Break Facebook up into a million pieces and scatter it in the wind. My nonpolitical friend goes, "but how"? He skipped right past the why. We all know the why.
"If these people say you had the power, wouldn't you want to?" Trump asked. "I wouldn't want any one person to have that authority," Pence said. "But wouldn't it almost be cool to have that power?" Trump asked. "No," Pence said."
And that right there is the truly scary thing. It is a power that Trump has probably lusted after all of his life and goes a long way towards explaining his life. and all of these fools would be quite happy to give him that power, if they could--because they think (mistakenly) that it would be used for them.
It won't be. Trump's motto is: What can YOU do for me (that I won't have to pay you back for in some fashion)... because truly powerful people (in Trump's mind) do not have to do things for others, they have things done for them or punish people if they don't. There are no carrots, only sticks.
Occasionally find something that may be disagreed with in this space on Sundays, but absolutely nothing today, save one small nit I think needs picking. And that would be David Jolly's characterization of the relationship of "Donald Trump and Republican leaders" with politically motivated violence as "flirting". With all due props to Mr. jolly, I think the flirting stage of the relationship has passed.
Having already had a turn or two around the dance floor with this never coy and increasingly "available" number on their dance cards, I believe full-on courtship has now ensued, at least in the ranks below those with the most visibility at the very top. And the top has proven it finds no unattractive qualities in this little number either, as evidenced by the language they use on the rare occasion they find themselves cornered and must address the "gossip" swirling about town regarding this, or their absolute failure to often say anything at all to repudiate the rumors and put them to rest once and for all. Guess they don't want to risk any remarks that their paramour may find off-putting, and hence disqualify themselves as acceptable suitors if the heavy petting that's occurring in some quarters at the moment turns into the need for outright consummation of the relationship later.
Other than for perhaps Donald Trump himself, said paramour may not be the one they really want to take home to meet their families. But with some lowlifes it's any port in a storm.
Listen, it is fine to have different opinions, but I read the stuff from Charlie and other Charlie like-minded writers of opinion-powered news, and I cannot shake this vision that their insatiable need to win at the political game puts them in a spin-bubble where most of the actual BFD considerations are ignored and dismissed.
Many of these super bright word people had not been that way... until Trump. It seems Trump broke something in them.
Ironically I see Chis Wallace as having developed that same malady. I expect that many of his colleagues at Fox see the same. But Chris did that to himself. Sorry, if your spouse says mean words to you and it causes you to lose your shit and burn down your own house... that is on you. For example, his terrible disrespectful and one-sided tilt moderating the debates. People with more self-awareness can easily diagnose that self-afflicted malady. They leave the door open for others to see into their house before they burn it down.
The respectable part about this and Chris Wallace rather than most of the talking heads on CNN, is that Chris Wallace at least demonstrated he owned his own principled stand and wasn't just a popularity pimp trying hard to get more followers and likes from one ideological tribe. I respect him for that even as I don't respect his blind biases. As for the list of other non-Fox talking heads leaving their post... they never obtained any identity of real journalism while also failed at being successful political popularity pimps.
I don't think that those like Charley and Chris see nor care about something important that they should see and care about. If you are stuck in the beltway-compliant bubble of political-tinted journalism, you are increasingly on the wrong side of both critical-thinking and journalistic relevancy. To fixate on Jan 6 as a BFD and ignore Russiagate as a BFD.... well let's just say that history will certainly not support your choice of attention. One is a real BFD and the other, ironically, is just made-up political-media theater serving the establishment cabal.
There is a very easy method to test if your political bias is clouding your critical thinking. Just replace the stories in your mind with the political parties reversed. If you can be intellectually honest in doing that (and I submit that many cannot), you can work out your own problems and get back to what we might call real journalism again.
I honestly don't think a ton of Democrats would be making excuses for Hillary Clinton if Chelsea and John Podesta held a meeting with Russian agents in an effort to get dirt on mom's rival for the presidency, after they knew Russia had already hacked Republican emails. I think Democrats would be disgusted if that happened.
The problem isn't that MSM ignores Russiagate as a BFD; the problem is that Republicans do. The problem is that Marco Rubio participated in a fairly damning Senate Intel Committee assessment of the Trump campaign's involvement with Russians, and yet he won't accurately characterize his own Committee's report, a Committee that was led by Republicans. Richard Burr chaired that committee for a time, and he went on to convict Trump, to my great shock, in the second Impeachment trial. I have little doubt what he learned during his committee's investigation influenced his vote in that second Impeachment.
What if the W Bush administration Justice Department used a known fake dosier paid for by the McCain campaign to get illegal FISA warrants to spy on the Obama campaign, and then a Republican-colluding MSM for over three years played the fake story that Obama colluded with the Iranian Mullahs to interfere in the election and influence it against McCain? And then the Republicans used all this fake story with their Bush admin plants in the Justice Depart and FBI to conduct an investigation to dig up any dirt that they could find on Obama... and then the Republican majority in Congress would conduct two impeachment attempts based on the crumbs of dirt they could find.
Democrats would be screeching like banshees over the corruption, the lies, the dirtiness and the unfairness of it all.
But I do agree with you that some Republicans fit in to the blame here.
If I remember correctly, the original seed of the Russia investigation was an Australian diplomat (or former diplomat) meeting in May 2016 with Trump advisor Popadopoulos in London, where Popadopoulos said Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton which would be released before the elections. The diplomat passed this on to US persons and this originally kicked things off with the FBI. It was sometime after that the Steele dossier came into the picture with (I think) John McCain, properly, passing it on to the FBI for review.
The FISA warrants were predicated on that preliminary information from the Australian diplomat. The sloppy applications for some of the warrants were deservedly reviewed, critiqued, and formed a basis for FBI disciplining/correcting their own, but there can be no question as to the unprecedented number of contacts by everyone and their brother (or sister) in the Trump campaign to get ANYONE, foreign or domestic, to dig up dirt to help Trump win. The uninformed and unfounded drumbeat about "spying" on Trump and his coterie, listening in on conversations of Americans, and "unmasking" American participants in the conversations is an unfortunate situational truth that is coming back to bite those ducking the 1/6 Commission in the patootie today. If you have a conversation (or text message exchange/meeting) with someone of interest that is being investigated by the authorities now (or targeted by the US Intelligence Services back in 2016), you're going to get swept up in the net (otherwise known as Incidental Collection). The content of the conversation (or text messages) is what would prompt a LEGAL request by an AUTHORIZED person to "unmask the name" of the US person involved in the exchange to understand context and evaluate if/how damaging this contact/exchange could be. One example would be the reported totally bizarre request by Kushner to use Russian communications gear/channels at the Russian embassy in DC for a "secure backchannel link to Moscow". This should make any sane person wonder that a senior advisor to a US president would trust a foreign intelligence service to so thoroughtly protect them and their secrets.
Unfortunately, as this entire exchange exemplifies: facts are squirrelly things and research doesn't mean what it used to. The
Spot on. And what was especially fishy with Popadopoulos was that the DNC knew about the hack, the FBI knew about it, the Russians knew about it, but no one on the Trump campaign should have known about it.
1. The FBI did not use the Steele Dossier to initiate anything. They vetted it. They told Trump it existed during the transition. They did not use it as a basis for any investigation.
2. The process to obtain FISAs against Page violated protocols, Democrats have condemned it, and the person who violated protocols is being held to account. The same issue with the process was documented in numerous other applications, so this was a systemic issue, not just a one-off meant to maliciously single out Trump.
3. Trump Tower meeting. Manafort, indebted to Russian oligarchs, handing over proprietary campaign polling data to Konstantin Kalimnik. There was collusion.
4. The first Impeachment ended up with many Republicans agreeing that Trump did what he was accused of, and hiding behind the argument that it didn't warrant impeachment. The Second Impeachment was the most bipartisan Impeachment in US history.
You want to rewrite history to pretend that the entire investigation into the Trump campaign was predicated on the Steele Dossier. If any Trump campaign officials got picked up in intercepts because they were talking to Russians, a la Michael Flynn, then that's on them, not on the US Govt.
1. Is a fabrication that relies on the continued stonewalling of the Justice Department of the previous House Intelligence Committee’s attempts (which have stopped under old Nancy's rule) to probe investigators’ political bias against Trump and to learn whether the Steele dossier — again, a Clinton-campaign product — was used to obtain the FISA warrant. This stonewalling if done by a W supported Justice over what it did to Obama would have the Dems squeeling. It also wipes out #2. Three is twaddle even with the use of "proprietary" in your comment... because none of that data is proprietary. #4 I agree with. There were plenty of Republicans duped into believing what was being reported. By the second impeachment they got it.
And the Michael Flynn prosecution was yet another fly in your partisan ointment. It was all political. Forgetting to mark a box on a form. Right. Wait until the GOP takes over in 11 months and you can comment on the treatment of General Milley... even though it will be deserved.
Mr. Boone, almost everything you write on this string is based on the premise that Democrats would be howling just like Trumpists if the situations were reversed, and you get to portray what you think the mirror equivalent would be. There's no way to play out a counter-history and see, but you do not even entertain the possibility that Democrats approach these types of scandals differently from the Trumpist elements of the GOP. You assume everyone is basically Trump-style dishonest. With that assumption, you'll always get the result you insist on--it's circular reasoning, and it signifies nothing.
--Mr. Gates is correct on #1--you've invented a scenario that you assume is true and called his account a "fabrication."
--You've relied on your own fabrication simply to dismiss Mr. Gates's #2, which is about the Democratic reaction to evidence of DOJ malfeasance--a reaction that does in fact refute your claims about Democrats for that instance (which you ignore).
--You scoff at Mr. Gates's #3 in order to evade it--he is absolutely correct, and the issue of whether the data was "proprietary" has nothing to do with the nature of Manafort's action as collusion. You've found a red herring and hoping we won't notice it's rotten.
--Your reaction to #4 simply doesn't make sense, despite your initial sarcastic phrasing. You seem not to understand Mr. Gates's point about the January impeachment.
--And then you top off your response with an irrelevant point about Michael Flynn. The actual point is that he was, indeed, acting to sabotage US foreign policy, still under Obama administration control.
I appreciate that on this string you are not simply trying to enrage with insults those whose posts you want to undermine, and so blow up the conversation, as trolls usually do. Offering sloppy arguments and unserious responses is an improvement of sorts, but seems to demonstrate that you are either simply not up to presenting cogent ideas, or that you are trying to troll by other means (in which case, my replying to your post is a mistake on my part.)
#1 is not true. Absolutely not proven true. On the contrary, it absolutely looks like from the timing of the Pages case that it was authorized by the FISA warrant based on the Dossier.
Durham is not done yet. He is finding one after another dirty and dishonest Democrat and the trail is leading to the top of politics in the Dem party... and also the Republican Party.
Thanks though for making my point again. Obviously, it struck a nerve. It is fascinating how hard those stuck on bias will work to deny it without even having the self-awareness that it keeps proving they are stuck on bias.
With Flynn, it was not marking a box on a form, it was having a discussion with a foreign diplomat on US Foreign Policy while there was still a DIFFERENT President in power. Trump had not been sworn in and Flynn had no authority to be making deals with foreign diplomats. He lied about his contacts with Kislyak to the FBI. Those are the actual facts on Flynn. The whole Turkish angle was yet more fun from a former US Government Official who knew (or should have known) how government works.
I'll stop here, as I know this will go nowhere. Have a good evening.
Even Strzok and Comey said at the time that he didn’t think Flynn lied, but rather, was confused and forgetful. It was only four days after Flynn assumed the position. That supposed lie was the basis for the case against him.
But this is just more of the same making my point. If Flynn was a Democrat friend, ya'll would be howling.
I’m all in for a third party that stabilizes our democracy and supports civilized political debate again. One shouldn’t have to hide their ideological stances because people have lost their collective minds around a perception that they have lost what is “theirs” nor should we continue to bolster up the victimhood mentality plaguing both of our major political parties. Folks we need to grow a pair and get moving. It gets worse before it gets better…
Decades ago, the Encyclopedia Britannica put out a 16 volume series called the Annals of American History. It includes a Fortune article dated April 1949 by Robert A. Taft (son of President Howard Taft) called "The Republican Party". It should be required reading by every Republican. In brief, it lays out what the Republican Party used to be, calling for principles on human liberty, peace, higher standards of living, ways to prevent hardship and poverty, equal justice, etc. I don't agree with everything he proposed, but the man had principles, and he genuinely wanted the best for the US. Would the party had such men or women of such vision today! Of course, Trump and his spineless sycophants would be calling to tar and feather him.
I will forever remember Pence and Barr as saying no when it really counted, whatever their courage or motivation.
It is easy to forget what the Repubs "bought" when they got behind Trump. The got 3 conservative justices, they got a guy in the WH who not only wouldn't interfere with them but had no idea how to exert pressure in either direction on Congress. They essentially got a figurehead to distract Americans & the media while they continued to work on Conservative goals. Was this integrity at work? No. But there really was nothing else to do about Trump if you were an elected Repub. And knowing what you are getting back makes it a lot easier to "humor" the Trump and spew rhetoric with a straight face.
And we see that it was not even until the very end that anyone was required to go beyond rhetoric & messaging and actually sign their name to a very-likely-illegal-and-unConsititutional Trump action. I am grateful that while they had willingly performed in the circus, they drew the line at putting their head in the lion's mouth.
I think we can all agree that the other players like McConnell, Graham, Cruz, McCarthy, etc will also stop short of signing on the dotted line. Maybe even MTG.
But I am worried about the Mo Brooks, Sen Johnson, DeSantis, Gaetz and the apparently countless emerging Trumper zealots signing on as candidates and election officials. There are going to be significantly more Trump-like people in government whether or not Trump is there too. And they don't discern between rhetoric and signing-on-the-dotted-line, which means they already believe that anything goes, and our government is theirs for the taking. We worry today about insurrection against our institutions; I think the more likely scenario is an insurrection against a government that has dispensed of our institutions, with no need for a Maga riot to do it.
As much as I want to say nothing good about Trump, that fact is that he operated with guardrails, and whoeever is coming, won't.
Its just shocking to me that he knew the right thing all along. Through all of the nonsense. I would Love to remember Pence for such an act. However, if a person smokes crack one time. Does it make them a crackhead? Pence proved he was a Son of Liberty only once. I will remember him as the man that was continuously loyal to a man that was an empty human. And what blind loyalty gets you.
I have a different take on Pence. I think for him to refuse to comply with the Constitution, and with 220+ years of precedent, would have taken courage as well. To be the person who single handedly, out in the open, attempts to steal the election would take real balls. Now he's going through some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where he knows everything, but is saying nothing, and is certainly not publicly critical of anything he witnessed in the last five years. In a way, I think he did the easier thing on January 6 by doing what every Vice President who has preceded him did; he doesn't have what it takes to be that diabolical. Nor does he have what it takes to say the truth when it's difficult.
I agree that it probably took less courage to resist the coup than doing the coup--which is probably a leading contributor as to why it did not happen. Most of these people lack that level of courage (thankfully)--that is because, unlike many of the Cult, they have a better idea of the ramifications and they are on top now--they might not be if the Coup happens.
The character of Donald Trump was always plain to see, including the fact that he has no reverence for the ideals of this nation. When Mike Pence was asked to join Trump as his VP candidate, he did the absolutely wrong thing. Of all Americans responsible for saddling the country with the disaster of Trumpism, Pence ranks number two behind Trump himself. You write as if the danger is passed and centuries from now the moment you described will be recalled as a nation saving moment. But the Trump-Pence destruction of Constitutional governance continues and the scene you find so full of meaning might just be a speed bump on the road to ruin.
The real damage Pence did was provide cover for evangelicals to support Trump. As VP in office, aside from his refusal to break the law, he had no influence.
Break Facebook up into a million pieces and scatter it in the wind. My nonpolitical friend goes, "but how"? He skipped right past the why. We all know the why.
"If these people say you had the power, wouldn't you want to?" Trump asked. "I wouldn't want any one person to have that authority," Pence said. "But wouldn't it almost be cool to have that power?" Trump asked. "No," Pence said."
And that right there is the truly scary thing. It is a power that Trump has probably lusted after all of his life and goes a long way towards explaining his life. and all of these fools would be quite happy to give him that power, if they could--because they think (mistakenly) that it would be used for them.
It won't be. Trump's motto is: What can YOU do for me (that I won't have to pay you back for in some fashion)... because truly powerful people (in Trump's mind) do not have to do things for others, they have things done for them or punish people if they don't. There are no carrots, only sticks.
Occasionally find something that may be disagreed with in this space on Sundays, but absolutely nothing today, save one small nit I think needs picking. And that would be David Jolly's characterization of the relationship of "Donald Trump and Republican leaders" with politically motivated violence as "flirting". With all due props to Mr. jolly, I think the flirting stage of the relationship has passed.
Having already had a turn or two around the dance floor with this never coy and increasingly "available" number on their dance cards, I believe full-on courtship has now ensued, at least in the ranks below those with the most visibility at the very top. And the top has proven it finds no unattractive qualities in this little number either, as evidenced by the language they use on the rare occasion they find themselves cornered and must address the "gossip" swirling about town regarding this, or their absolute failure to often say anything at all to repudiate the rumors and put them to rest once and for all. Guess they don't want to risk any remarks that their paramour may find off-putting, and hence disqualify themselves as acceptable suitors if the heavy petting that's occurring in some quarters at the moment turns into the need for outright consummation of the relationship later.
Other than for perhaps Donald Trump himself, said paramour may not be the one they really want to take home to meet their families. But with some lowlifes it's any port in a storm.
Listen, it is fine to have different opinions, but I read the stuff from Charlie and other Charlie like-minded writers of opinion-powered news, and I cannot shake this vision that their insatiable need to win at the political game puts them in a spin-bubble where most of the actual BFD considerations are ignored and dismissed.
Many of these super bright word people had not been that way... until Trump. It seems Trump broke something in them.
Ironically I see Chis Wallace as having developed that same malady. I expect that many of his colleagues at Fox see the same. But Chris did that to himself. Sorry, if your spouse says mean words to you and it causes you to lose your shit and burn down your own house... that is on you. For example, his terrible disrespectful and one-sided tilt moderating the debates. People with more self-awareness can easily diagnose that self-afflicted malady. They leave the door open for others to see into their house before they burn it down.
The respectable part about this and Chris Wallace rather than most of the talking heads on CNN, is that Chris Wallace at least demonstrated he owned his own principled stand and wasn't just a popularity pimp trying hard to get more followers and likes from one ideological tribe. I respect him for that even as I don't respect his blind biases. As for the list of other non-Fox talking heads leaving their post... they never obtained any identity of real journalism while also failed at being successful political popularity pimps.
I don't think that those like Charley and Chris see nor care about something important that they should see and care about. If you are stuck in the beltway-compliant bubble of political-tinted journalism, you are increasingly on the wrong side of both critical-thinking and journalistic relevancy. To fixate on Jan 6 as a BFD and ignore Russiagate as a BFD.... well let's just say that history will certainly not support your choice of attention. One is a real BFD and the other, ironically, is just made-up political-media theater serving the establishment cabal.
There is a very easy method to test if your political bias is clouding your critical thinking. Just replace the stories in your mind with the political parties reversed. If you can be intellectually honest in doing that (and I submit that many cannot), you can work out your own problems and get back to what we might call real journalism again.
I honestly don't think a ton of Democrats would be making excuses for Hillary Clinton if Chelsea and John Podesta held a meeting with Russian agents in an effort to get dirt on mom's rival for the presidency, after they knew Russia had already hacked Republican emails. I think Democrats would be disgusted if that happened.
The problem isn't that MSM ignores Russiagate as a BFD; the problem is that Republicans do. The problem is that Marco Rubio participated in a fairly damning Senate Intel Committee assessment of the Trump campaign's involvement with Russians, and yet he won't accurately characterize his own Committee's report, a Committee that was led by Republicans. Richard Burr chaired that committee for a time, and he went on to convict Trump, to my great shock, in the second Impeachment trial. I have little doubt what he learned during his committee's investigation influenced his vote in that second Impeachment.
That does not cover the point.
What if the W Bush administration Justice Department used a known fake dosier paid for by the McCain campaign to get illegal FISA warrants to spy on the Obama campaign, and then a Republican-colluding MSM for over three years played the fake story that Obama colluded with the Iranian Mullahs to interfere in the election and influence it against McCain? And then the Republicans used all this fake story with their Bush admin plants in the Justice Depart and FBI to conduct an investigation to dig up any dirt that they could find on Obama... and then the Republican majority in Congress would conduct two impeachment attempts based on the crumbs of dirt they could find.
Democrats would be screeching like banshees over the corruption, the lies, the dirtiness and the unfairness of it all.
But I do agree with you that some Republicans fit in to the blame here.
If I remember correctly, the original seed of the Russia investigation was an Australian diplomat (or former diplomat) meeting in May 2016 with Trump advisor Popadopoulos in London, where Popadopoulos said Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton which would be released before the elections. The diplomat passed this on to US persons and this originally kicked things off with the FBI. It was sometime after that the Steele dossier came into the picture with (I think) John McCain, properly, passing it on to the FBI for review.
The FISA warrants were predicated on that preliminary information from the Australian diplomat. The sloppy applications for some of the warrants were deservedly reviewed, critiqued, and formed a basis for FBI disciplining/correcting their own, but there can be no question as to the unprecedented number of contacts by everyone and their brother (or sister) in the Trump campaign to get ANYONE, foreign or domestic, to dig up dirt to help Trump win. The uninformed and unfounded drumbeat about "spying" on Trump and his coterie, listening in on conversations of Americans, and "unmasking" American participants in the conversations is an unfortunate situational truth that is coming back to bite those ducking the 1/6 Commission in the patootie today. If you have a conversation (or text message exchange/meeting) with someone of interest that is being investigated by the authorities now (or targeted by the US Intelligence Services back in 2016), you're going to get swept up in the net (otherwise known as Incidental Collection). The content of the conversation (or text messages) is what would prompt a LEGAL request by an AUTHORIZED person to "unmask the name" of the US person involved in the exchange to understand context and evaluate if/how damaging this contact/exchange could be. One example would be the reported totally bizarre request by Kushner to use Russian communications gear/channels at the Russian embassy in DC for a "secure backchannel link to Moscow". This should make any sane person wonder that a senior advisor to a US president would trust a foreign intelligence service to so thoroughtly protect them and their secrets.
Unfortunately, as this entire exchange exemplifies: facts are squirrelly things and research doesn't mean what it used to. The
Spot on. And what was especially fishy with Popadopoulos was that the DNC knew about the hack, the FBI knew about it, the Russians knew about it, but no one on the Trump campaign should have known about it.
You don't really remember correctly here but give the mess of lies by the MSM it is not surprising that there are all number of inaccurate stories.
1. The FBI did not use the Steele Dossier to initiate anything. They vetted it. They told Trump it existed during the transition. They did not use it as a basis for any investigation.
2. The process to obtain FISAs against Page violated protocols, Democrats have condemned it, and the person who violated protocols is being held to account. The same issue with the process was documented in numerous other applications, so this was a systemic issue, not just a one-off meant to maliciously single out Trump.
3. Trump Tower meeting. Manafort, indebted to Russian oligarchs, handing over proprietary campaign polling data to Konstantin Kalimnik. There was collusion.
4. The first Impeachment ended up with many Republicans agreeing that Trump did what he was accused of, and hiding behind the argument that it didn't warrant impeachment. The Second Impeachment was the most bipartisan Impeachment in US history.
You want to rewrite history to pretend that the entire investigation into the Trump campaign was predicated on the Steele Dossier. If any Trump campaign officials got picked up in intercepts because they were talking to Russians, a la Michael Flynn, then that's on them, not on the US Govt.
1. Is a fabrication that relies on the continued stonewalling of the Justice Department of the previous House Intelligence Committee’s attempts (which have stopped under old Nancy's rule) to probe investigators’ political bias against Trump and to learn whether the Steele dossier — again, a Clinton-campaign product — was used to obtain the FISA warrant. This stonewalling if done by a W supported Justice over what it did to Obama would have the Dems squeeling. It also wipes out #2. Three is twaddle even with the use of "proprietary" in your comment... because none of that data is proprietary. #4 I agree with. There were plenty of Republicans duped into believing what was being reported. By the second impeachment they got it.
And the Michael Flynn prosecution was yet another fly in your partisan ointment. It was all political. Forgetting to mark a box on a form. Right. Wait until the GOP takes over in 11 months and you can comment on the treatment of General Milley... even though it will be deserved.
Mr. Boone, almost everything you write on this string is based on the premise that Democrats would be howling just like Trumpists if the situations were reversed, and you get to portray what you think the mirror equivalent would be. There's no way to play out a counter-history and see, but you do not even entertain the possibility that Democrats approach these types of scandals differently from the Trumpist elements of the GOP. You assume everyone is basically Trump-style dishonest. With that assumption, you'll always get the result you insist on--it's circular reasoning, and it signifies nothing.
--Mr. Gates is correct on #1--you've invented a scenario that you assume is true and called his account a "fabrication."
--You've relied on your own fabrication simply to dismiss Mr. Gates's #2, which is about the Democratic reaction to evidence of DOJ malfeasance--a reaction that does in fact refute your claims about Democrats for that instance (which you ignore).
--You scoff at Mr. Gates's #3 in order to evade it--he is absolutely correct, and the issue of whether the data was "proprietary" has nothing to do with the nature of Manafort's action as collusion. You've found a red herring and hoping we won't notice it's rotten.
--Your reaction to #4 simply doesn't make sense, despite your initial sarcastic phrasing. You seem not to understand Mr. Gates's point about the January impeachment.
--And then you top off your response with an irrelevant point about Michael Flynn. The actual point is that he was, indeed, acting to sabotage US foreign policy, still under Obama administration control.
I appreciate that on this string you are not simply trying to enrage with insults those whose posts you want to undermine, and so blow up the conversation, as trolls usually do. Offering sloppy arguments and unserious responses is an improvement of sorts, but seems to demonstrate that you are either simply not up to presenting cogent ideas, or that you are trying to troll by other means (in which case, my replying to your post is a mistake on my part.)
#1 is not true. Absolutely not proven true. On the contrary, it absolutely looks like from the timing of the Pages case that it was authorized by the FISA warrant based on the Dossier.
Durham is not done yet. He is finding one after another dirty and dishonest Democrat and the trail is leading to the top of politics in the Dem party... and also the Republican Party.
Thanks though for making my point again. Obviously, it struck a nerve. It is fascinating how hard those stuck on bias will work to deny it without even having the self-awareness that it keeps proving they are stuck on bias.
With Flynn, it was not marking a box on a form, it was having a discussion with a foreign diplomat on US Foreign Policy while there was still a DIFFERENT President in power. Trump had not been sworn in and Flynn had no authority to be making deals with foreign diplomats. He lied about his contacts with Kislyak to the FBI. Those are the actual facts on Flynn. The whole Turkish angle was yet more fun from a former US Government Official who knew (or should have known) how government works.
I'll stop here, as I know this will go nowhere. Have a good evening.
Even Strzok and Comey said at the time that he didn’t think Flynn lied, but rather, was confused and forgetful. It was only four days after Flynn assumed the position. That supposed lie was the basis for the case against him.
But this is just more of the same making my point. If Flynn was a Democrat friend, ya'll would be howling.
I’m all in for a third party that stabilizes our democracy and supports civilized political debate again. One shouldn’t have to hide their ideological stances because people have lost their collective minds around a perception that they have lost what is “theirs” nor should we continue to bolster up the victimhood mentality plaguing both of our major political parties. Folks we need to grow a pair and get moving. It gets worse before it gets better…
Yes! I agree 100%.
Decades ago, the Encyclopedia Britannica put out a 16 volume series called the Annals of American History. It includes a Fortune article dated April 1949 by Robert A. Taft (son of President Howard Taft) called "The Republican Party". It should be required reading by every Republican. In brief, it lays out what the Republican Party used to be, calling for principles on human liberty, peace, higher standards of living, ways to prevent hardship and poverty, equal justice, etc. I don't agree with everything he proposed, but the man had principles, and he genuinely wanted the best for the US. Would the party had such men or women of such vision today! Of course, Trump and his spineless sycophants would be calling to tar and feather him.
I will forever remember Pence and Barr as saying no when it really counted, whatever their courage or motivation.
It is easy to forget what the Repubs "bought" when they got behind Trump. The got 3 conservative justices, they got a guy in the WH who not only wouldn't interfere with them but had no idea how to exert pressure in either direction on Congress. They essentially got a figurehead to distract Americans & the media while they continued to work on Conservative goals. Was this integrity at work? No. But there really was nothing else to do about Trump if you were an elected Repub. And knowing what you are getting back makes it a lot easier to "humor" the Trump and spew rhetoric with a straight face.
And we see that it was not even until the very end that anyone was required to go beyond rhetoric & messaging and actually sign their name to a very-likely-illegal-and-unConsititutional Trump action. I am grateful that while they had willingly performed in the circus, they drew the line at putting their head in the lion's mouth.
I think we can all agree that the other players like McConnell, Graham, Cruz, McCarthy, etc will also stop short of signing on the dotted line. Maybe even MTG.
But I am worried about the Mo Brooks, Sen Johnson, DeSantis, Gaetz and the apparently countless emerging Trumper zealots signing on as candidates and election officials. There are going to be significantly more Trump-like people in government whether or not Trump is there too. And they don't discern between rhetoric and signing-on-the-dotted-line, which means they already believe that anything goes, and our government is theirs for the taking. We worry today about insurrection against our institutions; I think the more likely scenario is an insurrection against a government that has dispensed of our institutions, with no need for a Maga riot to do it.
As much as I want to say nothing good about Trump, that fact is that he operated with guardrails, and whoeever is coming, won't.
Its just shocking to me that he knew the right thing all along. Through all of the nonsense. I would Love to remember Pence for such an act. However, if a person smokes crack one time. Does it make them a crackhead? Pence proved he was a Son of Liberty only once. I will remember him as the man that was continuously loyal to a man that was an empty human. And what blind loyalty gets you.
I have a different take on Pence. I think for him to refuse to comply with the Constitution, and with 220+ years of precedent, would have taken courage as well. To be the person who single handedly, out in the open, attempts to steal the election would take real balls. Now he's going through some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where he knows everything, but is saying nothing, and is certainly not publicly critical of anything he witnessed in the last five years. In a way, I think he did the easier thing on January 6 by doing what every Vice President who has preceded him did; he doesn't have what it takes to be that diabolical. Nor does he have what it takes to say the truth when it's difficult.
I agree that it probably took less courage to resist the coup than doing the coup--which is probably a leading contributor as to why it did not happen. Most of these people lack that level of courage (thankfully)--that is because, unlike many of the Cult, they have a better idea of the ramifications and they are on top now--they might not be if the Coup happens.
No. No. No. If Pence wasn't fundamentally corrupt in his role in elevating Trump to the Presidency, this democracy threatening moment never happens.
The character of Donald Trump was always plain to see, including the fact that he has no reverence for the ideals of this nation. When Mike Pence was asked to join Trump as his VP candidate, he did the absolutely wrong thing. Of all Americans responsible for saddling the country with the disaster of Trumpism, Pence ranks number two behind Trump himself. You write as if the danger is passed and centuries from now the moment you described will be recalled as a nation saving moment. But the Trump-Pence destruction of Constitutional governance continues and the scene you find so full of meaning might just be a speed bump on the road to ruin.
The real damage Pence did was provide cover for evangelicals to support Trump. As VP in office, aside from his refusal to break the law, he had no influence.