2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Razgovory]

Shows he can play hardball.  We need that quality when negotiating with Putin.

All we need is to get him to stand up to Putin the same way he can stand up to babies.

[Eddie Teach]

Even with the babies he waffles.

[Monoriu]

What a nightmare of a candidate. 

[Martinus]

Sanders: Trump's taxes prove system rigged

That struck me as an amusing attitude for a man who has spent a quarter century in congress.  At that point I don't think you can pretend to be an innocent bystander in our whole rotten system anymore.

Hey, having lived his entire life on tax payer's dime means Bernie has a vested interest in making sure people pay as much taxes as possible.

[Maladict]

Also saw some "Clinton for Prison 2016" posters, which is just stupid, even if it is a bit funny.

Saw a lot of those in rural PA last year. I thought I was still in civilized territory.

[jimmy olsen]

And this guy has been blasting the administration's Iran deal.

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/10/03/20280/trump-s-organization-did-business-iranian-bank-later-linked-terrorism

Donald Trump's real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran's nuclear program.

Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran's largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.

U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran's nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks — a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump.

The Trump Organization's dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Trump's wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. Trump has denounced Iran as a "big enemy," blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. His five-year stint as Bank Melli's landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States.

"It's a pretty hypocritical position to take," said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. "It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid."

A court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli's rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building's 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year.

The legal ramifications of the Trump Organization taking rent payments from Bank Melli are unclear.

At the time, the U.S. had a sweeping embargo in place which prohibited Americans from doing business with Iran, including receiving rent payments. However, some Iranian organizations were granted licenses exempting specific transactions from sanctions. If the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank

The Treasury Department does not publicly disclose individual licenses granting companies exemptions from sanctions rules. The Treasury Department, the Trump campaign and Bank Melli all declined to answer whether the agency had issued a license to the Trump Organization or the bank permitting rent payments during Trump's ownership of the building.

The Trump campaign declined to answer any questions about Bank Melli for this story, but said Trump would take steps to avoid any conflicts of interest with his business dealings if he is elected president.

[jimmy olsen]

Clinton's running ads on the Cuba dealing now

https://soundcloud.com/hillary-clinton-976818877/two-trumps-hillary-clinton/s-rW8qL

[Phillip V]

Trump Tax Records Obtained by The Times Reveal He Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades

Mitt Romney once again proven right.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/270650-romney-theres-a-bombshell-in-trumps-tax-returns

[Legbiter]

Clinton's running ads on the Cuba dealing now

https://soundcloud.com/hillary-clinton-976818877/two-trumps-hillary-clinton/s-rW8qL

She's dead Tim. She's dead. 

[jimmy olsen]

Wow

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-chertoff-hillary-clinton_us_57f24e9be4b024a52d2f9a48

Former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is planning to vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, according to Bloomberg.

The lifelong Republican, who served under President George W. Bush, told Bloomberg he is endorsing the former secretary of state because of her experience on matters of national security. Clinton, he said, "has good judgment and a strategic vision how to deal with the threats that face us."

Chertoff's endorsement of Clinton is surprising, to say the least. He was once the lead Republican counsel on the Senate Whitewater committee, which looked into one of the earliest Clinton scandals in search of a storyline.

What made Chertoff shun Donald Trump, the nominee of his own party? The real estate mogul's poor performance in last week's debate and his impulsive temperament in the wake of his feud with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado:

"Not only did he seem at the debate to lose his temper, but to get up at 3:30 a.m. and reach for your smartphone is to me a hysterical reaction. If you're president, the button you reach for is not the Twitter button; it's the nuclear button," Chertoff told Bloomberg.

Chertoff joins a bevy of former Bush administration veterans crossing party lines to endorse Clinton in November, including former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Former President George H.W. Bush is also supporting Clinton, according to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who said in a Facebook post published last month that the elder Bush "told me he's voting for Hillary."

[The Minsky Moment]

Listening to Trumps's deposition that was released(for funsies), regarding his lawsuit about a restaurant in his DC Old Post Office hotel...I keep hearing his lawyer objecting to questions that Trump then just goes ahead and answers.  I gotta wonder if that kind of behavior would make our resident lawyers cringe (profressionally). 

Objections are to form.  Witness still has to answer.

[garbon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trump-terroristic-man-toddler.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Donald Trump: Terroristic Man-Toddler

Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist; only his form of terror doesn't boil down to blowing things up. He's the 70-year-old toddler who knows nearly nothing, hurls insults, has simplistic solutions for complex problems and is quick to throw a tantrum. Also, in case you didn't know it, this toddler is mean to girls and is a bit of a bigot.

It isn't so much that he is a strict disciple of radical ideology, but rather that he is devoid of fixed principles, willing to do anything and everything to gain fame, fortune and power. He has an endless, consuming need for perpetual affirmation. This is a bully who just wants to be liked, a man-boy nursing a nagging internal emptiness.

He's fickle and spoiled and rotten.

So, when he loses at something, anything, he lashes out. When someone chastises him for bad behavior, he chafes. This is the kind of silver-spoon scion quick to yell at those he views as less privileged, and therefore less-than, "Do you know who I am?"

We do now, sir.

After Trump got trounced in the first debate, he went full anti-science, insisting that flimflam applause-o-meter polls, many from conservative websites, were in fact proof positive that he had won the debate.

During the debate, Hillary Clinton delivered a devastating kidney punch, calling out Trump for his sexist, bigoted comments about a Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, who had apparently gained too much weight for Trump and his pageant.

Trump has been smarting over this ever since.

He spent the week sulking and careening from fat-shaming Machado to slut-shaming her, shooting off a manic insomniac's witching-hour tweet storm that called Machado "disgusting" and the "worst Miss U" and encouraged his followers to "check out" an alleged "sex tape" and her past.

Trump was apparently oblivious to the can of worms this would open about his own past and that of his family.

This is the same man who marveled on television about his daughter Ivanka's "very nice figure" and mused, "I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her."

This is the same man who said on a radio show that he marveled at the beauty of a 12-year-old Paris Hilton, the daughter of his friends, saying when she walked into the room — at 12! — "Who the hell is that?" He would then go on to admit that he had watched Paris's sex tape.

This is the same man who told Esquire in 1991, "You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of [expletive]."

This is a man who, as Buzzfeed reported Friday, made his own cameo in a Playboy porno in 2000, though thankfully not as an erotic actor.

That man is lecturing someone else about their past and calling them disgusting?

And, early Friday morning, Trump tweeted: "Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"

Hours later he repeated the assertion in another tweet: "Remember, don't believe 'sources said' by the VERY dishonest media. If they don't name the sources, the sources don't exist."

But CNN's Brian Stelter shot back on Twitter: "Tell that to your campaign aides who insist on anonymity."

Then Stelter provided screen grabs, presumably from a smartphone, that Stelter described as proof of people on the Trump campaign requesting anonymity.

But perhaps even more absurd is that this admonition about sourcing comes from Trump, who often prefaces his offenses with anonymous-sourcing phrases like, "A lot of people are saying ..." Just because you use that as a vehicle to spread a lie, Mr. Trump, it doesn't mean that other people do, too.

Last week CNN obtained Trump campaign talking points which instructed his supporters to bring up Bill Clinton's sexual scandals as an attack on Hillary.

I think Trump is falling into a trap here. I think in his anger and haste he is severely underestimating the empathy people have for a betrayed spouse, who might, in misdirected anger, blame the victim, believe the unbelievable, and grant unearned forgiveness. Love makes people do crazy things, and a broken heart isn't a physical wound but a psychic, spiritual one. It hurts like hell and people often respond in ways that are less than honorable, but ultimately understandable.

This is the kind of childish person who, when losing, flips over the board and yells insults at his family, rather than learning from the loss so that he can get better and be in a stronger position to win the next time.

This man is a brat whose money has stunted his maturation.

He shouldn't be ushered into the White House; he should be laughed into hiding. His querulous nature shouldn't be coddled; it should be crushed.

America is in need of a leader, not a puerile, sophomoric sniveler who is too easily baited and grossly ill-behaved.

Go to your gilded room, Donald. The adults need to pick a president.

[Syt]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-group-did-business-iranian-bank-later-linked-terror-n657636

Trump Group Did Business With Iranian Bank Later Linked to Terror

A full version of this story was originally published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity, non-profit, non-partisan news organizations based in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump's real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran's nuclear program.

Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran's largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.

U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran's nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks - a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump.

The Trump Organization's dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Donald Trump's wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. Trump has denounced Iran as a "big enemy," blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. His five-year stint as Bank Melli's landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States.

"It's a pretty hypocritical position to take," said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. "It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid."

A court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli's rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building's 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year.

The legal ramifications of the Trump Organization taking rent payments from Bank Melli are unclear. At the time, the U.S. had a sweeping embargo in place which prohibited Americans from doing business with Iran, including receiving rent payments. However, some Iranian organizations were granted licenses exempting specific transactions from sanctions. If the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank.

The Treasury Department does not publicly disclose individual licenses granting companies exemptions from sanctions rules. The Treasury Department, the Trump campaign and Bank Melli all declined to answer whether the agency had issued a license to the Trump Organization or the bank permitting rent payments during Trump's ownership of the building.

The Trump campaign declined to answer any of ICIJ's questions about Bank Melli, but said Trump would take steps to avoid any conflicts of interest with his business dealings if he is elected president.

"Mr. Trump's sole focus is and will be on making our country great again," campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email. "He has already committed to putting his assets in a blind trust and will have no involvement whatsoever in the Trump Organization."

Bank Melli did not respond to repeated telephone and email inquiries by ICIJ to its offices in Tehran, London and Paris.

Bank Melli's office in the GM Building was listed by the Treasury Department among financial institutions "owned or controlled" by the Iranian government and subject to U.S. economic sanctions, according to the Code of Federal Regulations from the years 1999 through 2003. Trump owned the GM Building from July 1998 until September 2003, New York City property records show.

Under U.S. sanctions rules, Bank Melli was forbidden from conducting banking transactions within the U.S., but the bank may have maintained its New York offices in the hope that the U.S. government would someday ease sanctions against Iranian businesses.

The bank moved out of the GM Building sometime after 2003. A spokesperson for Boston Properties, Inc., which is currently the building's majority owner, said Bank Melli was not a tenant when Boston Properties and other partners bought the building in 2008.

[garbon]

Yep that's posted by Tim a bit up.

[Syt]

Yep that's posted by Tim a bit up.

I ignored it because it had no bolded bits.