#trump tower russia

[mylionheart2]

ACTIVE MEASURES

UM HELLO.... The Russians interfering in the 2024 Presidential election to once again help Trump win should be a bigger story... don't you think?

**Tap, Tap, Tap... is this thing on?** 🎙️

How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts

The Kremlin did not bother to hide its efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election, as it did in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/technology/russia-us-election-interference.html

FBI Calls Russia ‘Most Active’ Foreign Threat on Election Day

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-05/fbi-russia-poses-most-active-threat-on-election-day

[odinsblog]

Uh oh 👀

A squad of FBI special agents, assisted by local police, descended on Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Ave. to carry out a search of unit 4102. It’s owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, that is controlled by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state corporation records.

Sunny Isles Beach has been dubbed “Little Moscow” by locals because it’s home to many Russian expatriates. Some expressed concerns about a backlash against their affluent beachfront community after the Russian military invaded Ukraine last year and the U.S. government started pursuing sanctions against oligarchs who hide their wealth in real estate in South Florida and other parts of the country.

Before becoming president in 2016, Trump signed a deal with the developers of the 45-story condo buildings to name the property after him to help promote sales. Foreign buyers, especially from Latin America and Russia, flocked to Trump Towers, as they did with other Trump-branded properties in Sunny Isles Beach.

(continue reading)

[trump666traitor]

[lasseling]

Trump Meets with Zelensky in NYC, Vows Swift End to Ukraine-Russia War with ‘Fair Deal’

President Donald Trump has met with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss plans to end Ukraine’s war with Russia.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

On 7/31/2019 Trump has a private meeting with Putin. On 8/3/2019, just 3 days after his private meeting with Putin Trump issues a request for a list of top US spies. By 2021 the CIA reports an unusually high number of their agents are being captured and/or being murdered. During the search executed at Mar A Lago the FBI find nore documents with lists of U.S. informants on them.

A Timeline

• FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquartered at Trump Tower for two years - March 21, 2017

• Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador - May 15, 2017

• Trump, Putin Meet For 2 Hours In Helsinki - July 16, 2018

• Rand Paul Goes To Russia And Delivers Letter For Trump, Marking Our Era Of Irony - August 9, 2018

• Following the Money: Trump and Russia-Linked Transactions From the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration - December 17, 2018

• The US extracted a top spy from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to the Russians in an Oval Office meeting - September 10, 2019

• Trump’s Loose Lips Force US to Extract Spy From Kremlin - September 10, 2019

• Was Mar-a-Lago Trespasser a Tourist or a Spy? A Judge Said Her Story Didn’t Hold Up. - November 25, 2019

• Trump downplays massive cyber hack on government after Pompeo links attack to Russia - December 19, 2020

• Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years, former KGB spy says - January 29, 2021

• There was Trump-Russia collusion — and Trump pardoned the colluder - April 17, 2021

• Longtime GOP operatives charged with funneling Russian national’s money to Trump, RNC - September 20, 2021

• Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants - October 5, 2021

• Files Seized From Trump Are Part of Espionage Act Inquiry - August 12, 2022

• Ex-Clinton aide implies 'President of France' file found at Trump's home during Mar-a-Lago raid could be valuable to Putin as 'kompromat' - August 13, 2022

• Inventing Anna: The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago, and an FBI investigation - August 22, 2022

• Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it - October 30, 2022

• Trump makes shocking comments about trusting Putin over US 'intelligence lowlifes' - January 31, 2023

• Russia's Prigozhin admits links to what US says was election meddling troll farm - February 14, 2023

• GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump- February 17, 2023

• Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House: Sources - October 5, 2023

• 'So appalled': What witnesses told special counsel about Trump's handling of classified info while still president - April 24, 2024

🤔🤔🤔

[mugiwara-lucy]

FUCKING DISGRACEFUL.

So not just Ableism but Anti-Semitism as well?? The fact that he's saying all this hatred against Jewish people and Immigrants gives me STRAIGHT ADOLF HITLER 2.0 Vibes.

This guy is a legit DANGER to America and anyone worth a damn and we can NOT let him or his pet dog Vance into the White House! If so the America we've all known and loved will be DONE and replaced with Nazi Germany from the 1930s along with Norea Korea/Russia and China with Christianity bullshit plastered everywhere.

To prevent that bullshit from happening to our democracy, here is the link below to register to vote along with the deadlines varying by state! Also, your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! ALSO PLEASE check your registration DAILY because MAGA WILL purge your voter registration!!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and try early voting that way you can avoid MAGA fuckery on November 5th! Down below is a list of dates by state:

And Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option! BUT if you decide to go with Mail In/Absentee Ballots; PLEASE mail your ballots at the ACTUAL USPS office!! That way MAGAts won't fuck with it.

And if you’re an American who lives overseas; PLEASE use the option of voting overseas since I know every country other than North Korea, Russia and China do NOT want to see Trump’s stinky ass back in the Oval Office! Here’s a link below:

I don't understand how people find this guy funny. It's the SAME FUCKING INSULTS he's used since 2016 against Hilary and 2020 against Biden BUT he just changes the name.

This is a 78 year old man with GRANDCHILDREN acting like a FUCKING TODDLER.

I can't even laugh at him. (I never laughed at him by the way or found him funny, he was just a bad headache you can never get rid of). I'm just SICK of him.

NEARLY TEN YEARS we've been dealing him. FUCKING HELL.

[rosymaraschino]

The Republican dislike of Ukraine is not very much talked about, but recent news has shown Trump has been more open about giving both countries a “fair” deal (basically saying fuck Ukraine because fair isn’t exactly a play in Russia’s game of politics).

Trump has had ties to Russia as far back as his first campaign, but he’s also held a grudge against Ukraine for not helping him collect dirt on Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate before becoming elected.

It should be so simple to see Ukraine as the victim. It should be easy to understand that this is just another form of colonization. After all, Russia has always been a colonizing power, stealing land from Eastern Europeans and Central Asians all the way to Indigenous peoples within Northeastern Asia and Alaska.

The fact Republicans can’t say who we should be supporting is frightening.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 4, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 5, 2024

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today released a 156-page report showing that when he was in the presidency, Trump received at least $7.8 million from 20 different governments, including those of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia, through businesses he owned. 

The Democrats brought receipts. 

According to the report—and the documents from Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars that are attached to it—the People’s Republic of China and companies substantially controlled by the PRC government paid at least $5,572,548 to Trump-owned properties while Trump was in office; Saudi Arabia paid at least $615,422; Qatar paid at least $465,744; Kuwait paid at least $300,000; India paid at least $282,764; Malaysia paid at least $248,962; Afghanistan paid at least $154,750; the Philippines paid at least $74,810; the United Arab Emirates paid at least $65,225. The list went on and on. 

The committee Democrats explained that these payments were likely only a fraction of the actual money exchanged, since they cover only four of more than 500 entities Trump owned at the time. When the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) stopped the investigation before Mazars had produced the documents the committee had asked for when Democrats were in charge of it. Those records included documents relating to Russia, South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil. 

Trump fought hard against the production of these documents, dragging out the court fight until September 2022. The committee worked on them for just four months before voters put Republicans in charge of the House and the investigation stopped. 

These are the first hard numbers that show how foreign governments funneled money to the president while policies involving their countries were in front of him. The report notes, for example, that Trump refused to impose sanctions on Chinese banks that were helping the North Korean government; one of those banks was paying him close to $2 million in rent annually for commercial office space in Trump Tower. 

The first article of the U.S. Constitution reads: “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument [that is, salary, fee, or profit], Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” 

The report also contrasted powerfully with the attempt of Republicans on the Oversight Committee, led by Comer, to argue that Democratic Joe Biden has corruptly profited from the presidency. 

In the Washington Post on December 26, 2023, Philip Bump noted that just after voters elected a Republican majority, Comer told the Washington Post that as soon as he was in charge of the Oversight Committee, he would use his power to “determine if this president and this White House are compromised because of the millions of dollars that his family has received from our adversaries in China, Russia and Ukraine.”

For the past year, while he and the committee have made a number of highly misleading statements to make it sound as if there are Biden family businesses involving the president (there are not) and the president was involved in them (he was not), their claims were never backed by any evidence. Bump noted in a piece on December 14, 2023, for example, that Comer told Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo that “the Bidens” have “taken in” more than $24 million. In fact, Bump explained, Biden’s son Hunter and his business partners did receive such payments, but most of the money went to the business partners. About $7.5 million of it went to Hunter Biden. There is no evidence that any of it went to Joe Biden. 

All of the committee’s claims have similar reality checks. Jonathan Yerushalmy of The Guardian wrote that after nearly 40,000 pages of bank records and dozens of hours of testimony, “no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current or previous role.”

Still, the constant hyping of their claims on right-wing media led then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to authorize an impeachment inquiry in mid-September, and in mid-December, Republicans in the House formalized the inquiry. 

There is more behind the attack on Biden than simply trying to even the score between him and Trump—who remains angry at his impeachments and has demanded Republicans retaliate—or to smear Biden through an “investigation,” which has been a standard technique of the Republicans since the mid-1990s.

Claiming that Biden is as corrupt as Trump undermines faith in our democracy. After all, if everyone is a crook, why does it matter which one is in office? And what makes American democracy any different from the authoritarian systems of Russia or Hungary or Venezuela, where leaders grab what they can for themselves and their followers?

Democracies are different from authoritarian governments because they have laws to prevent the corruption in which it appears Trump engaged. The fact that Republicans refuse to hold their own party members accountable to those laws while smearing their opponents says far more about them than it does about the nature of democracy.

It does, though, highlight that our democracy is in danger.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[cmesinic]

Donnie has been sucking up to his Butt Buddy since he had plans for a Dump Towers in Russia, and Vlad is reputed to have Donnie’s Golden Showers video. Did you guys forget about that?

[peakwealth]

You Run

Vladimir Putin, flanked by airline cabin crew (reportedly Aeroflot trainees), shortly before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Two recent quotes stick in my mind. The first one was by an American woman who escaped from a mass shooting incident after the US Super Bowl in Kansas City. (One dead, twenty-two injured.) Interviewed minutes later on TV, she said: In this day and age, you run.

I forget where I saw the second quote but I thought of it after Donald Trump threatened to pull the plug on NATO, should he be re-elected this year: It's as if the devil had changed sides.

Near panic broke out across Europe. Trump was willing to throw European countries, previously known as America's allies, to the wolves.

Vladimir Putin, do as you please. Ukraine, prepare to be sacrificed. And by extension, Taiwan, your time is up.

I keep coming back to this: the West isn't what it used to be. I think of myself as fortunate to have grown up in a 'eurocentric' world order, or the outcome of the second world war if you prefer. It may have been delusional but it was printed on perfume bottles: PARIS - LONDON - NEW YORK.

In reality, eurocentrism and the colonial empires that created it were already faltering by the time I came into this world. It took, however, a long time to see and accept it. As for the 'American century', it ended in 2001 with the apocalyptic scenes of 9/11 in New York City. As the towers collapsed, the world pivoted into a new era. To put it differently, the world was changing hands.

---------------

On February 24 2022 I woke up in a small hotel south of Granada and went downstairs to have coffee at the bar. I flipped open my tablet and there it was:

RUSSIA ATTACKS UKRAINE

Until then I - we - had assumed there existed a fundamental contract with European history, immovably rooted in postwar reality and shared by all: never again, no more major wars in Europe. No one in their right mind would want to mess with that contract.

Except that Vladimir Putin had just ordered his army across the border into Ukraine.

Now I wake up every day and want to hit my head against the wall as the Russian war of aggression grinds on. Grind, meat grinder, human waves, trench warfare. The words are all desperately wrong.

After two years of daily annihilation, hundreds of thousands of lives casually erased or ruined, it goes on and on. Both sides, it has been reported, are running short of young men to waste at the front.

We do not know exactly what goes on on those front lines. We hear about Russian soldiers dispatched to their deaths as a matter of course. But we do not get to see that, nor do we get any real casualty numbers. At the beginning of the war, things were more graphic, the bodies photographed where they had fallen. Two years on, we don't know. But the broken, blasted cities tell the story, as they do in Gaza: not many people walk away alive.

And now no one seems quite sure what to do about Ukraine. The war looks unwinnable because Putin does not care about the cost in human lives.

Why fight if you can't win? Is a negotiated settlement still possible? Land for peace would mean the partition of Ukraine accepted as a fait accompli. But can there be peace without justice for Ukraine, which would effectively be sacrificed in the hope of keeping Putin's Russia in check? Putin, however, cannot be trusted, nor can Trump for that matter.

Should Trump return to the White House, a new world order might emerge overwhelmingly inimical to the west or what would be left of it. It might not even be clear where the USA would position itself. As for the loss of Ukraine, in whole or in part, it would be like small change.

You can go on like this, endlessly turning over the options and arguments in your head, none of them acceptable: Ukraine's outright surrender? Or an indefinite ceasefire that would humiliate Kyiv but leave it attached to Europe?

Faced with a historic opportunity to rewrite everything, a moment of dizzying recalculation of how the planet works and who's boss, it is hard to imagine that China would hesitate to seize the moment. Others would follow, like India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, eventually lining up with Russia in an historic act of opportunism and Schadenfreude.

In this day and age, you run. The devil has changed sides.

A lot is at stake in 2024.

[mylionheart2]

[mariacallous]

Northern Russia must have felt bitterly cold to U.S. soldiers, even though nearly all were from Michigan. On Sept. 4, 1918, 4,800 U.S. troops landed in Arkhangelsk, Russia, only 140 miles from the Arctic Circle. Three weeks later, they were plunged into battle against the Red Army among towering pine forests and subarctic swamps, alongside the British and French. Ultimately, 244 U.S. soldiers died from the fighting over two years. Diaries of U.S. troops paint a harrowing picture of first contact:

We run into a nest of machine-guns, we retire. [Bolsheviks] still shelling heavily. Perry and Adamson of my squad wounded, bullet clips my shoulder on both sides. … Am terribly tired, hungry and all in, so are the rest of the boys. Casualties in this attack 4 killed and 10 wounded.

These unlucky souls represented just one prong of the sprawling and ill-fated Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. From 1918 to 1920, the United States, Britain, France, and Japan sent thousands of troops from the Baltics to northern Russia to Siberia to Crimea—and millions of dollars in aid and military supplies to the anti-communist White Russians—in an abortive attempt to strangle Bolshevism in its crib. It’s one of the most complicated and oft-forgot foreign-policy failures of the 20th century, captivatingly retold in technicolor detail by Anna Reid in her new book, A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into the Russian Civil War.

The specifics of the conflict, which Reid brilliantly weaves alongside personal diaries from the participants, often feel otherworldly. Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East. The mercurial French—at first the most hawkishly pro-intervention out of all the Allies—led the occupation of southern Ukraine, tussling with the Reds over cities now familiar to readers: Mykolaiv, Kherson, Sevastopol, Odessa. The British—who invested the most in the intervention, including 60,000 troops—were crawling all over Russia’s fringes: defending Baku from the oncoming Turks, conducting naval sabotage against the Bolsheviks in the Baltics, and ultimately evacuating the Whites from Black Sea ports as they crumbled in the face of a Red Army onslaught.

The disturbing question hanging over Reid’s excellent book is whether the West is doomed to repeat history. The intervention failed, and if you squint hard enough, today’s intervention in Ukraine may appear similarly futile in the face of a vast and determined Russia with a seemingly endless well of materiel, manpower, and political will. It’s what the far-right flank of Republicans in Congress, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and former U.S. President Donald Trump would lead you to believe. A sense of hopelessness articulated by Edmund Ironside, the British commander of Allied forces in northern Russia during the intervention: “Russia is so enormous that it gives one a feeling of smothering.”

But despite the strong historical echoes, the differences between the two interventions are more instructive than their similarities. A close study poses perhaps an even bigger question: What conditions make for a successful foreign intervention? Yes, the Allies bungled things, but in fairness, they mostly failed because of what was out of their control, rather than what was in it. The most limiting factor was their feckless (and noxious) White Russian allies, a disparate group of anti-Bolshevik socialists and incompetent former Tsarist officers who were Great Russian autocrats at heart. They had the buy-in of neither the Russian population nor, critically, Tsarist Russia’s tapestry of ethnic minorities—from Ukrainians to Balts—whom they sought to restore under Russia’s heel.

The circumstances today are much more favorable. The United States and Europe have a unified and determined partner in Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, in a struggle with blinding moral clarity. Russia’s economy may be on wartime footing, but collectively the West has significantly more resources at hand. And the task—defending a motivated Ukraine against a hostile invasion—is much less ambitious than trying to topple the government of the largest country in the world. A sober comparison of the two interventions should, in fact, fortify Western resolve that it can see Ukraine through—as long as its own political will, waning now as it did in Western capitals then, doesn’t get in the way.

The critical ingredients of any foreign intervention are clear and achievable objectives, reliable allies on the ground, an assailable adversary, material means, and the political will to finish the job. On nearly every measure, the Allied intervention in Russia was fatally lacking.

Perhaps most striking about Reid’s narrative is that it’s often unclear what exactly the Allied troops were meant to do in Russia. Yes, all Western governments loathed Bolshevism and feared its expansionist and infectious potential. But beyond that, there was little in the way of shared strategy or purpose. In fact, Western troops were initially sent to guard railways and Allied military stores in northern and eastern Russia that they feared would reach German hands. But this was slightly complicated after Germany surrendered in November 1918. As George F. Kennan put it in his masterful volume The Decision to Intervene, the “American forces had scarcely arrived in Russia when history invalidated at a single stroke almost every reason Washington had conceived for their being there.”

Zealous British officers on the ground—egged on by hawkish ministers at home such as War Secretary Winston Churchill, who nearly depleted his own political capital advocating for the quixotic Russian adventure—soon took the initiative to actively intervene and fight the Reds. In other arenas, including southern Ukraine, the mission was clearer in support of the local White forces—though France quickly lost heart and sailed home in April 1919 after it suffered a series of setbacks and mutinies.

Encapsulating this ambiguity were instructions for the U.S. military intervention written personally in a July 1918 memo by President Woodrow Wilson, who was characteristically tortured by the decision and “sweating blood over what is right and feasible to do in Russia.” He opened the memo by warning that military intervention would “add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it”—yet then committed U.S. troops to aid the Czech Legion operating in Siberia and to northern Russia to “make it safe for Russian bodies to come together in organized bodies in the north.” Hardly clarifying stuff.

U.S. officers took these instructions quizzically. Gen. William Graves, in charge of the 8,000 doughboys in Siberia, was decidedly skeptical about the United States playing a role in the conflict and interpreted Wilson’s instructions as permitting him only to guard railways, not fight the Reds. He later wrote in his memoirs that he had no idea what Washington was trying to achieve. This was all to the chagrin of his more pro-interventionist British colleagues in Siberia, who instead proactively aided the Whites’ monstrously incompetent “supreme ruler,” Adm. Alexander Kolchak, a former head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet who incongruously found himself fighting deep in landlocked Siberia. (He was also, incidentally, a dead ringer for current Russian President Vladimir Putin.)

Which brings us to the White Russians. Perhaps the sine qua non of any foreign intervention, especially one as ambitious as the Western intervention in both Ukraine and in the Russian civil war, are allies on the ground. It’s the difference between the chaos that followed Western intervention in Libya and the successful intervention in the Balkans. On this score, the Whites failed miserably.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Beyond Kolchak, there was the overmatched Gen. Anton Denikin leading White forces in southern Russia, who dissembled to Allied governments about the horrific pogroms against the Jewish population of Ukraine perpetrated by Whites under his watch. And beyond operating across an impossibly large and disconnected front covering the entire periphery of Russia—a country of 11 time zones—the different White factions acted essentially as warlords, with little loyalty or coordination among them.

Just as fatal to the Whites was a conspicuous vacancy: any coherent or compelling ideology. Antony Beevor, in his fabulous new history of the Russian civil war, pins the White loss on both their lack of political program and fractious nature: “In Russia, an utterly incompatible alliance of Socialist Revolutionaries and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against a single-minded Communist dictatorship.”

Contrast all this with the Reds. They controlled the industrial heartland of Moscow and St. Petersburg, operating from the inward out with stronger interior lines of communication. It allowed Commissar Leon Trotsky—who, Reid notes, “blossom[ed] into a war leader of near-genius: shrewd, decisive and boundlessly energetic”—to hop on his armored train to shore up flagging fronts as the Whites advanced from the east and south. The Bolsheviks—though enacting ruinous economic policies and initiating the first waves of terror at home—were motivated and possessed a clear ideology that held, at least at that juncture, some appeal to the local population.

And, fundamentally, their will was much stronger than the Whites’ or the West’s. After the devastation of World War I, Allied governments feared the spread of Bolshevism but couldn’t bring their exhausted publics along with them. Here, the historical echoes are most troubling. Public support understandably flagged, and budgetary pressures mounted. As Britain’s Daily Express put it in 1919, in echoes of today’s Republican rhetoric in the United States: “Great Britain is already the policeman of half the world. It will not and cannot be the policeman of all Europe. … The frozen plains of Eastern Europe are not worth the bones of a single British grenadier.” Rolling White setbacks in Siberia and southern Russia were the nail in the coffin. Then, as now in Ukraine, foreign political support for intervention depended most on the sense of momentum on the battlefield.

The job of foreign-policy makers is to distinguish between what is in versus out of their control. To the degree that they intuit favorable conditions—allies, geography, the enemy’s vulnerability—then the task is to focus on and optimize the things they can manage: strategy and objectives, mobilizing political will, providing the materiel to support the effort, and coordinating with allies.

Despite the current pall of pessimism pervading Western capitals, today’s war in Ukraine presents some of the more propitious circumstances a policymaker could hope for—unlike those faced by the Allies during the Russian civil war. Ukraine is a worthy and competent ally, fighting to defend its territory with a highly motivated population behind it. The Ukrainian cause is a righteous one, with a Manichean quality to it easily explained to Western publics. While Putin’s personal will to win is strong, it’s clear by his actions and hesitancy to fully mobilize Russian society that he senses a ceiling on what he can ask from his population. Though Russia’s manpower and materiel are larger than Ukraine’s, the amount needed to keep Ukraine armed and in the fight is completely manageable. A $60 billion aid supplement from the United States—currently held up by far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives—is a pittance compared with the returns: holding the line on international norms; standing up for the Ukrainians and, in doing so, Western values; bogging down Russia in a strategic sinkhole and reducing its capacity to threaten the rest of NATO’s eastern flank; and fortifying the trans-Atlantic alliance. Today, Western capitals are much more united than they were in 1918, and defense coordination among them is strong. Though they can sharpen the shared sense of an endgame in Ukraine, everybody knows that the conflict will end in some sort of negotiated settlement—the questions will be on whose terms.

If the United States and its allies can avoid the pitfalls of the Western intervention in the Russian civil war—developing a clear long-term strategy, continuing to coordinate closely, and reinforcing domestic support by making the case to their own populations—then they have a real shot of prevailing over Putin. Given the auspicious conditions, the main, perhaps only obstacle to long-term success is the political will to see the job through.

[nostalgicamerica]

I would be the first to admit seems somewhat scatterbrained at times. Lately, he seems more in a fog. I attribute that to age and having a lot on his plate. His taking oil out of the strategic supply is not something we should be doing at this time. Especially if it's not put back at the same rate. Trump as you know railed at Biden for doing this. If you look up what Trump did while in office, he took from the strategic oil reserves on many occasions. As to Trump hitting back. Yes, he does that. He likes to take the low road. He puts people down to make himself look good. Not a trait in a good statesman. Now let's get to the border crisis. He took money from the Military Budget to build part of the wall. That money was to go to military bases to upgrade the poor living conditions for military families. He did that because congress wouldn't give him what he wanted. That money for military bases was already approved by congress. Trump is like a bull in a china shop when it comes to world politics. He's pissed off more than one leader in a country and if you don't realize it. He is in Putin's pocket. More of that will come out and I hope that if Biden is in China's pocket or Ukraine's pocket, that news will come out. Remember when Trump said he didn't have money in China. Turns out he's had a bank account in China and other Countries. Russia backed up a loan when Trump went to Deutsche Bank. Back in the eighties he wanted build a Trump Tower in Russia. That hasn't happened. Why? Because the Russians know that he can be manipulated.

Do you really believe that if there was anything to all the allegations against Trump it wouldn't be trumpeted from the rooftops and plastered in all the newspapers in 108 point font headlines? The swamp's goal from day one was 'Get Trump!' everything thus far has been yawn-inducing nothingburgers.

[tales-of-a-wallflower-swiftie]

crucify me daddy (or how I learned to stop giving a shit about celebrities relationships and focus on the nu cold war) *insert edgy title here by Fall Out Boy* - a rant with love

So TTPD has finally graced us with it's presence and it's an amazing album. It's a mix of Folklore + Speak Now + Reputation + Midnights in one bundle. Will have to give it a few more listens before I can decide my personal favorites but Clara Bow has been stuck in my head quite a lot.

Now... elephant in the room. I am a fan of The 1975 but I am not a Matty Healy apologist by any means. Do I think he's a racist, fuck no! If so, why are pretty much all of The 1975's work r'n'b based and has a black influence and collaborations with ethnic artists. He's not dancing in a KKK outfit or anything or wearing blackface or beating up a Pakistani kid or . Why are the many artists he's supported over the years people of color or *coughs* ASIAN! FOR FUCKS SAKE HIS LAST GIRLFRIEND IS BLACK AND WAS A VICTIM OF DOMESTIC ABUSE TO WHICH HE SUPPORTED AND STOOD UP FOR EVEN GIVEN HIS SICKENING PORN TASTE!

Do I think he's a twat and an idiot who sticks his foot firmly in his mouth a lot and says and does a lot without thinking, YES! The whole Love It If We Made It incident which started the entire Matty hate mob was an honest ill thought mistake. He shouldn't have shared his own song during his BLM post, I agree. It was fairly cringe for him to kiss the gay fan and put a target on that fans back but his heart was in the right place in calling out the bullshit in the eastern areas against stuff like this.

Cum Town helped Matty through his rehab and in return he was invited as a guest to which he joined in on some edgy jokes about Ice Spice and shared his porn taste of the hardcore variety like most men watch. The episode was out for many months prior to the news of them getting together however the psycho swifties wanted any ammunition to cause a fandom jihad.

So to no one's surprise, I was expecting at least a few Matty mentions. Boy was I in for a treat. Peter, But Daddy I Love Him, The Tortured Poets Department among others.

But kudos to Taylor for actually sticking up for herself and Matty during But Daddy I Love Him. I loved Taylor before but I completely adore her for having the guts to say to those parasocial dicks who thinks everything is a coded message or an easter egg, enough is fucking enough

"I'll tell you something right now I'd rather burn my whole life down Than listen to one more second of all this bitchin' and moanin' I'll tell you something 'bout my good name It's mine alone to disgrace I don't cater to all these vipers dressed in empath's clothing"

It sickens me to see some of Swifties wish death, rape, bus crashes, , overdoses on Matty and his family. She chose to be with him, she wasn't shotgun wedding or married off to him and fuck me, imagine genuinely liking someone once you get to know them and not look at the edgy stuff they said online... crazy am i right?

Look what happened to Mac Miller, Ari's fans launched a crusade against him and he ended up doing himself in because of it

You know we're going to be nuked soon anyway... china, russia, israel or even if Trump gets re-elected. Mexico is over run with videos of people getting their faces cut off and Logan, Jake and KSI sell poison to kids and have yet to be assassinated. Life's too short to care about the relationship of two celebrities. Go touch grass, go milk a horse blindfolded, go kick a hornets nest, go burn yourself alive in front of Trump tower. Be a decent human being stop fixating on relationships of the stars

#staygay

[darkmaga-returns]

There are a growing number of reports on what the forthcoming Trump administration will do domestically and what policy approach it will have globally.  There have been a number of comments, some of them coming from administration wannabes, on what President-elect Trump should do about Ukraine.

Trump promised during the campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine pretty quickly once he took office.  He has hinted he would do this by engaging Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky.  Beyond that we have a guessing game.Mr. Zelensky (left) and Mr. Trump in New York at Trump Tower.7

The wannabes are throwing around contradictory ideas.  Some want a ceasefire deal.  Others talk about a cordon sanitaire and having it enforced by the Europeans.  Still others concede the need to "award" Russia and let them hold onto captured territory.  And some say that part of a deal might be to stop Ukrainian NATO membership for a period of time, perhaps 20 years.

No one seems to have any idea what the Russians want, or so it seems. 

Trump is a savvy negotiator.  He will want to know what his opponent wants and he will try and find ways either to accommodate or to leverage him.

Russia has been fairly clear about some of what it wants, but not everything.  

What follows is my understanding of Russia’s objectives in Ukraine. Explaining them does not mean that I agree with them. Nor does it mean that all are of equal importance to Russia’s leaders.

Russia will insist on keeping the territories that it has previously annexed.  Various solutions, a cease fire, a buffer zone, or some kind of territorial freeze will not satisfy Russia's leaders.  Russia will demand formal recognition of its earlier annexations and seek to establish firm borders for these territories.  This means that any negotiation about the annexed territories is mostly a matter of maps.  

[garudabluffs]

The Rachel Maddow Show 10/26/2024

TRANSCRIPT closed caption

5:00 this is not normal American stuff this isn't American at all this is strongman

5:07 authoritarian form of government stuff which our constitution protects us from

5:13 explicitly but he wants to get rid of all that and he is saying if you vote for him he will get rid of all

5:21 that

+tonight we're going to speak with Julia Navalny tonight about the challenge of standing in opposition in leading opposition efforts in a country where the Independent Media has been eliminated I mean what Trump is proposing to do here in America to the media is what Putin of course has already done in Russia in Russia it is State controlled media only and that's the case everywhere you've got an authoritarian in charge that's the case everywhere you've got a dictatorship that's the case everywhere in most cases you've got a monarchy any place you've got authoritarian leadership in Saudi Arabia the state controlled media includes Al Arabia TV you get a handy reminder of the fact that it's state controlled media if you watch any of their Clips online um Trump loves Saudi Arabia right one of the many under reported things in the presidential campaign this year I think was that in the midst of our presidential campaign just this summer Trump signed a deal to build Trump Tower Saudi Arabia uh in jeda in Saudi Arabia that is a huge real estate deal that is the the Saudi government doing out a huge financial favor to Trump while he is in the middle of his presidential campaign they are expecting presumably that if he does get back into the White House that huge personal financial favor they just did him will still be fresh inhis mind when it comes to making American policy American government policy towards Saudi Arabia the Saudi royal family you will recall also stuffed $2 billion with a B $2 billion into the pockets of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner as soon as he left the White House the New York Times recently reporting that they the Saudis have seen precisely zero return on that supposed investment in Jared Kushner he's just kept all the money and skimmed out over a hundred million in fees for himself while returning nothing to them at least sofar but presumably that's because they're not expecting to be paid back by him they're expecting to be paid back by the White House by the American people the Saudis don't seem to be all that eager to get any of that money back from old Jared because they know they'll get it back another way from us from policy at our expense to pay back the people who have paid him so the Trump relationship with Saudi Arabia is very well oiled honestly if you wanted to create like a kindergarten level textbook one of those like those books where that the pages are cards right card stock if you wanted to create a kindergarten level textbook to explain to a kindergartener what corruption is right this is how you might spell it out fail imagine your friend is running for president somebody gives your friend a huge sweet business deal while he's running for president and that same someone then gives your friend's family billions of dollars while he's running for president C is for corruption your friend is corrupt right and then if it was like a you know a good children's book it would say oh but don't worry this could never happen in the United States of America yeah we'd have to update that textbook uh but anyway um today Al Arabia Saudi State controlled media posted a new interview with Donald Trump and this new interview with Donald Trump it was just published today it got basically zero pickup in the United States which is kind of amazing right a presidential candidate interview gets zero pickup two weeks before election day but I think the reason this interview didn't get any pickup might be because of the headline that Saudi State controlled Al Arabia slapped on the video when they posted it look at the headline they put on this quote Trump says Middle East peace possible if elected oh yes that's what we're all expecting right elect Donald Trump what's going to happen well for starters you'll get pieces in the Middle East it's evaded the Geniuses of many generations but that six-dimensional chess player will be able to sort it out yeah um Peace and Trump will will bring about peace in the Middle East if he's elected...

++"...this is not a normal election between two normal

candidates if you want to know how this one is going to end this is the time for you to make a difference as to how it is going to end this is it now or never we be right back in 2013 so 11 years ago um Donald Trump posted on Twitter about hosting

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