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Why does this all sound more like a daytime TV soap opera than an international criminal cabal plotting treasons?

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Modest Mussorgky played on a stupidly loud synthesizer, everyone https://www.youtube.com/wat...

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Not all heroes wear capes.

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Well, back in the '80s it wasn't "Russia" so much as "the USSR", meaning "the Soviets", meaning "Communists". But now that Russia is a kleptocracy, it's right in the GOP's wheelhouse.

EDIT: Also too: religious conservatives have major pull with both the GOP (Evangelicals) and the Russian kleptocracy (Russian Orthodox church), and those religions sometimes pull in the same theocratic directions.

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The idea of being honorable doesn't occur...

They are only 'lost' in terms of the mechanics of perception and politics.

Notice that they are not lost in any way regarding governance or truth, as there is none of either.

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This chart is not correct -- what's the direct connection between Trump and Firtash?

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Funnily enough, all the recent news involving Ukraine prompted me to look up some very-vaguely-remembered work of art called The Great Gate of Kiev. Turns out it was the final movement in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition suite.

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And what kind of cynical monster wouldn't believe that?Give me a hint! Are her initials FDF?

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Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

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Her emails don't stand up to scrutiny, either.

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Not enough flaring nostrils for a soap opera.

But it does sound like a crude Tammany Hall-era scheme to get lucrative city sidewalk paving contracts than the work of international master criminals.

I maintain that is because they are not master criminals. They are just a bunch of sleazy palookas with connections.

Unfortunately, in the Trump regime, that is enough to do a shitload of damage to the rule of law, the international standing of the US, and simple decency.

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Why provide better dirt when Trump (and the Republican Party and Fox "News") are so pathetically eager to embrace and pay good bribe money for any old crap and push it out on the air?

Trump's drug of choice (other than Adderall) is dirt on Biden. Any halfway-experienced drug pusher knows that you don't have to sell the addict the good stuff when he'll give you the same money for a baggie of talcum powder and by the time he figures out the difference, you'll be in, say, Vienna.

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The first draft where Newman and Redford keep tripping over their own dicks and a character named Rudy keeps telling Doyle Lonnegan exactly what they are pulling.

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I figured he was a fake mobbed-up anti-mob crusader at least since he tried to foist Bernard Kerik on New York (and I'm guessing it goes a lot further back.)

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"Tsk, tsk. Where are your manners?" - The both-sides crowd.

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Almost no heroes wear capes, at least in the non-comic book world.

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