TGHusker

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-19/health-care-disaster-exposes-trump-as-a-monster Good read. Here it is copied: With the Republicans' Plan C to vote for "repeal and delay" lasting about 12 hours or so before falling short of winning in the Senate, Donald Trump returned to his least attractive -- and most foolish -- position on health care: "We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.” Let's put aside for now the extent to which the Affordable Care Act would "fail" without active measures by the White House and the Republican Congress to undermine the state marketplaces; for that matter, ignore the extent to which active Republican resistance, such as the various lawsuits against the law and the decision by many Republican governors to not expand Medicaid, is responsible for a fair number of problems in the first place. Let's just stipulate for the sake of argument that Trump is correct and the law is doomed if his administration and Republicans in Congress adopt a passive stance of watching and waiting. The first point is just how monstrous Trump is bragging he will be. As Brendan Nyhan says: Imagine if Ronald Reagan had said after Congress prohibited him from aiding anti-Communists in Nicaragua: "Fine. I'll just surrender to the U.S.S.R. today. That'll show 'em!" 1 Or if Franklin Roosevelt, faced with sharp congressional resistance from isolationists, decided to disarm and allow the Axis to proceed at will. Or if George W. Bush had reacted to the first defeat of the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008 by publicly rooting for a worldwide economic meltdown. This is worse because Trump has, in fact, undermined the health exchanges, and he has threatened to do so further; indeed, one estimate says that the bulk of projected 2018 premium increases are the result of Trump and other Republican actions, not a deterioration in the markets -- in part because insurers are directly saying that's why their rates are going up. I certainly can't think of any president who directly promised to harm the American people unless his political opponents let him have his way. The closest analogy might be the Republican Congresses in 1995 and 2011, which shut down the government in (unsuccessful) efforts to win policy battles with Democratic presidents. At least those episodes were conceived of as short-term actions with fairly limited costs. A better parallel might be Obama-era Republican threats to default on the debt by refusing to raise the debt limit. That, like Trump's boast on health care, was a threat to harm the American people if everyone didn't do what one side -- that didn't have the votes -- wanted. It's a fundamental violation, in my view, of political ethics, far worse than (quite bad) sundry conflicts of interest or failures to disclose tax returns. Trump is hardly the first politician to fall sadly short when it comes to ethics. So why aren't there other examples of presidents who threatened to harm the American people? Because it's also self-defeating. Trump claims that voters will hold Barack Obama and the Democrats responsible for health care's problems, but everything we know about retrospective voting says that outside of hard-core Republicans, who will back Trump no matter what, voters will blame the current president for anything that goes wrong, fairly or unfairly. Thus the many voters who blamed Obama and the Democrats in 2010 for the state of the economy. Thus the scattered studies of voters who turn against incumbents after totally unrelated events such as storms, losses by local sports teams and even shark attacks. We could argue all day about who voters should hold responsible if they don't like their health insurance, but the evidence says they will blame the incumbent president and his party. Fortunately, most politicians realize that and try hard to produce policies that will benefit their constituents. Sure, they'll also make speeches in which they blame their predecessors for anything going wrong, but they'll actively attempt to fix the problem, because they know that buck-passing rhetoric won't work very well. Of course, most politicians also entered public life at least in part to improve the conditions of the nation. But even those with nothing but raw ambition are smart enough to at least pretend (in their rhetoric) that they care about voters' well-being, and smart enough to know that the way to satisfy that ambition involves keeping voters happy. Most politicians. But evidently not this one.

Knapp, how do you get these tweets so quickly!! Well that is good news. Like the article I posted yesterday or day before said - it is all about following the money (isn't that the usual case in most investigations?). As one reporter stated, Trump has been so inconsistent on almost everything - back peddling on campaign promises left and right. But he has been remarkably consistent in his comments with regard to Russia: I want better relationships with Russia. Makes you wonder just a bit about their arrangements, blackmail, financial ties - puppet on a string.

BRB - This could all be solved wt a simple voter ID that verifies citizenship and thus the right to vote. I don't understand why the left has such a hard time wt voter ID laws if the ID is free, gov issued and not easily duplicated. But that is a whole new topic. If a panel is needed to insure voters have equal access, that only citizens vote, and that there is no tampering - I'm fine wt that. But I agree wt you - this is the wrong admin to be doing this and perhaps the initiative should be started via Congress instead if there were a federal panel.

The Bold: Yes - remember Travelgate during the Clinton admin? Clinton's didn't like the existing travel staff, trashed the staff and then moved in their own people. Hillary was known to trash people left and right - that was her MO - but that was basically done behind the scenes unlike Trump who seems to not have a problem throwing under the bus even his most loyal supporters. He is an egomaniac who always needs stroking and revolts in anger if someone says or does the 'right thing' that makes him feel uncomfortable.

If I was a member of this administration, I would have the hair standing on the back of my neck after hearing Trump's comments about Sessions. Just unbelievable. So Trump wants nothing but yes men around him, & if a person takes an ethical stand as Sessions did and The Donald is uncomfortable with it, then damn the ethics. My bet is that Sessions is planning a dignified exit strategy now. He won't last long and this happens to the guy who was one of Trump's most loyal supporters. No one is safe from the verbal wrath of Trump.

Good points. Yes, actors and athletes bring a value back to the shareholders. Perhaps the weakening of unions hurt all of us. But what also hurt the unions was the growing wealth of the union leadership at the expense of the common guy. In some cases their greed ended up hurting the average worker. My dad's company broke the union when the union got way too greedy. Then everyone suffered.

To add to my Goebbels comment above, I posted this on the ACA repeal thread and it applies here as well and maybe more so: again separate but equal shows the power of words. This nation was torn asunder by the Civil War and then lived for decades basically another century under the pretense that 'separate but equal' was an American value. It wasn't but the political leaders of the era made it stick in the American psych and culture for a long time. He who controls the language controls the argument and we have to be aware of the same today. Trump is doing so by calling all negative media reports as Fake News. Before long that gets into the American psych and we believe it is true. Too much of the nation already believes it is true. And we have shills like Hannity reinforcing it on TV and radio. I can't believe I use to listen to him... I once had some friends I went to college with at MOO U (SDSU - S.Dak State) who got involved in a cult like group in S.Falls. The group originally listened to many good Bible teachers. Then one by one they dropped all of the teachers but one. This one guy was on the fringe. The group in SF eventually packed up and moved to Florida and became a part of the cult's encampment. That is what happens when we hitch our butt to one person without question. Sell your soul, you lose your soul. To many on the R side are doing so.

Well, my distrust for all things Hillary remains but I won't go down the conspiracy trial.

When is the last time this country has taken an enourmous step back after taking taking a small one forward? Has something like this ever happened in the US before? Prohibition maybe? Maybe separate but equal again separate but equal shows the power of words. This nation was torn asunder by the Civil War and then lived for decades basically another century under the pretense that 'separate but equal' was an American value. It wasn't but the political leaders of the era made it stick in the American psych and culture for a long time. He who controls the language controls the argument and we have to be aware of the same today. Trump is doing so by calling all negative media reports as Fake News. Before long that gets into the American psych and we believe it is true. Too much of the nation already believes it is true. And we have shills like Hannity reinforcing it on TV and radio. I can't believe I use to listen to him... I once had some friends I went to college with at MOO U (SDSU - S.Dak State) who got involved in a cult like group in S.Falls. The group originally listened to many good Bible teachers. Then one by one they dropped all of the teachers but one. This one guy was on the fringe. The group in SF eventually packed up and moved to Florida and became a part of the cult's encampment. That is what happens when we hitch our butt to one person without question. Sell your soul, you lose your soul. To many on the R side are doing so.

History tells us that things don't go well for a nation or to the leaders who implement such tactics: Paul Joseph Goebbels (German: [ˈpaʊ̯l ˈjoːzəf ˈɡœbl̩s] ( listen);[1] 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's close associates and most devoted followers, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deep, virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust. Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with Gregor Strasser in their northern branch. He was appointed as Gauleiter (district leader) for Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazi Seizure of Power in 1933, Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted controlling supervision over the news media, arts, and information in Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on the Christian churches, and (after the start of the Second World War) attempting to shape morale. In 1943, Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce total war, including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into the labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations into the Wehrmacht. Hitler finally appointed him as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War on 23 July 1944, whereby Goebbels undertook largely unsuccessful measures to increase the number of people available for armaments production and the Wehrmacht. As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined him in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitler's underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler's will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after poisoning their six children with cyanide

When is the last time this country has taken an enourmous step back after taking taking a small one forward? Has something like this ever happened in the US before? Prohibition maybe? Maybe separate but equal

No doubt it would put more money into circulation. The lower income workers would be spending a lot more of their income because they would have more and because the cost for everything would increase drastically. Where we differ in thinking is that would change their quality of life. It's not like all of a sudden we would have fewer poor people. The definition of poor (poverty) would just be adjusted upward. I view quality of life in relative terms to others in society. If today a person earns $25,000/Yr and has to live in some crap hole to make ends meet, what changes if they are earning $42,000/YR and all their costs increase, as well as housing costs? I think they're living in the same crap hole and still struggling to pay their bills while the overpaid CEO's, who have also increased their pay at a rate far exceeding $8 per hour, still live in their mansions and still horde their profits. The quality of life between the 2 groups has not changed and I would have a tough time saying it has improved at all for the poor folk. This doesn't apply if you're looking at it on an individual basis. Sure one person receiving that large raise will be better off. But when it happens across the board I think all it does is expand the scale of the same problem we have today. I'm not saying trickle down economics works either. We've seen how that way of thinking has allowed the rich to get exponentially richer. I think the solution will only come about when everyone realizes that no CEO is worth multi million dollars per year while his lowest paid workers are only getting $10/Hr. I don't think the problem can only be addressed from one end. Something has to change on the upper end as well. Maybe start wt Hollywood types (see if that compassionate liberalism is just a token jester) and over paid athletes as well?? I saw a comedy act last night in which the comedian said the only people without dead end jobs are athletes. He defined dead end jobs as those jobs that don't pay what the job is worth to society. He pointed out most people aren't paid what they are really worth to society - using teachers, policemen, military, fireman, clerks, waiters and even doctors who serve impoverished people as examples. He said athletes get paid what they are worth and therefore don't have dead end jobs. Why, because their job isn't the game they play but the sneakers they are wearing & therefore selling. They are high paid sales people who get paid beyond their contribution to society thus they don't have a dead end job. The rest of us well that is another story.

The Bold: Maybe a faster version of 'Trickle down Economics". The theory behind 'Reaganomics" was that as tax cuts were given to job creators more jobs would be created. Those jobs would then be filled by the average Joe who would then place more money back into the economy via their spending. This does work IF the underlined portion doesn't occur. Jobs grew big time under Reagan by a series of events: Gov't spending (military spending created many military related jobs in industry for example) Tax cuts - more money for job creation and more money for average Joe to spend, & Tax increases supporting spending. As the article notes, CEO salary, stakeholder equity and corp profits all rose substantially while wages stagnated at best and decline in actual buying power. Thus the argument for investing not at the top but at the bottom. To speed up the trickle down by going directly to the consumers with a much higher min wage who will spend the money thus accomplishing 2 things - driving many out of poverty level living and stimulating greater growth in the economy. This is 'globalization' localized. The 'raise all boats' argument of globalism is that as we put manufacturing jobs in poor countries, those workers will earn a living, they will spend and also then demand even more advance type jobs, products and services. You can see this happening in many economies around the world. Those base jobs would then move to an even poorer country and the cycle repeats itself. However, we need to do a better job here to help our poor out of the cycle. Once they have more purchasing power, they too will demand more sophisticated products and services and this will spur more economic development. So if we have tried corporate subsidies and they have fallen short, maybe it is time to cut directly to the bottom and create a trickle down that only has one drop - a higher wage. This might create a trickle up that spurs business growth in multiple sectors. And you are hearing this from a fairly conservative guy . Mark Levin would have a hard time with this but compassionate conservatism has to be more than being pro-life and helping unwed mothers, it has to start in the real world of the average worker.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/07/us-army-seeks-internet-battlefield-things-distributed-bot-swarms/139533/ Interesting article on robots, drones doing our fighting as well as combating 'tech free' zone areas in a war zone. Johnny goes to war is and will be Johnny robot going to war. The article states that we (USA) has fallen behind in this area as we have fought the ISIS cavemen. We have tech in the battle field, tech in space all so much different that how we won WW 2 by sheer brutal strength. Just think - it was only a 100 years ago (short time in history) in which we faught WW1 with bi-planes, balloons, 1 shot rifles, mustard gas and trench warfare. As society advance we find more sophisticated ways to both kill and defend ourselves. Maybe we should find a way to agree on this planet that war is obsolete & try to work things out peacefully. Unfortunately in a world of good and evil, one has to defend against evil while trying to overcome overall evil with good.

Good honest soul searching and well written article good quote here: I believe that we in the American political and economic elite face an extraordinarily inconvenient but undeniable truth: Our country will not get better until our fellow citizens feel better; and they will not feel better until they actually do better. And this is the hard part for many of you: The American people will not do better until they are actually paid more. And they won’t be paid more until we change the way we manage our economy. This is the stark, simple fact at the heart of our ailing political system. Nothing is going to get better until we enact laws and standards that persuade or oblige every business to pay every worker a fair, dignified and livable wage. Everything else, from Trump on down, is a distraction or a lie. I also would like to see the #s that support the claim that increase min wages increases jobs and does not delete jobs. Perhaps it is true and has been documented someplace: President Trump promises to restore the middle class to its former glory by bringing back old industrial-era jobs—as if slashing environmental regulations could somehow make coal competitive again with plummeting solar prices, let alone our fracking-induced glut of cheap natural gas. This is magical thinking. Manufacturing as a percentage of the overall economy, and of jobs, has been declining globally for decades. This trend will not reverse. Trump cannot restore the middle class with empty promises to bring manufacturing jobs back from the dead. No, the only realistic near term way to insure Americans do better is to make existing jobs into good jobs by requiring they be paid adequately. There is no earthly reason why an entry-level job at low-wage employers like Walmart or McDonalds could not pay $15 or even $20 per hour with full benefits, the way an old factory job used to. There is nothing “unskilled” about a barista or a home health care worker, and no economic principle that prevents these workers from earning a living wage. The only difference between today’s service workers and yesterday’s manufacturing workers is that most service workers have no union, and thus have no power. People have never been paid what they are worth, despite what the trickle-downer’s will tell you. They are paid what they negotiate. And working people have lost their ability to negotiate decent wages. Union jobs that used to pay people middle-class wages and that delivered the job security and benefits that enabled a dignified, stable and secure life have been eliminated and replaced with minimum-wage jobs. Low-wage employers tell us that this is all they can afford. That, too, is a lie. When Starbucks and Walmart and McDonalds say they cannot provide their workers with middle class wages and benefits like General Motors and IBM used to, they really mean they’d prefer not to do so. Why? Because if wages are low, profits and bonuses are high. I want to underscore that I do not think it reasonable for any company, even the size of Walmart, to be expected to unilaterally raise the wages of their workers to double the national minimum wage. In a viciously competitive market, such an action is unrealistic. What is unforgivable (and in a sense, inexplicable) is the failure of Walmart’s leaders to lead the charge to level the playing field by raising the federal minimum wage, so that every company is required to pay their workers fairly. After all, who would get the biggest share of these extra consumer dollars? Our nation’s largest retailer: Walmart. To be clear: raising wages simply does not kill jobs. Raising wages will no more kill jobs than eliminating slavery killed jobs, or giving women the right to vote killed democracy (both of which arguments were made at the time). In fact, the opposite is true. Despite what our good friends at the Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) may tell you. If raising wages really killed jobs, the empirical evidence would be abundant. We’ve raised the federal minimum wage 22 times since 1938, and unless the economy was already in or heading into recession, employment always increased. And if you look further into the data by sector, the results are even more dramatic. The more effected the industry sector by the increase, the better it did. The lowest wage sectors had better employment effects than higher wage sectors.

McMullin and Kasich would be a great place to start. If those two came out in the next 6 months announced a Kasich/McMullin ticket to challenge Trump in 2020, that'd be great... (insert "Office Space" gif) U can start the Draft K & M organization.

Sometimes you have to wander in the desert for a while. Barry Goldwater did - and then a guy named Ronald Reagan gave a campaign speech on Goldwater's behalf - The Time for Choosing Speech. (Rendezvous wt Destiny). The rest is history. It took Reagan 16 years to end up in the WH. Shorter version of the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvg7lRsCVJ8 The full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY

Can we have a 2016 Do Over? Take Hillary, Trump, and all of the Republican leadership & San Fran Nan, and NY Sen Schumer out of the election pool and just start from scratch. Or can we impeach Trump, The Turtle, and Paul Ryan?

Now if I can get some of you guys to read some conservative journals! We all do need to read opposing literature as it challenges our assumption and may help us to see things differently. Actually, too many conservative outlets, at this time still haven't taken the leap of cutting ties to the Republican plantation. We conservatives thought all of the stars came into alignment wt the 2016 election - we dodge a bullet (no Hillary), you control house, senate, WH - you expect great things. But what has happened since then convinces me that philosophical, constitutional conservatives need to disconnect from the Republican party. Liberals on the other hand have a more philosophically pure party to be a part of. With the conservative movement hitched to the republican leadership as it now exists, we will be continually disappointed.

Yes, I was going to bring up the tax records and didn't when I posted that article. It seems to me that this is the primary reason those taxes weren't opened to the public - why they have been 'with the auditor' for all of these years. I suspect that we have a guy who may turn into a Russian puppet due to the financial strings attached to him. This will make the Clinton Foundation look pretty small in comparison if my suspicions are true.

https://nebraska.rivals.com/news/blades-breaks-silence-will-attend-arizona-western-in-2017 This may have been discussed previously, but did we have a huge miss in not 'protecting' him while he was at JUCO? From the article: What’s interesting is Minnick said he didn’t have any contact with the Husker coaching staff about possibly placing Blades at Arizona Western. Blades and his camp initiated the contact on their end, which means he will not be a recruit Arizona Western protects and sends back to Lincoln in two years. “If Nebraska would’ve placed him here, he’d be protected,” Minnick said. “But Nebraska didn’t place him here, so he could go anywhere he wants. “If Nebraska would’ve called and said, ‘hey we want to send this kid here and get him back,’ it would be a different story. They didn’t call me about him. We recruited him, so he could go wherever he wants to go.” Last year Arizona Western had 27 players going Division I, and this year they already have 14 with early Division I offers according to Minnick.

Maybe related to the article I posted above??

https://www.vox.com/2017/7/18/15983910/donald-trump-russia-putin-natalia-veselnitskaya-collusion Good article - pretty revealing. Follow the money not the politics as the article states. I copied large sections of the article but read the whole link to get the flow. The most important quote is what I highlighted in bold - the very last sentence. It is frightening to consider the consequences. Quotes from the article/interview: To understand the roots of the collusion, set aside Putin and follow the money.” That’s what Seva Gunitsky, a politics professor at the University of Toronto and the author of Aftershocks, told me in a recent interview. I reached out to Gunitsky on Monday after he posted a short but incisive thread on Twitter about the financial roots of the Trump-Russia collusion case. Gunitsky, who was raised in Russia, has followed the evolving relationship between Donald Trump and Russia for more than a decade. He says the prevailing narrative about Putin interfering in the American election in order to undermine democracy is wildly overstated. Putin is happy to sow confusion and distrust in America’s system, of course, but to assume that’s the basis of this operation is to overlook a much simpler motive: money. The financial connections between Trump and various Russian banks and oligarchs (business elites with ties to the Kremlin) stretch back decades, which is likely a big reason why Trump won’t release his tax returns. Trump’s election, Gunitsky contends, presented Russian oligarchs with an opportunity to recoup losses and leverage Trump’s debts for political gain. I asked Gunitsky to lay it out for me as clearly as possible, and to explain the financial dealings between Trump and his Russian business partners. Here’s what he told me. Seva Gunitsky I think it's justifiable for you to say that it seems impossibly convoluted, but I would say it's still much simpler than this idea that there's a global conspiracy designed to bring down democracy. I'm not saying the political dimension is unimportant — surely it is. But if we're talking about the roots of the collusion, we have to look at where Trump's links with Russia begin. And it begins with money. [These roots] don't start with the election; they start with money, and namely Russian oligarch money. Sean Illing So walk me through the trail. Where does the money lead? Seva Gunitsky Again, this doesn't start with the election; it starts with Russian oligarch money pouring into Trump's real estate and casino businesses. Many of them Trump has been working with for years, well before he developed any serious political ambitions. And we’re not talking about small change here; we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Possibly even enough to keep Trump out of another bankruptcy. Sean Illing And we know this how, exactly? Seva Gunitsky We know because they’ve told us. We can talk about specific cases in a minute, but Donald Trump Jr. has already admitted the importance of Russian money to their business ventures. He said publicly in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Sean Illing And this is why you think Western media has overplayed the centrality of Putin in all of this? We have this notion of Putin as a kind of master strategist playing 10-dimensional chess with Trump. I think it’s obvious that once Putin saw an opportunity he took it, but these financial ties go back a long way, long before the 2016 election. Seva Gunitsky I think that’s right. Putin is often put up as this sort of central antagonist, but the Russian government is not this shadowy monolith. It's sometimes portrayed this way in the West, but in reality the Russian government is messy and disorganized and ad hoc. So Prevezon is a holding company with links to Russian elites that has been accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through New York City real estate. It's also part of Hermitage Capital, an investment fund that was being investigated by Magnitsky (the Russian lawyer who was killed in a Moscow prison in 2009) more than 10 years ago. Prevezon was part of this giant tax fraud scheme that Magnitsky uncovered in 2008, which led to his death and which led indirectly to the Magnitsky Act of 2012. The U.S. Attorney’s Office was also preparing a massive case against Prevezon last year. Until it was abruptly dropped. Sean Illing We’ll circle back to the case being dropped in a second, but let’s stick to the role of the Russian lawyer that Trump Jr. met with. Seva Gunitsky Now, Prevezon’s lawyer was Natalia Veselnitskaya, who of course met with Trump Jr. last year. She had been pushing for a long time to get something done about the Prevezon case. So it's very possible that she went into that meeting essentially asking for help, in return for which she would give the Trump campaign dirt on Hillary and the DNC. It’s impossible to know for sure what happened in that room, but these are extremely plausible interpretations. It’s hard to say what the groups’ motivations were. These motivations are all entangled — I want to stress that. I don’t want to insist that this was all about the money. I’m only So what happened with the Prevezon case? Seva Gunitsky Several months after Trump takes office, the Prevezon case is dismissed. So what happened? The U.S. attorney was carefully preparing a case against Prevezon Holdings. They were all set to go forward, and then suddenly the case was settled. Prevezon's own lawyers were kind of shocked. We know they paid something like $6 million, which is a fraction of what the lawsuit was about. So they were extremely happy about it. Congressional Democrats have openly expressed concerns about what happened here. They want to know why it was settled so quickly. Was pressure being applied from above? In any case, we can see the possible motivations of the people approaching Trump for favors. When I say the collusion starts with financial interests, this is what I mean. It’s not that obstructing democracy wasn’t important; it’s that it was potentially a happy byproduct of these financial relationships. And I think for Trump it was always about the money. It's just that now he's undergoing a level of scrutiny that he’s never experienced before. Sean Illing Do we have any evidence that Trump was involved in any way with Prevezon? Seva Gunitsky We don't know that Trump was involved in any way with that. Obviously, it's kind of his wheelhouse, New York City real estate, so I am sure he at least heard about it. But we don't know if he has any direct connections. But it's not even necessary for him to have any direct connections here. They're only asking for some relief in this case, in return for certain compromising documents. So the interesting thing for me is, was there pressure placed on the U.S. Attorney's Office by the administration, by the Department of Justice? What we know is that Preet Bharara, the attorney in charge of the case, was fired in early March, and shortly thereafter the Prevezon case was dropped saying that the financial motivations in all of this have been understated in relation to its importance. Sean Illing Do we know of any public reactions to the dismissal of the Prevezon case from the Russian lawyer or from anyone else associated with this? Seva Gunitsky Veselnitskaya was ecstatic about the Prevezon case on her social media. She said it was "settled on Russian terms"; that's a direct quote. She said it was the beginning of the end of the Cold War, and she said there'd be more to come. Again, like so much of the evidence here, this doesn’t prove anything definitively. But there’s an unbelievable amount of smoke, and a massive web of overlapping interests. Sean Illing As hard as it is to make sense of all this, it does help to explain Trump’s unusual consistency on all things Russia. This is a guy without a fixed ideological core, but his bizarre pro-Russia posture is arguably the only issue on which he’s been consistent. Seva Gunitsky I’d only slightly disagree here and say the thing about which he’s been most consistent is the desire to make money. And if we take that, then his consistency on Russia becomes much more sensible. I think you're absolutely right that he has no strong ideological commitments. We've seen that painfully over and over during the last few months. But if his financial interests are tied up with Russian oligarchs, who in turn are tied up with the Kremlin and thus have parallel interests, then Trump’s “consistency” becomes much more explainable. And if we emphasize this financial angle a bit more, it also makes a lot of sense that he would not want to release his tax returns. Because that would expose just how deeply embedded he is with Russian money. Sean Illing To be clear about what you’re saying, you’re not denying the political motivations of Putin or the Kremlin. In your mind, this is about understanding what catalyzed the alleged collusion process, right? Seva Gunitsky That’s right. I think the idea of parallel interest is key here, that the Russian intelligence service, once they saw what Trump was doing, quickly latched on in order to push their own agenda, which was very similar to the Russian oligarchy agenda. And it's hard to even separate the two because, as you probably know, in Russia the distinction between political power and economic power is very fuzzy. Sean Illing Looking at the timeline here helps to clarify your broader argument. It’s not like the Russians foresaw back in 1987, when they first started dealing with Trump, that he might become president in 2017. It seems clear enough that the financial ties were already there, and when the opportunity presented itself, the Kremlin took full advantage of it. Seva Gunitsky Absolutely. There’s a tendency here, in part because of our Cold War inertia, to see Putin as this creature with his tentacles in every part of the country. And I think that may be overstating the case just a bit. He's been in power for 17 years, the people who support him are starting to itch a little bit, and he has to keep them happy. They're not happy about sanctions; they're not happy about restrictions on their financial dealings. If they have financial leverage over Trump, and they clearly do, then why wouldn’t they want him to become president of the United States?

Oh, I needed the clarification - I thought it was the pictures of associates of the Clintons who died under mysterious circumstances Ok I just couldn't resist. I take it back - slap my hand!

Learn something new each day on HB - I didn't know what 'chyron' was until I looked it up. Thank-you for providing this educational service to mankind. It is appreciated.