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US Politics: Lock Him Up!


Fragile Bird

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6 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Come on guys.... this is classic rewriting the script.  They did it with Bush with false equivalencies and no investigations after a decade of doing it before.  Now they are doing it again after years of investigations that turned up nothing while doing nothing about actual corruption today, trying again to use false equivalencies to justify their hypocrisy.

So now we're in for Russia=Benghazi, and that turned up nothing, so there is obviously nothing to see there.

It's just simple math.

/sarcasm

Oh and hey look! The Russians feel the same way that All-For-Joffrey does!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/asia/russia-american-hysteria-hurting-relations/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

/I believe this is called gaslighting.

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8 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

And you think Comey or wikileaks didn't depress turnout amongst Dem-leaning voters in the Midwest? Like, at all? Because the margins were razor thin.

Her own people were begging her to campaign in those states and she didn't.  She wasn't buying ads in those states but other swing states that she thought she might win.  

This seems, again, I generally go with occam's razor, the most important factor in why and how she lost those states.  And I would say generally, she wasn't a candidate that generated a huge amount of enthusiasm, when you compare the size of her events to Trumps...that should have been a red flag that they REALLY needed to shore up their key areas, but they didn't.  I'm sure there was some marginal impact of wikileaks and Comey's letter, but enough to swing the election?  I doubt it.

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7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yep, I agree, and I made a similar argument last Friday. The problem is, it will take a lot longer than 19 weeks. :P

 

Ha.  Yeah, I was not entirely serious about the 19 weeks thing.  it really depends what kind of grandes are out there waiting to be tossed.  

3 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Not technically, no. But he paid out $25 million in the Trump University case. To me that is a practical admission of guilt.

That was for civil cases though, wasn't it?

 

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Wikileaks is releasing over 8,000 documents pertaining to the CIA's hacking abilities and tools, shortly after Trump calls out Obama and the "deep state" for wiretapping him. Russia Today had an article up within 15 minutes of the release. We're so fucked.

 

There's some juicy stuff in there.  i'm not going to wade into the other conversation going on now, but the underlying point that we should at lease attempt to interrogate these stories without the lens of 'Trump bad russian spy' goggles is valid.

 

 

1 hour ago, denstorebog said:

I think the reason the discussion has become more basic is because the game became more basic on November last year. Or to put it another way: When Trump tries to use the CIA leak within the next 24 hours to promote the narrative that the deep state is against the people, are we then allowed to talk about it here? Or should we generally stay above those topics and pretend that US politics hasn't devolved into a struggle to control the story, moreso than ever?

 

Why do we need to wait for Trump to tweet something before we talk about the 'deep state' and it's potentially sketchy practices of spying against american citizens and corporations?

 

 

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

@All-for-Joffrey - The fact that you think I am hysterical about this is, well, hysterical.  

 I think that it is disturbing that the CIA has these capabilities, but I am frankly not shocked.

I think it's cute that you think I'm a "presumable liberal".  But, I guess it depends where you are standing.

I do think there will be a different narrative about this particular leak than there is about other leaks coming out of the administration.  

All of these leaks are f*cking scary - both the substance of what they are leaking and the fact that the leaks are happening themselves.  On multiple levels.

 

Yeah.  Very scary.  i haven't gotten through much of the information yet, but there's some pretty frightening content in there that should transcend partisan bickering, though I doubt it will.

 

51 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

, this crap kind of reminds of all the shit  floating around the far-right internet about how the Clintons secretly murdered a bunch of people by connecting the dots to a bunch of apparently unrelated deaths. 

 

I was thinking the same thing the other day.

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12 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

We don't have enough information. If the FBI wasn't interested in the dossier for several months, then what changed?  It has been reported that multiple media outlets had been attempting to confirm all or parts of the dossier for months and had nothing.  Neither Trump's GOP opponents or the Clinton campaign appear to have had sufficient faith in the dossier to make it public...so it seems odd, with no other context, that somehow it became credible to the FBI, at least to me it does.

My understanding on the letter is that Comey believed the NYFBI was going to leak the information about the emails found as part of their own investigation and that is why he went public.  It may be true or not, but it makes sense to me and it would have been even more damaging if Huma's email stuff was leaked to the NYC papers by the FBI because then the story would have been FBI covering up for Clinton, even if that wasn't the case.  I also don't think the letter changed the election.   I don't think wikileaks changed the election either.  Clinton lost because she was anticipating a landslide and so she failed to shore up her base in Wisconsin, PA and Ohio, it's really that simple, a little more turnout there and she would have won.

Agreed. What changed? Maybe they started investigating it because the email investigation was closed? I don't know.  What I do know is the FBI/DNI felt there was sufficient credibility (whether they confirmed anything or not at that point) to brief the POTUS and the POTUS-elect about it. Journalists don't have access to signal intelligence or international sources like the FBI or IC has. Not really a surprise they were unable to confirm parts of the dossier that the US government could.

Fair enough if you believe that the Comey letter had zero effect. I believe differently. Sam Wang talks about it here and Nate Silver talks about it here. There was a clear, measurable impact when that letter came out. You can disregard it and disagree, no problem there, but when 80,000 votes separates a winner and loser, it's hard to ignore. 

As we've talked about many many times before, Clinton made a number of mistakes. No one disagrees. But with razor thin margins, Comey's letter is one of the biggest measurable changes that happened during that election.

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10 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

 

Yeah.  Very scary.  i haven't gotten through much of the information yet, but there's some pretty frightening content in there that should transcend partisan bickering, though I doubt it will.

 

 

Not a chance, sadly.  But you know, I believe in the Fourth Amendment as much as I believe in the First, and you know, I'm disturbed.

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5 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Yeah, but I'm not sure how that's relevant. Civil Fraud is still Fraud, right? 

 

/Again, I understand that he did settle, as opposed to being found guilty.

 

i don't really want to spend a ton of time on this, because it's fairly trivial.  but can we at least agree that there is substantial an meaningful difference between 'Trump already has a fraud conviction', and 'Trump settled a class action lawsuit filed against one of the companies he owns, immediately after he'd just been elected president?'

 

3 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Not a chance, sadly.  But you know, I believe in the Fourth Amendment as much as I believe in the First, and you know, I'm disturbed.

me too.

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1 hour ago, Mexal said:

There is more to this.

1. The FBI wanted to hire Steele on further. That goes to show they thought he was credible and wanted him to continue to dig.

2. There has been elements of the dossier that have been confirmed.

Now, if you want to be like Joffrey up there, you can dismiss it all because it's anonymously sourced in mainstream media articles, but it's been reported by multiple organizations.

Steele has finally resurfaced and is back at work at his company.  At this point, I view his report as raw intelligence.  It's interesting and provides useful starting points for potential investigations, but all the allegations need verification.  I hope he can shed a little more light on his report and explain what parts of his report that he feels are most credible and why.  I think that was one part of the report that was missing that you'd typically find in an intelligence report.  There have also been elements of his report that have been proven false or inaccurate, and I hope that he'll provide an explanation for the errors.

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3 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

i don't really want to spend a ton of time on this, because it's fairly trivial.  but can we at least agree that there is substantial an meaningful difference between 'Trump already has a fraud conviction', and 'Trump settled a class action lawsuit filed against one of the companies he owns, immediately after he'd just been elected president?'

Basically agree. Technically he doesn't have a fraud conviction. I still thinks it's fair to say he's a con and a fraud, however.

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4 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Steele has finally resurfaced and is back at work at his company.  At this point, I view his report as raw intelligence.  It's interesting and provides useful starting points for potential investigations, but all the allegations need verification.  I hope he can shed a little more light on his report and explain what parts of his report that he feels are most credible and why.  I think that was one part of the report that was missing that you'd typically find in an intelligence report.  There have also been elements of his report that have been proven false or inaccurate, and I hope that he'll provide an explanation for the errors.

I saw that. From what I understand, the memos was never a true intelligence report but a collection of raw intelligence. He never completed a final report which could have been because he never really had a client to give it to as they kept pulling out before he finished investigating. It would definitely be smart for the FBI to talk to Steele.

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1 minute ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Again, technically correct. Breitbart is considered to be media by some.

Lol, well played. 

But seriously, this isn't even covered by the whole 'the media is out to get conservatives so discount everything they say' kind of blinkering. This is flat out closing your eyes to elementary level reasoning. Either the press should be faulted for talking about the President's claim that the former President broke the law/Watergate/McCarthy'd him, or that was so two days ago, why haven't we moved on to Schwarzenegger, #liberalbias?

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6 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Lol, well played. 

But seriously, this isn't even covered by the whole 'the media is out to get conservatives so discount everything they say' kind of blinkering. This is flat out closing your eyes to elementary level reasoning. Either the press should be faulted for talking about the President's claim that the former President broke the law/Watergate/McCarthy'd him, or that was so two days ago, why haven't we moved on to Schwarzenegger, #liberalbias?

Yeah, the one thing this administration is good at is nullifying the truth as a starting point for any sort of meaningful conversation. Up is down, left is right, news is fake news, etc, etc.

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19 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

So, an astonishing number of Trump staff/supporters keep insinuating or saying that this whole 'Obama tapp (sic) thing' is a media generated story. Which is...I mean...I don't even...

Do you have links to this?  i haven't seen it.

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What's the scuttlebutt on Muslim Ban 2.0? It's kinda interesting that this was *the* centerpiece of the resistance a month ago, but now it doesn't seem to be receiving a lot of attention or, well, resistance. Obviously, avoiding attention was the point of the scaled-back version and the more orderly rollout. I see that ACLU and some attorney generals are signaling an intention to challenge it, but what's your take? Have people moved on to other resistance issues, and if so, will this one pass? Or are they just waiting for someone to take the lead on checking and balancing the Trump administration again?

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1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

Ha.  Yeah, I was not entirely serious about the 19 weeks thing.  it really depends what kind of grandes are out there waiting to be tossed.  

Oh I know that it was a bit sarcastic. But unless something giant drops, it will take some time for Trump's support to erode among Republicans who held their noses when they voted for him.  

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1 minute ago, denstorebog said:

What's the scuttlebutt on Muslim Ban 2.0? It's kinda interesting that this was *the* centerpiece of the resistance a month ago, but now it doesn't seem to be receiving a lot of attention or, well, resistance. Obviously, avoiding attention was the point of the scaled-back version and the more orderly rollout. I see that ACLU and some attorney generals are signaling an intention to challenge it, but what's your take? Have people moved on to other resistance issues, and if so, will this one pass? Or are they just waiting for someone to take the lead on checking and balancing the Trump administration again?

The early read that I've seen is this version will be a lot harder to challenge in the courts. They removed the sections that clearly made it a Muslim ban. However, their slow walking of it combined with the delayed implantation are dead giveaways that they were absolutely lying about the urgency of the measure.  

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