How do you know about the Clinton Foundation and the Middle Eastern governments though? Does it have something to do with accountability and transparency?
Because we are certainly not seeing it from Trump’s side, so it is certainly not the same nor is it business as usual. We at least know how deep she is with the Saudis.
I don’t think anyone is pretending that Clinton is squeaky clean or that the House of Saud isn’t as awful in its own way as the House of Putin is. It becomes yet another question of the lesser of two evils in this craptastic election.
In Clinton’s case here the evil is a lot “lesser”, because the Clinton Foundation at least acts as an auditable buffer in whatever pay-for-access scheme is going on. In this case, Putin essentially has direct access via his pet oligarch bankers to a politician who’s highly reliant on them to keep himself financially solvent and who’s going to unusual lengths to hide his ties to his Russian backers.
Also, there’s the question of where the pay-for-access funds go: in Clinton’s case, to a foundation that by all reports is well-run and donates the bulk of its proceeds to real charitable efforts; in the case of the spray-tanned grifter, the bulk goes into his poorly run company and from there into his own pockets.
I think he’s a liar. The majority of people old enough to remember a time before the Internet do a better job of writing. ‘belive’? ‘politicalized’? ‘Every wander why’? All caps!? As most, he’s 30.
All those “speaking fees” are direct payment, too.
These regimes have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into our political system, both parties, over the last 30 years, and we have been fighting for their interests in the Middle East for the last 30 years.
I won’t divert this thread further. People are okay with it, I understand that, it’s a Democracy. I just wish people could admit what it is they are okay with when they look at the millions killed and displaced in the Middle East.
Her speaking fees are not necessarily collected through the Clinton Foundation. Either way, they’re recorded on her tax returns as income through whatever entity she uses to book them. More to the point, her tax returns are released (as are the foundation’s), so we can track who gave how much to her and when it happened.
No-one here (except perhaps Putin’s sockpuppet astroturfers) is OK with pay-for-access or with authoritarian regimes. They’re all sad elements of American political life that have been in place long before Reagan. We can only start countering them if we oppose candidates who try to entrench them further than they already are.
Here is a Pew poll that shows it’s about 66% of scientists say they are Democrats, but only 6% say they are Republicans. There are a lot of independents out there. The difference may be in how the question is phrased.
Or in what kind of person identifies or is identified as a “scientist.” That’s a pretty broad job description. You may catch a lot of wild cards with it.
It’s just for Trump’s chess lessons.
Indeed!
The notion of Trump playing correspondence chess got a giggle out of me.
You’re thinking of astroturfing:
I think sockpuppets are just one tool for astroturfers, and would be more appropriate to use when somebody is participating in a conversation using two accounts.
I can imagine the instructions:
Remove shirt to show manliness.
Pawn is classiest, most powerful piece on board. Like you.
Pay for access =/= pay for play unless you think bottle service means you own a nightclub.
Say hello to my little hand!
Mother Jones has some interesting details. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump
There are no smoking guns here – all we see is the metadata indicating something that appears to be a highly secretive dialog between a politically connected Russian bank and the Trump organization. Without the content of these conversations, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on.
But is it enough for a warrant to be issued? (Actually curious.)
To get him interested in playing they told him it’s a game about “banging” the other guy’s queen. 
I caught that write-up this morning, and I’d love to cheer it further but for the details. We’re left, in this case, holding a very enticing but locked bag with little to no expectation of a key.
What little I have seen of trump tells me that he wouldn’t be hard to manipulate, and especially not hard to manipulate by Russian agents: ostensible RF business partner refuses to meet in America, will only meet in RF but is “ready to do business with an American Scion like Trump”; likes to hold meetings at strip clubs or the like, and hey golly, Mr. Trump, Julia really seems to like you so why don’t I just step out of the room for a little while?
trump was so entirely willing to take any bait HRC offered, I have to think he would pose little to no difficulty for RF spymasters attempting to get him into interesting situations.
I don’t see how because so far there is no particular reason to assume that there is anything illegal going on.
Of course that doesn’t mean that it isn’t interesting politically considering how Trump has denied any link to Russia.
