Another Trump campaign adviser/confidant Roger Stone is found to have been in contact with Russian hackers during Trump's campaign. Basically at this point I'm left wondering who inside Trumps government is not in bed with the Ruskies.
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The longtime Trump confidante allegedly exchanged Twitter DMs with the hackers.
Every day I think to myself, "There's no way that Donald Trump's administration can get scarier." I mean, they're already the answer to what would happen if Voldemort's Death Eaters worked at LexCorp. But then, invariably, I turn on the news and #### gets even spookier. Today's addition to the "Oh, there really is no bottom this pit we're falling down, huh?" report is about longtime Trump confidante and former adviser Roger Stone. According to The Smoking Gun Stone reportedly exchanged direct messages on Twitter with "Guccifer 2.0", who was at the epicenter of the election hacks.
The contact between Roger Stone, the Trump associate, and the Russian influence operation came via private messages exchanged on Twitter, according to a source. Stone’s contact was with “Guccifer 2.0,” an online persona that U.S. officials say was created by Russian government officials to distribute and publicize material stolen during hacks of the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Gmail accounts used by Clinton staffers like John Podesta, the campaign's chairman.
When asked for comment about this allegation, Stone told The Smoking Gun that he "didn't recall" and that he believed his entire communication with the account was public. And of course Stone did communicate with Guccifer publicly and even praised the account in no uncertain terms for the world to see.
If there was DM communication between Stone and this Russian propaganda account, it may also help explain how Stone knew about Podesta's emails being hacked DAYS before that was made public and they began leaking.
Stone also has bragged about being a back channel to Julian Assange, but has since deleted those tweets.
This is the same Roger Stone that said he had a backdoor to Assange
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"I do have a back-channel communication with Assange, because we have a good mutual friend,” Stone told CBS4 News Wednesday evening. “That friend travels back and forth from the United States to London and we talk. I had dinner with him last Monday.”
Caught the end of Ryan's lecture on healthcare. They've been waiting to repeal and replace Obamacare for decades. Huh. Time flies.
Gotta admit though he was kind of convincing. I don't know if he knows what he's talking about, but at the very least he seemed like he'd done his homework.
Sounded to me as if he hadn't got a basic grasp of how insurance works.
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“The fatal conceit of Obamacare,” Ryan said in his press briefing, “is that young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people.”
Sounded to me as if he hadn't got a basic grasp of how insurance works.
I think Ryan's argument is that many young people opted to not buy insurance under the ACA because it became more expensive for them. The ACA has a rule where premiums for older people can only be 3 times as high as those for younger people. This lead to premiums rising for young healthy people as they were in effect subsidizing older enrollees. Because of that, participation in the program was lower among 18-35 year olds than they'd originally planned for. And when there are fewer young healthy people paying into the system (and not using it much) it becomes more expensive for everyone else. I believe they needed about 35% of participants to be 18-35 year olds in order to keep premiums stable, but that age group ended up being only about 25%.
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Sounded to me as if he hadn't got a basic grasp of how insurance works.
Ha, fair enough. I guess my standards have been lowered enough to be impressed by a press conference that isn't just a rambling blowhard insulting the people in the room.
On a related note, Spicer doesn't seem quite as frazzled when he gets up there now, and that's too bad.
I think Ryan's argument is that many young people opted to not buy insurance under the ACA because it became more expensive for them. The ACA has a rule where premiums for older people can only be 3 times as high as those for younger people. This lead to premiums rising for young healthy people as they were in effect subsidizing older enrollees. Because of that, participation in the program was lower among 18-35 year olds than they'd originally planned for. And when there are fewer young healthy people paying into the system (and not using it much) it becomes more expensive for everyone else. I believe they needed about 35% of participants to be 18-35 year olds in order to keep premiums stable, but that age group ended up being only about 25%.
A lot of the reason for that is the penalty for not buying healthcare is incredibly low. A $600 fine is not a serious incentive, particularly if you're in a middle income bracket which only qualifies for partial subsidies.
According to the kff.org subsidy calculator, a 27 year old smoker making 35,000/year would be paying about $3,336/year for a silver plan.
Which would a 27-year old, fresh off their parent's insurance, bar-manager pulling in 35k a year do: face a one-time $600 hit on their tax return or shell out $278 a month?
Compare that to Switzerland which has a similar mandate. The penalty for not being insured in Switzerland is the Canton chooses an insurer for you and you are then sent a bill for all premiums backdated to the date you should have purchased insurance.
Edit: ANOTHER problem is the beloved but misguided option for people to stay on their parent's insurance until 26. This takes a huge amount of young, healthy people out of the pool of potential buyers of insurance.
So one of the theories Wikileaks is claiming is that the DNC Podesta hacks were a false flag operation by the CIA designed to undermine Donald Trump. So the CIA, in the bag for Hillary Clinton, cooks up a ridiculous plan to hack her side to EXPOSE the democracts and lead it back to Russia in order to undermine Trump? That and they didn't bother to hack his tax returns? Wow. Is the head of the CIA Peter Griffin? LOL.
Trump and tweeting since the inauguration. So basically early morning is likely to be angry Android tweeting, otherwise it's staffers most of the rest of the day.
He's one of six dead in the last four months. Likely assassinated by his own people as retaliation for the Trump-Russia dossier. Also this is likely why Chris Steele went into hiding immediately after the dossier's public release.
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Media company Axios note that not only is Mr Churkin’s death unexplained, but it is also remarkably similar to the deaths of Russia’s Ambassador to India on 27 January, the country’s consul in Athens on 9 January, and a Russian diplomat in New York on US election day, 8 November.
Two more diplomats died more clearly violent deaths in the same period: Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated by in Ankara at a photography exhibition on 19 December, and on the same day another diplomat, Petr Polshikov, was shot dead in his Moscow apartment.
Additionally, an ex-KGB chief, Oleg Erovinkin, who was suspected of helping a British spy draft a dossier on Donald Trump, was found dead in the back of his car on boxing day, 26 December. Mr Erovinkin also was an aide to former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, who now heads up state-owned oil company Rosneft.
As for all these sudden illnesses, remember the case of the KGB assassination of Markov using the ricin umbrella. It also appeared to be a quick sudden illness that took medical examiners awhile to figure out. These are tools the KGB had fourty years ago, who knows what tools they have now. https://thevieweast.wordpress.com/20...georgi-markov/
Canada is a logical target. We are a G7 member, a strong supporter of NATO (if not a strong contributor), an advocate for a values-based international system, and a vocal critic of Moscow and its interference in other countries. We have to expect Russia will focus more of its clandestine efforts on us, especially as we approach the next election cycle.
Like elsewhere, Russia has three objectives as it goes after Canada. The first is to undermine any policies or politicians seen to be against Moscow’s interests. For example, the Russian Embassy has already been trying to discredit Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, an outspoken advocate for continued sanctions, with a smear job about her grandparents. Russia also wants to discredit the broader political system, to undermine Canadians’ faith in “the system”, be it our own election process, our system of government, or parliamentary affairs. Finally, it wants to undermine Canada’s support for our allies, and for the international system including NATO and the United Nations.
To achieve these goals, Moscow will likely rely on the same methods it has used relatively successfully in the United States and elsewhere. It will spread disinformation—false stories that create confusion around a controversial and heated issue. For example, during the American election, Russia used bogus social media accounts to spread rumors about Hillary Clinton. We will see similar attacks here, likely directed at the ruling Liberal party. Moscow won’t necessarily prefer a Conservative victory; the Russians will simply want to delegitimize the entire process.
