Russia

[knapplc]

 

[TGHusker]

1 hour ago, Fru said:

 

Because of course

Color me surprised !!

 

but not a spy chip it appears -

Quote

 

The Adidas soccer ball Russian President Vladimir Putin gave to President Trump at their summit in Finland appears to contain a chip that can transmit information to nearby cell phones, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

The publication noted that photos of the ball show a logo for a near-field communication (NFC) tag, a chip that is included in the Adidas 2018 FIFA World Cup ball. Russia hosted this year's World Cup.

Adidas AG soccer balls, similar to the one Putin presented to Trump during a joint press conference last week, contain a small chip that can send content to mobile devices. Users can hold their phones close to the ball to access videos and competitions, according to Bloomberg.

 

 

Adidas declined to comment to Bloomberg on whether the device could be used in a Russian cyberattack. The brand’s website states that the chip can’t be modified.
 

The publication reported that such a chip has been used at least one to breach a phone, though a cybersecurity expert told Bloomberg that it’s unlikely that a cyberattack could be launched using the device.

The soccer ball underwent a security screening as part of the routine procedure for all gifts given to the president, the U.S. Secret Service said last week.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had said on Twitter that the ball should be inspected for "listening devices" and that he would "never allow it in the White House."

It’s unknown if the chip — if it was in the ball at all — was removed before or after it was given to Trump.

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

 

"We don't want anymore campaign ads run about this."

[Danny Bateman]

Not only does Rand Paul desperately want attention, he's doing his best to try to normalize this situation and provide cover for his dear leader.

 

All of these clowns are complicit in auctioning our democracy off for rubles.

 

                                                                    

[LumberJackSker]

6 hours ago, Clifford Franklin said:

Not only does Rand Paul desperately want attention, he's doing his best to try to normalize this situation and provide cover for his dear leader.

 

All of these clowns are complicit in auctioning our democracy off for rubles.

 

                                                                    

what happened to this guy? i'm starting to think he is the prostitute trump is giving a golden shower to in the tape

[TGHusker]

7 hours ago, LumberJackSker said:

what happened to this guy? i'm starting to think he is the prostitute trump is giving a golden shower to in the tape

I think when his neighbor beat him up, there must have been a blow to the head.  He sure isn't acting like the Rand Paul we saw in the primary debates.

 

Related to Russia.  At least Trump's intelligence team recognize the Russian hacking threat even if Trump doesn't or doesn't want to confirm it. 

https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-social-media-disinformation-c29e6d79-8e57-4603-ab57-0fe08e55d2f0.html

Quote

 

The officials came together yesterday to warn anew about a hidden war by Russia on U.S. campaigns and elections, and to say that they're on it:

• Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats: "In regards to Russian involvement in the midterm elections, we continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States."
• Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen: "Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs."
• FBI Director Christopher Wray: "Just last week, ... we disseminated a list to our state and local law enforcement partners of various foreign influence indicators for them to be on the lookout for — things like malicious cyber activity, social abnormalities, and foreign propaganda activities."
• National security adviser John Bolton: "We meet on this constantly, the senior staff here at the White House."

Russia isn't the only threat, Coats added: "We know there are others who have the capability and may be considering influence activities."

I asked a couple of Obama national-security alumni to read between the lines of this remarkable briefing:

• Jeremy Bash, former chief of staff at the CIA and Pentagon: "The women and men who work in law enforcement, intelligence and the military expect their leadership to speak 'truth to power,' even if the President doesn’t want to hear it. That’s what happened today."
• Matt Miller, former Justice Department spokesman: "It's pretty clear this press conference happened because the staff realized Trump did deep damage to his presidency in Helsinki and raised real doubts in people's minds about where his loyalties lie, and they convinced him they needed to signal to the American people that he is not actually in bed with the Russians."

Be smart, from Matt Miller: "You can't admit to Russian interference at the same time you are claiming the investigation that is holding Russians accountable is a witch hunt. ... So you will continue to see this dissonance."

 

 

 

[schriznoeder]

 

Here's a copy of the letter...

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Fru]

16 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

[Danny Bateman]

20 minutes ago, Fru said:

 

I love how scores of people leading up to Trump ultimately getting the GOP nomination in 2016 were telling me how they wanted to vote for Rand because he seemed different and like he was an independent thinker not beholden to his party.

 

What a joke. Rand Paul is an utter pawn of Russia at this point.

[Moiraine]

46 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

 

 

Trump probably e-mailed it to them from his hotmail account.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[commando]

russian tv

 

More detailed translation of what Tretyakov says re: sanctions (shortened in the original Tweet due to character constraints): "Let's turn this into a headache for Trump. If you want us to support you in the elections, which we're ostensibly arranging, then do this or that."

[TGHusker]

Contrasts come to my mind when I read this article which recaps Reagan's speaking to students at the Univ of Moscow 30 years ago.

Reagan sought to end Soviet dominance and end the arms race.  His actions led to the eventual decline and collapse of the Soviet empire.

He saw the evil in the Soviet system that dominates free men and women and stifles individual freedoms and liberties.

I contrast that to our current president who does not see the communist who rules Russia now - Putin as a threat - his sanctions notwithstanding.

Trump has too often coddled Putin, given excuses for Putin's actions and accepted Putin's denials of election tampering.  

Trump is no Reagan.  

 

 

Off topic alert:    I wanted to address this upfront so everyone knows I don't support some to his conclusions at the very end of the article.

I don't agree wt the writer's conclusion in the last 2 paragraphs.  He states that it was pro-life Dems who elected Reagan - that Reagan would have been

beaten by Carter without those voters.  He then says something that I find 'cringe worthy' - he jumps to the conclusion that aborted babies didn't

die in vain - as their deaths prompted the voter turnout on behalf of Reagan and that indirectly their 'sacrifice' (my words) helped prevent nuclear disaster

through Reagan's election.     I agree with the article up to those last 2 paragraphs.  His conclusion is incorrect - while we did get a huge turnout

of Reagan Democrats it wasn't just because of the abortion issue - it was primarily a pocketbook issue - the economy and also the mindset that the nation

was on  a terrible downward spiral.   

 

 

https://world.wng.org/2018/08/improbable_events

Quote

 

Thirty years have gone by since Ronald Reagan in 1988 spoke to students at Moscow State University. At a time when the Soviet Communist Party still claimed to be the vanguard of wisdom, Reagan said, “Freedom is the recognition that no single governmental authority has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious.”

Reagan for 40 years, ever since he fought Communists in Hollywood and faced threats of acid being thrown on his face, had been one of the Soviet Union’s staunchest critics—but 1988, miraculously, was a time in Moscow when, in his words, “the accumulated spiritual energies of a long silence” were breaking free.

 

 

Quote

A Slate article in 2004 had this headline: “How Reagan won the Cold War.” Fred Kaplan wrote, “Did Ronald Reagan bring on the end of the Cold War? Well, yes. Recently declassified documents leave no doubt about the matter. … The Soviet system was dysfunctional; its empire was collapsing; the cupboard was bare. And Reagan’s surging military budgets, without question, brought this internal crisis to a head.”

To put it simply, the U.S. and the S.U. in 1988 were runners near the end of an ultramarathon. Both were tired, but the U.S. suddenly surged and the S.U. couldn’t keep up. In 2014 George Weigel noted “the Soviet Union’s economic vulnerability” and said Reagan exploited “that vulnerability by launching a full-throttle American defense expansion that he knew the Soviets … could not match, given their system’s economic, technological, and bureaucratic incapacities.”

Weigel also emphasized the ethical attack: “Reagan understood that the Soviet Union was ideologically vulnerable: that a steady, fact-based, morally-driven critique of communism’s abominable human rights record would rattle the men in Moscow, expose cracks in the Soviet system, encourage brave dissidents to exploit those cracks, and hasten the end of what Reagan called, perhaps undiplomatically but certainly truthfully, an ‘Evil Empire.’”

So if Reagan did it—and Gorbachev contributed by being, unlike other Soviet Belshazzars, someone who could read writing on the wall—then why did Reagan have the opportunity to do it? Neither Jimmy Carter nor Walter Mondale, the two Democrats he defeated, would have escalated the arms race to where the gasping Soviets had to give up.

 

 

[RedDenver]

23 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Contrasts come to my mind when I read this article which recaps Reagan's speaking to students at the Univ of Moscow 30 years ago.

Reagan sought to end Soviet dominance and end the arms race.  His actions led to the eventual decline and collapse of the Soviet empire.

He saw the evil in the Soviet system that dominates free men and women and stifles individual freedoms and liberties.

I contrast that to our current president who does not see the communist who rules Russia now - Putin as a threat - his sanctions notwithstanding.

Trump has too often coddled Putin, given excuses for Putin's actions and accepted Putin's denials of election tampering.  

Trump is no Reagan.  

 

 

Off topic alert:    I wanted to address this upfront so everyone knows I don't support some to his conclusions at the very end of the article.

I don't agree wt the writer's conclusion in the last 2 paragraphs.  He states that it was pro-life Dems who elected Reagan - that Reagan would have been

beaten by Carter without those voters.  He then says something that I find 'cringe worthy' - he jumps to the conclusion that aborted babies didn't

die in vain - as their deaths prompted the voter turnout on behalf of Reagan and that indirectly their 'sacrifice' (my words) helped prevent nuclear disaster

through Reagan's election.     I agree with the article up to those last 2 paragraphs.  His conclusion is incorrect - while we did get a huge turnout

of Reagan Democrats it wasn't just because of the abortion issue - it was primarily a pocketbook issue - the economy and also the mindset that the nation

was on  a terrible downward spiral.   

 

 

https://world.wng.org/2018/08/improbable_events

 

 

I think the idea that Reagan caused the Soviet collapse is overblown. The Soviets had been in decline since the early 70's, and it was their own people overthrowing the government that finally put the nail in the coffin. Reagan's arms race may have put more pressure on them, but that system was unstable and would have collapsed anyway.