Bartimaeus

Opening statement of Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal lawyer who was convicted on a variety of charges a few months ago by Special Counsel Mueller, to Congress in tomorrow morning's publicly televised testimony and hearing (with some material evidence to be displayed to boot): https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000169-2d31-dc75-affd-bfb99a790001 I read the entire thing. Fun read. I set a recording for CSPAN tomorrow morning so I can watch the followup. Some important bits from the opening statement: "Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that within a couple of days there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign." "The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws. You can find the details of that scheme, directed by Mr. Trump, in the pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York....I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank account on August 1, 2017 – when he was President of the United States...to reimburse me...for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf." "In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie....There were at least a half-dozen times between the Iowa Caucus in January 2016 and the end of June when he would ask me “How’s it going in Russia?” – referring to the Moscow Tower project. You need to know that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it." "Yet, last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual #1. For the record: Individual #1 is President Donald J. Trump." "Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation - only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the “greatest infomercial in political history.” He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign - for him - was always a marketing opportunity." "Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself. Please see Exhibit 3B to my testimony." Still no direct evidence of collusion, but there are other things to be concerned about, to say the least, regardless.

And...Adam Schefter of ESPN (their top reporter) reports that Cowboys DT David Irving is also being reviewed for suspension. What's up with Cowboys and defensive linemen and drugs? DeMarcus Lawrence (amphetamines) and Greg Hardy (cocaine, general violence) have had also had drug problems.

Uh, please don't tell me that's still going? I was a (bigger) fan of the DM of the Rings series that it apes, but I followed D&D for probably a year or so when it first started before I realized that I simply like reading and watching stuff in a big chunk rather than piecemeal weekly and decided I'd wait a few years before coming back...and I never did. It's been many years now.

32 pounds, according to newegg. I've mocked a lot of cases for looking like "spaceships" before, but that literally looks like it could actually be a spaceship. Congratulations on going the full mile, DEEPCOOL? (e): also, what the flip, $400

Yeah, running a 4770k, still don't see the point in upgrading yet.

North Carolina to hold new election for 9th Congressional District due to election fraud at hands of the GOP candidate and his campaign: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/mark-harris-nc-voter-fraud.html Kind of hope he's thrown in jail eventually here, since even his own son had specifically told him how he was breaking the law before he did it. Deliberately defrauding elections in a democracy should carry pretty harsh consequences.

Yeah, wasn't sure what to do with the GPU, since he said he was only going with a 1080 monitor, but I thought he might eventually upgrade those.

Something like this, I guess?: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Sakhr/saved/7M9V6h Pay $30 more for the Ryzen 5 2600X CPU, pay like $50 less to drop down to a 1070 TI GPU, pay a heck of a lot more to go up to either a 1080 TI or 2080 GPU. Depending on what you do with your PC, Intel might still be a better choice (e.g. if all you do is game, then getting a CPU with 12 good threads is probably not as effective as getting a CPU with 6 fantastic threads, etc.). As it is, you'd have a few hundred dollars left for SSDs and miscellania too.

I mean, if a processor *requires* liquid cooling to cool adequately, it's more likely that I'll just get a different processor than go along with it. @ShadySands: Probably need some kind of specifics you want to be able to recommend anything.

There's a really weird bug going on with the forums lately where it tells me someone's posted since I last did, but then I enter the topic and I'm still the latest poster. Strange things...

Just seeing this. That was a...weird trailer. Definitely not what I expected.

Yeah, he'll be 9 years older than when Trump was elected. That's understandable. Makes the choice of VP very important if he wins the nomination, whereas with most younger candidates, most VP choices seem to be more a means to an end. There are so many candidates right now that I don't even want to start examining them individually. Will wait until we get closer to the primaries to see who's actually got realistic shots before I start bothering, I guess. So by default, I guess Bernie's still my favorite choice (with I THINK Elizabeth Warren as my second choice, but that's preliminary and totally ignorantly chosen as heck).

They can just come and take it from my corpse. No kidding. Pretty egregious. (e): I meant to add this on to my previous post, but now GD has already responded to me. One moment... @Bernie: That's fine and pretty expected. I prefer the focus of his policies more than most candidates (as he's historically mostly shyed away from the wedge issues like abortion and gun rights that I currently consider to be of the least importance in dealing with at this point in time, and focused more on the issues that I think are currently vitally important like wealth inequality, getting money out of politics, getting out of endless wars, etc.), even if all of the implementations for his ideas aren't always perfectly sound. On top of that, I generally like his personality and the way he does business in politics - generally. He's not perfect, not nearly, but uhh, yeah, one only has to look at literally everyone else to see that's always the case.

Any particular reason why? I'm currently unsure of how to feel about him as a 2020 candidate, but I'm thinking I still like him better than the likes of Klobuchar.

I'd give a slight nod to Kaepernick. He presumably got paid some amount of money as a result of the NFL either fearing losing the case or simply fear of it being dragged out and creating a big PR issue when they've already got other massive PR issues, and I think that's a win for him no matter which way you put it. The amount of money he got probably would hint at which scenario it was, but we're not privy to that. I would've preferred to see it dragged out, personally, and again, I don't know exactly what Kaepernick got out of it or whether his case had legitimacy to it, so that's why I'd only consider it a minor victory (at least in terms of his cause).

Same - I'm usually pretty good at recognizing faces, and I had to seriously look at him for a while to realize it was him. He looks...uh...different these days.

Many Patriots players are already saying they won't be going to the White House, but would like to meet President Obama. Oof! Didn't the NBA champs literally already do that this past year, too? They rejected the invitation, Trump "rescinded" it, then they did something with Obama.

it's not even that they didn't really play it, it's that they said they were going to, and then they only played two seconds of it to then immediately jump to the worst hottest garbage in the world, on top of it being the lowest scoring super bowl in history and the evil empire winning once again 9/11 was an inside job, etc.

unrelated to draft: /r/bikinibottomtwitter: "It's no Superbowl, but they played this at the Dallas Stars hockey game": https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/amz9ej/its_no_superbowl_but_they_played_this_at_the/ this stupid dumb thing is all I wanted, but no there's precious few joys in life left except children's cartoons, folks, and the NFL will tease and lie to us but won't even let us have that anymore

For playoff games that I don't want to see, I sometimes use a highly advanced strategic skill that I've spent many years developing that I like to call "taking a nap" before a game starts so I can just wake up near the end of the game or right after rather than sit through it. Sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised - and sometimes I'm not. I have no regrets doing it for this year's Super Bowl - apparently, even Spongebob showing up was basically a scam, and I really think that would've just been too much for my little old young heart to handle.

Congressman (Republican) Walter Jones in hospice: https://www.witn.com/content/news/FIRST-ON-WITN-Congressman-Walter-Jones-in-hospice-504916912.html Known for being a genuine and principled moderate, he's pretty well considered even among progressives - a little bit of a unicorn in this day and age. Sad to hear, and best of luck to the man and his family.

Society? I thought we were talking about politics? Sorry to differ with you guys but he is done. The only thing that saves him is a SCOTUS fight if RBG steps down or another Hillary Clinton-esque candidacy. Had his opponent been literally any other democrat (with the exceptions of Warren, Sanders, Pelosi, or Schumer) he would not have won in '16. He was less loved than she was hated. As far as where is supports would go? Home. They stay home. I vote in every election but if there is no LP candidate for President I would skip that one. Or write my own name or Mickey Mouse's in. Put the black mouse in the White House in '20! Politics, society as a whole, both really. At this point, it seems like RBG will fight to literally her last breath than let Trump appoint another SCJ. We'll see how that turns out.

He's been a laughably pathetic manbaby his entire term - this might be a black eye, but who else is his base going to turn to? ...Of course, the reasons that I see him as a pathetic manbaby (see almost literally everything on his Twitter...sigh) aren't the same that his base might, so I guess I don't know for certain. The amount of machismo about him "caving" is really stupid, though - when did being able to compromise and admit you were wrong become completely synonymous with weakness in our society? It's such an awful attitude to have, for literally everybody. Not that anyone should be singing his praise or doing somersaults for very temporarily ending something he started over something so stupid (that he really should've been fighting his own party with two freaking years ago when they controlled the House - funny how it only became an issue the moment Democrats controlled it), but goodness gracious, the tribalism is getting so freaking insane.