Zombie [NY Times] Trump tax returns

Those are your words, not mine. but I can fix your posts for you, too:

 

Qualified. Utter bullshit. UK retrospective on the Libya thing. You know, Hiliar's claim to competence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...amning-verdict-on-camerons-libya-intervention

MPs deliver damning verdict on David Cameron's Libya intervention


David Cameron’s intervention in Libya was carried out with no proper intelligence analysis, drifted into an unannounced goal of regime change and shirked its moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, according to a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee.

The failures led to the country becoming a failed a state on the verge of all-out civil war, the report adds.

The report, the product of a parliamentary equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, closely echoes the criticisms widely made of Tony Blair’s intervention in Iraq, and may yet come to be as damaging to Cameron’s foreign policy legacy.
It concurs with Barack Obama’s assessment that the intervention was “a shitshow”, and repeats the US president’s claim that France and Britain lost interest in Libya after Gaddafi was overthrown. The findings are also likely to be seized on by Donald Trump, who has tried to undermine Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy credentials by repeatedly condemning her handling of the Libyan intervention in 2011, when she was US secretary of state.

(Obama calls her major policy initiative a shit show)

...

“There is a debate about whether that intervention was necessary and on what basis it was taken, but having been achieved, the whole business then elided into regime change and then we had no proper appreciation of what was going to happen in the event of regime change, no proper understanding of Libya, and no proper plan for the consequences,” he said.

...

The report says: “We have seen no evidence that the UK government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya. It may be that the UK government was unable to analyse the nature of the rebellion in Libya due to incomplete intelligence and insufficient institutional insight, and that it was caught up in events as they developed.

“It could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value; and it failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion. UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.”

It finds the UK’s plans for reconstruction were founded on the same incomplete and inaccurate intelligence that informed the initial military intervention. It says political engagement might instead “have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at lesser cost to the UK and to Libya. If political engagement had been unsuccessful, the UK and its coalition allies would not have lost anything”.

 

True. And that would be a bad thing, if the L party had even a remote possibility of fielding a serious candidate.

It would be, but you won't be getting 10% this time.

In very small part because you spend 40% of your time bashing Hillary, 60% defending Trump, and 0% promoting your supposed party.

Your lack of enthusiasm is telling.

barfo

 

Your math is completely off. It's not even a fifth grade thing.

I spend 0% of my time defending trump.

I spend a lot of posts critical of the media doing a hit job. Excuse me if I want more from the media than 24/7 Clinton ads. Or 47% or binders of women instead of Benghazi.

I already posted a photo of my Libertarian primary ballot. You have to register Libertarian Party to get one. Or at least I got one because I have been registered LP for decades.

When you've told the truth about Trump, I've agreed.

If I wanted to support Trump, I would say so. Imagine that!

 

the clown brought up qualifications. I've seen enough.

You claim to be anti war. Why keep the ol' trap shut when it's Libya, Iraq post surrender, Syria, Pakistan, and several other places? I have a pretty good idea.

 

​

FIFY

What a great game this is.

 

Let's see.

• NYTimes: "Trump used a legal tax loss provision to write down his future earnings, maybe paying $0 in taxes some years. He lost $916M one year"
  (What they don't say is he's worth $3.7B by the lowest estimate)
• Forbes: "NYTimes paid $0 in taxes despite ~$30M in profit."
  (NYTimes: "do as we say, not as we do!" - hypocrites)
• NYTImes: "Teresa Heinz Kerry releases a few pages of her 2003 tax return in the 2004 election; she is worth ~$1B"
  (NYTimes nor Trump detractors didn't cry foul about that - hypocrites)
• Clinton used the same LEGAL tax loss provision as Trump did.
  (Where's the NYTimes on this one? Hypocrites)
• Obama lost $1B on just two green energy companies (he lost way more than that all told).

So where's the beef?

Crane 4, NYTimes 1, Obama -1, barfo 0.

Ezra Klein of the left wing Vox says:

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/2/13137604/trump-tax-return

Here’s the thing I can’t get over about the New York Times’s bombshell story on Donald Trump’s tax returns: they don’t actually know what’s in his tax returns.

Look at their headline again. “Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found.” The word “could” is doing a lot of work there.

Reread the first sentence. “Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.” “Could” is doing all the work there, too. It’s also possible that Trump paid taxes in all of those years!

All the Times has is three pages of Trump’s records from 1995. Everything else is informed speculation, extrapolation, and the word “could,” which appears again and again through the article.

 

Snopes' take on Trump's bankruptcies.

They talk about how Trump actually lost $900M+ in 1994 or 1995. That's $900M of his personal money that he put up.

Sorry barfo, but a guy who takes a few $million from anyone, his father or anyone else, and turns it into $billions, or $900M to invest in a property like a casino, did pretty well.

http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/01/donald-trumps-bankruptcies/

So how are we to rate Donald Trump's business acumen in relative terms? Is the cautious businessman who minimizes risk, rarely fails, and shows a moderate return better than the brash businessman who often takes on highly risky pursuits, strikes out a lot, but also hits his share of grand slams? That's too subjective a question for us to answer, and the few numbers offered in this trope aren't very informative.

It's an oft-cited statistic that Donald Trump "has" 515 companies, but a number of those businesses are only connected to him in tangential ways (e.g., through licensing agreements) and aren't owned or directly controlled by him.

It's also an oft-cited statistic that about 80-90% of businesses fail within the first year to eighteen months, but such numbers typically refer to startups and small businesses, while much of Donald Trump's business empire involves expanding and building on existing large business lines and ventures.

...

The most important takeaway from this trope might be that you can't sum up the world of big business. much less any presidential candidate's qualifications, with a couple of numbers devoid of explanation or context.

 

I'm embarrassed for Giuliani. He's looked like an idiot this campaign, but he's a much better person than shows.

 

That's unconstitutional in so many ways.

For one you can't target a single person with a law. For two, you can't pass an ex post facto law.