Tea leaves?

China is not simply an economic rival to the United States. It’s becoming a dangerous enemy.
Outsourcing our manufacturing power brought American companies profits, but in the long run, it has made us dangerously dependent on a nation that seeks to displace us on the world stage.
Our leaders made it possible. Who is getting rich out of this?
There is alleged link between Biden’s role in U.S.-China policy, and a deal consummated by his son Hunter Biden’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners with the Chinese government.
Questions asked - How much money has family and him personally taken from the most murderous regime of the 21st century?

The entire academic world is addicted to Chinese money. Harvard and Yale both got hundreds of millions of dollars in donations and payments from foreign countries.
American academics have made it clear whose side they’re on.
Some time ago Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted a message of support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Many league officials and prominent players sought to distance themselves from Morey in order to pacify Beijing.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/24/trump-biden-china-debt-205475
Are you seriously trusting Trump, of all people, to protect the country from "being sold to China"? He has business ties with weirdest characters. Including Chinese.

 

Yes, I trust President Trump and expect him to be our president till 2024.

Doing business as a private citizen in China in 2012 including loans from the Chinese state back is not the same as the story above it's different when the dad is VP of the US.
The same in Ukraine with Borisma etc. The Washington Ellitta has foundations that are accepting foreign money and businesses that undermine Americas workers, security, prosperity, and much more.
Some in GOP also have close ties with China, if I'm not mistaken Mich Maconnel. See what Dem's did to their states, NY, CA, and other blue states.
Visit San Farn when homelessness is the norm, in Pelocies town if you have a store, your first thing in the morning is to clean entry to the store after the homeless who defecate by your store.
That is if it wasn't destroyed by the BLM mob that was hijacked by paid gang members and terrorists. I wouldn't be surprised if it was found that Chinese financing these groups.

 

He has remained truer to his 2016 agenda than any other President in recent memory. Politicians say lots of things in order to be elected, things placed in party platforms after careful polling, in hopes of appealing to desired constituencies. Then often times that's the last that people hear about those agenda items once the candidate is elected and things continue on as before.

Yes, him and many more. The establishment Republicans are up to their eyeballs in China just like the Democrats are. The Republicans are stereotypically (but with some truth) the party of the big-business and financial elites. And for the last 20 years at least, big business has looked to China as their holy land, the place where their companies can find the growth that Wall Street rewards. Even at the cost of laying off millions of American workers and reducing whole sections of the country to rust belts. Even at the cost of surrendering industries vital to national security (shipbuilding, chip-making, pharmacuticals...) to our greatest geo-political rival. But the companies don't care, they are global don't you see? Their companies will thrive even as the US withers, which is all they care about.

And much as the Democrats still pretend to be the party of the working-man against the bosses, they are just as beholden to big business as the Republicans. All that todays' Democrats seem to care about is identity politics and social issues. (It doesn't matter how many Americans a company puts out of work as long as it supports BLM, normalizing transvestites or whatever it is.) So the Democrats as well steer themselves into policies directly counter to the interests, identities and beliefs of the 'working-man' who was once their base. 'New economy' companies with 'woke' sensibilities and open checkbooks fund and to some extent steer the new Democratic party. Google, Facebook and all the rest.

And just like the 'old economy' (non-"tech" manufacturing etc,) companies once associated more with Republicans, the Democrats' new allies are joined at the hip to China. That's why it didn't really matter very much whether we elected George W. Bush or Barack Obama. The China sell-out never slowed for a moment. So regardless of which party was in power, the same policies continued unabated.

The reason why the US was never torn by 19th-20th century style European class warfare politics is that most Americans identified as Middle Class. The Middle Class, as much as anything, is the explanation for the United States' extraordinary historical stability. The US is still on its first Republic. How many has France been through in the same time? (Don't get me going on Germany or Russia.)

And the Middle Class is now being hollowed out, gutted and destroyed. As the ranks of the poor swell, the country's wealth is channeled into the hands of a small class of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Here in California the Middle Class has been abandoning the state in droves, as formerly nice neighborhoods turn into slums, and as the elites claim the nicer upper middle class neighborhoods along the coast and price regular people out.

So the Democrats' generations-old populist appeal as the party of the little-guy against the ruling elites has evaporated. The Democrats are even more the party of the elites than the Republicans, especially if we include media elites, bureaucratic elites and academic elites. Everyone who purports to be in a position to instruct other people on what to think and believe. (It's a distinctly anti-democratic tendency when we contrast it with the idea of popular sovereignty.)

So out in Middle America there's been a rising sense of "A plague on both their houses" that neither party wanted to hear or address. Donald Trump heard and he spoke to it. Millions of voters, flocked to his banner. Not because they loved Trump the man, not because they were "racists" or "fascists", but because he spoke to their concerns and to their interests. That's why he appears to have what this thread refers to as a "base".

Donald Trump isn't really a Republican in any traditional sense. He's a Republican merely in the sense that he's registered to vote Republican and ran on that ticket. He has little or no connection to the Republican establishment. Which is why establishment Republicans join with the Democrats in hating and trying to undermine him.

 

I've been through this already. You of all people should be informed enough to recognize Burisma story is hogwash. Zlochevsky needed no help - no help whatsoever - from Biden in order to avoid Ukrainian authorities. He needed help from opportunistic Westerners with some name recognition, C-listers like Hunter Biden, to window-dress his company in the West. Taking this kind of no-work job is form of privilege, yes, and is questionable - but is both legal and super-common. And has NO connection, none at all, with Biden's role in Ukraine. The fact that Burisma story is spun by Andriy Derkach (a pro-oligarchy lawmaker with clear ties to Russia; a KGB Academy graduate, in fact) should tell you everything you need to know. Think of it: the story that casts Viktor Shokin and Andriy Derkach (and at one point Yuri Lutcenko) as heroes? You know what these people are like, or you should know.

That is actually how public vetting should work. If a political figure faces powerful opposition (like the GOP) for a long time, and all the opposition has to throw at them is tales made of duct tape and bulls#1t - maybe they're not so bad. Logic that works even better on Hillary Clinton, BTW.

 

"The Burisma indictment reveals that former Ukrainian President Yanukovich illegally obtained $17.4 billion and laundered it through an investment fund close to the US Democratic Party."

Ukrainian natural gas company pressured the Obama State Department to help end the corruption investigation during the 2016 election cycle just one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden forced/asked Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin.

Maybe an eye-opener for you.

 

I'm not sure how legitimate it'll be, but I think Biden wins both.

 

Would be more likely if you gave your sources. But, again, the idea that firing Mr. Shokin could have helped Mr. Zlochevsky is preposterous. Shokin is a master of rendering any and all investigations into anyone connected utterly ineffectual. Shokin was fully controllable by Mr. Poroshenko - that's why most everyone pressured Ukrainian government to fire him (if anything, Biden takes too much credit for the deed). Poroshenko tricked the Western partners by appointing Lutsenko instead, a politician who talked a good game about holding oligarchs accountable but turned out to be in the pocket of Porokh as much as Shokin was. The idea Burisma would have to go through State Department? Are you serious?

Also, the idea that electing Don the Con is for fighting corruption is laughable. His only service to his voters is making life harder for us people with foreign accents.

 

Now according to your logic, Melania (with a foreign accent) would be what?

As to American investment fund Franklin Templeton Investments, which is alleged to have strong ties to the U.S. Democratic Party.
Another Verkhovna Rada MP, Andrei Derkach, claimed that the US Franklin Templeton Investments management company was involved in the scheme. He pointed out.
“The investigation suggests that the Yanukovich's illegally obtained $17.4 billion and laundered it through an investment fund as government domestic loan bonds,”
There was a financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko.
The claim alleges that Hunter Biden and his partners received $16.5 million for their ‘services’.

This system is still working under the guidance of the current managerial board of the National Bank, ensuring that money flows in the the interest of people who stole millions of dollars took it offshore and bought Ukrainian public bonds turning them into the Ukrainian sovereign debt,” Dubinksy claimed. He then added that “in both cases of Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and the companies she controls were investing the stolen funds.”

Some of the info came from the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency
it has been an information provider in the political and economic information market of Ukraine since 1992. Since then, the agency has earned a reputation for being the most reliable and competent supplier of timely and objective information.

Jun 26, 2020 · From Interfax. KYIV. June 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The initial bribe to close the case against Burisma was $50 million, not $6 million, former senior prosecutor of the Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) Kostiantyn Kulyk said on Monday at a press conference at Interfax Ukraine.

 

I don't have anything personal against Biden, actually, I like this person. I only disagree with his vision for our country.
What I posted earlier is published news widely available on the internet.
I think on the left he is a better candidate than the radical socialists and communists that have now a seat in Dem's apparatus.
The Democratic Party is not what it used to be.
May the best person for President of the USA win this election.
Will respect the American people's will. I think Donald Trump is a much better President by far.

 

I'm curious what tells you that. Other than getting a bunch of judges confirmed (McConnell's work), a tax cut for the wealthy (ditto), and some regulations-slashing, what was on his "agenda" and met? The "wall"? Getting out of the ME? Building up the military? The economy? Jobs? These are all "no." So I'm curious what a fan of his thinks he's done.

 

An Eastern European Uncle Tom.
There's a long traditions of certain immigrants who push for closing the country's doors while THEY are through. I've met those types, and so did you. Nativists love useful idiots like that.

Dude, that's Andrij Derkach, who is literally a Russian spy, the son of the SBU Chief Leonid Derkach who is culpable for murder of journalist Heorhij Gongadze. To the non-Ukrainians: Gongadze was a legendary investigative journalist, founder of top Ukrainian independent news site "Ukrainian Pravda"; his murder sparked protests against Kuchma regime that rolled into the first Maidan Revolution in 2004.
Have at least some information hygiene, man. Piece of half-truth in this poisoned sandwich: Western financial institutions are indeed helping cleptocrats launder their money. Just ask the very same Deutche Bank bankers who handle Trump credit portfolio.
"On September 10, 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach "for attempting to influence the U.S. electoral process," while also alleging that Derkach "has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118

 

So you are questioning his credibility, it's OK. He is only one out of many.
But does it change the facts about the scheme of money laundering and using US Fund to do it?
And who profited from it?

I think Melania is proof that you are wrong, far from uncle Thom.
Ivanka converting to Judaism etc shows the opposite of your views that are influenced by left media operations.

On immigration, as I mentioned many times I'm for a more compassionate approach.
It is interesting that the reform that made immigration laws much more though was in 1996 under Clinton.
Bill Clinton signed an immigration law in 1996 that made it easier for the federal government to deport people.
The bill also subjected more immigrants to the threat of deportation.

 

I'm not so sure she's proof of anything. It's funny how a public figure's public statements often conflict with what they do in their private lives. Look no further than Trump's opposition to what he calls "chain migration" and the circumstances of his in-laws' trek to citizenship.

 

He is key enough to keep popping up in these discussions. And I don't "question" his credibility; I refuse to consume anything originating with him - because he is a front for FSB. Anything he spews, whether it has any basis in fact or not, is designed to harm Ukraine and the US. Everything.

 

She is not. There's far too many anti-immigrant immigrants for Melania to be a proof of anything, or even interesting. She's content to be an arm candy for this guy; so be it.

I have a privilege to experience a tiny bit of impact Trump's admin has on day-to-day operations at USCIS. They make it hard not just for the undocumented.

 

Trump fans generally base their idea of how well Trump has done in office by listening to Trump. What they seem to forget is that he lies about his own record almost as much as he lies about other people.

 

I don't know how content she is...

 

And anyway, the original purpose of the thread was to discuss chances not merits. I still haven't changed my mind. I'm thinking Trump will win in Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin which will give him 275 EV and a second term. He will PROBABLY win Michigan, too.

 

I admit, though, that the polling makes for a long uphill climb for the GOP.