling of the accusations against Halkbank reveal how Turkey’s leader pressured the president, prompting concern from top White House aides.
WASHINGTON — Geoffrey S. Berman was outraged.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Mr. Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran.
For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing President Trump to quash the investigation, which threatened not only the bank but potentially members of Mr. Erdogan’s family and political party. When Mr. Berman sat down with Mr. Barr, he was stunned to be presented with a settlement proposal that would give Mr. Erdogan a key concession.
Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indictment by paying a fine and acknowledging some wrongdoing. In addition, the Justice Department would agree to end investigations and criminal cases involving Turkish and bank officials who were allied with Mr. Erdogan and suspected of participating in the sanctions-busting scheme.
Mr. Berman didn’t buy it.
The bank had the right to try to negotiate a settlement. But his prosecutors were still investigating key individuals, including some with ties to Mr. Erdogan, and believed the scheme had helped finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“This is completely wrong,” Mr. Berman later told lawyers in the Justice Department, according to people who were briefed on the proposal and his response. “You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”
It was not the first time Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, had fended off attempts by top Justice Department political appointees to disrupt the Halkbank investigation.
Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.
The president’s apparent eagerness to please Mr. Erdogan has drawn scrutiny for years. So has the scale and intensity of the lobbying effort by Turkey on issues like its demand for the extradition of one of Mr. Erdogan’s political rivals, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in the United States. Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.
At the White House, Mr. Trump’s handling of the matter became troubling even to some senior officials at the time.
The president was discussing an active criminal case with the authoritarian leader of a nation in which Mr. Trump does business; he reported receiving at least $2.6 million in net income from operations in Turkey from 2015 through 2018, according to tax records obtained by The New York Times.
And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.
Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own.
“He would interfere in the regular government process to do something for a foreign leader,” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, said in a recent interview. “In anticipation of what? In anticipation of another favor from that person down the road.”
In the case of Halkbank, it was only after an intense foreign policy clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan over Syria last fall that the United States would proceed to lodge charges against the bank, though not against any additional individuals. Yet the administration’s bitterness over Mr. Berman’s unwillingness to go along with Mr. Barr’s proposal would linger, and ultimately contribute to Mr. Berman’s dismissal.
The Justice Department initially declined to comment, but after this article was published online, a department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, provided a statement emphasizing that Mr. Barr had backed the decision last fall to indict the bank.
“The attorney general instructed S.D.N.Y. to move ahead with charges and approved the charges brought,” she said, referring to the federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Turkish and U.S. government officials, lobbyists and lawyers with direct knowledge of the interactions. Representatives for the Turkish government, Halkbank and the White House declined to comment.
Turkey had mounted an elaborate influence campaign in Washington to deal with Halkbank. It predated Mr. Trump’s election but came to encompass a broad cast of players, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; and Brian D. Ballard, a lobbyist and fund-raiser for the president.
After senior Turkish government officials lobbied Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mr. Trump, Mr. Mnuchin pressed the Justice Department not to impose too large a fine on Halkbank because Turkey could not afford it, two federal officials said. Mr. Mnuchin’s office declined to comment on Halkbank but added that the Treasury and Justice Departments “routinely consult and coordinate” on sanctions cases and fines.
Mr. Bolton and others said they could not fully explain why Mr. Trump seemed so determined to please Mr. Erdogan.
“This was a relationship that was really important for the United States to handle,” said Fiona Hill, who oversaw policy on Turkey and Europe for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump. “And at every turn, the president kept leaping in, and he wasn’t following the strategic threads of the relationship.”
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
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For the campaign that brought you the line that Biden is mentally deficient:
Edit: That link wasn't to the actual part of the speech so here you go.
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(10-29-2020, 09:41 PM)bfine32 Wrote:
Implicit bias test.
How many of you thought Lil Wayne had a gun in his hand when you first saw this picture?
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(10-30-2020, 10:19 AM)GMDino Wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/us/politics/trump-erdogan-halkbank.html
Wait, wait, wait. So the same sort of thing that Trump was trying to manufacture controversy over for Biden, is something that Trump actually took part in with regards to Erdogan and Turkey? And Biden had already turned Erdogan down when he requested they end their investigation into the Turkish bank during Obama's administration?
Huh. Sure seems like there may be some confusion about who the more corrupt candidate is, and also that their may have been some of what psychology would refer to as deflection.
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As of today, Texas has more votes cast than the 2016 election which had the highest amount of votes cast ever in Texas....and it isn't even election day yet.
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(10-30-2020, 02:31 PM)Au165 Wrote: As of today, Texas has more votes cast than the 2016 election which had the highest amount of votes cast ever in Texas....and it isn't even election day yet.
Isn't Texas a very "high population but low voter turnout" sort of state? The shakeup of that status quo intrigues.
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(10-30-2020, 02:53 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Isn't Texas a very "high population but low voter turnout" sort of state? The shakeup of that status quo intrigues.
They are currently at 53% of registered voter turnout compared to 59% in 2016, but some project they will end up breaking that record on the election day. 55% voter turnout in any election is considered pretty normal.
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(10-30-2020, 12:38 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Wait, wait, wait. So the same sort of thing that Trump was trying to manufacture controversy over for Biden, is something that Trump actually took part in with regards to Erdogan and Turkey? And Biden had already turned Erdogan down when he requested they end their investigation into the Turkish bank during Obama's administration?
Huh. Sure seems like there may be some confusion about who the more corrupt candidate is, and also that their may have been some of what psychology would refer to as deflection.
And not a peep out of the people calling for a Biden investigation.
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Quote:Tricia Cunningham is all Trump, all the time.
Even her phone message — “God bless you and have a Trumptastic day” — gets in a pitch for the president.
The 48-year-old, who helped organize Team Trump PA and became a local leader of Women for Trump, took her devotion to Donald Trump to the heavens. On April 24, 2016, she helped organize “Jump for Trump,” a parachute jump designed to draw support to then-candidate Trump.
Trump was a good fit for the high-energy woman who began her professional career in talk radio in South Carolina and was among the first Western Pennsylvanians to embrace the Tea Party.
”My first impression of Donald Trump as he was coming down the escalator and he was introducing his campaign to the rest of the world was that he was going to solve all of the issues that were directly affecting my family, such as health care, illegal immigration and the veterans, and basically everything he spoke about that day was affecting my friends and family and folks I knew who were hurting,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham said she spent years living in South Carolina. She said frightening issues with illegal immigrants in that state’s vacation communities were covered up so tourism wouldn’t suffer. And she said she learned firsthand of the shortcomings in health care when her husband suffered a catastrophic accident and mounting hospital bills nearly resulted in the loss of the family home.
Although others see a lack of empathy in Trump, she sees someone who wants to help families like hers.
“He’s the guy who wants to get things done. He cares,” Cunningham said from her home, where the rustic decor is accented by her collection of Trump regalia.
She said she has seen a side of Trump few do. He’s written notes to her small granddaughter and promised a visit at next year’s Easter egg hunt.
“He’s a good man,” she said.
As if to go “Jump for Trump” one better in this campaign, this year Cunningham drove 7,538 miles through 21 states in 23 days to participate in Operation Flag Drop, where she delivered flags for the Trump campaign.
—————
The Tribune-Review talked with 8 Western Pennsylvania voters who have gone above and beyond in their support for their candidate. Over the next week, we will be profiling them and their reasons for backing Democrat Joe Biden or President Donald Trump.
Photo by Kristina Serafini
Read all the profiles here: http://trib.me/supersupporters
[url=http://trib.me/supersupporters?fbclid=IwAR1OVOx4W_voo9RTe-FM1fZt9Y_bezTRMHC1wtkj5Nyqqk1NoBEo38xcFHU][/url]
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Good for people who can get that fired up over politicians. I moved to Chicago during Obama's first term and seeing people on the train wearing Obama stuff like he was a sports team was a bit odd. Then again I'm from western PA where im the odd one for not wearing camouflage to wal Mart.
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(10-30-2020, 03:21 PM)GMDino Wrote:
[url=http://trib.me/supersupporters?fbclid=IwAR1OVOx4W_voo9RTe-FM1fZt9Y_bezTRMHC1wtkj5Nyqqk1NoBEo38xcFHU][/url]
In case you need a reminder of what cult members act like.
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(10-30-2020, 04:55 PM)BigPapaKain Wrote: In case you need a reminder of what cult members act like.
OK?
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(10-30-2020, 05:06 PM)bfine32 Wrote: OK?
Cult doesn't always mean "bad" but there is certainly an amount of reality-shaping and group identity going on there.
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(10-30-2020, 05:06 PM)bfine32 Wrote: OK?
Can't you just be satisfied no one called her a "lady"?
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The story continues to confound as it breaks down further.
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"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
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(10-30-2020, 06:04 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Cult doesn't always mean "bad" but there is certainly an amount of reality-shaping and group identity going on there.
Yeah, some call the supporters. others call them a cult.
The fact that you must say doesn't "always" mean should be enough for you and others to condemn the remarks, but I'm guessing it wont'
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