Former President Donald J. Trump

in reality, all of this has been a total load of old bollocks
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BARON CORNY DOG
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 26 Mar 2019, 13:29

Sadly I haven’t had the free time to write out my reaction Barr’s letter, and I fear that the Dems are losing the messenging war on this. Here’s a start, which makes a point or three I wanted to make:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-does-b ... -collusion
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Count Machuki » 26 Mar 2019, 13:52

Still Baron wrote:Sadly I haven’t had the free time to write out my reaction Barr’s letter, and I fear that the Dems are losing the messenging war on this. Here’s a start, which makes a point or three I wanted to make:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-does-b ... -collusion


This language suggests that Mueller’s report viewed the conduct through the lens of a criminal investigative process—that is, whether the evidence met the Department of Justice standards for prosecution, including the ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was intent to violate the law.


This is sort of what I've been thinking recently. That Mueller was such a stickler that he didn't make a recommendation to prosecute cause he was only 90-odd percent there, not 100 percent. And that he trusted the system to sort out the rest. Of course, if the system is being gamed by the subject of the investigation, well...

I don't know, it's tough for a layman. My law knowledge isn't nearly strong enough to have a really informed opinion.

Thanks for the link.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 26 Mar 2019, 13:57

There’s also the fact that Mueller almost certainly believed that he didn’t have authority to indict a sitting President, so that was never really on the table.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Jimbo » 26 Mar 2019, 14:01

Still Baron wrote:There’s also the fact that Mueller almost certainly believed that he didn’t have authority to indict a sitting President, so that was never really on the table.


But he could have indicted the sons or other members of his coterie - or Julian Assange for that matter, no?
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 26 Mar 2019, 14:35

Jimbo wrote:
Still Baron wrote:There’s also the fact that Mueller almost certainly believed that he didn’t have authority to indict a sitting President, so that was never really on the table.


But he could have indicted the sons or other members of his coterie - or Julian Assange for that matter, no?


Yes.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby bobzilla77 » 26 Mar 2019, 19:39

The impression I get, they could prove flirtation but not full penetration. And that don't cut it.

Ok well, fuck the fucking Russians. They get to get away with it, whatever "it" is.

Let's get interested in all the other ways Trump can be defeated at the polls. This is no longer a feasible talking point.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby bobzilla77 » 26 Mar 2019, 19:46

I think we are so opposed to that guy on a gut level we are abandoning common sense and it leaves us easily manipulated. There were a lot of bombshell Revelations that smoldered out as apparent bullshit. Wapo printed lots of them. Thus has been a high profit period for them. Turns out they have a capacity for bullshit when their readership craves it.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Sneelock » 26 Mar 2019, 21:39

I don't know. I feel like my bullshit detector works pretty good.
I think had Nixon or Clinton Admins tried to stand on the neck of the proceedings the way TRUMP has that they never would have gotten away with it.

The White House Twitter account has FOX footage of Brett Hume bloviating about how the Democrats have committed an offense worse than any offense ever committed against anybody. The White House has contacted media outlets with a list of Democrats that they demand no longer be included in their programs. GOP leadership is demanding that these same Democrats be relieved of the committee appointments they presently hold.

meanwhile the Admin is lowering the boom - trying to uphold that ban on Obamacare and cutting a whopping 7 Billion out of Education spending.

I think Barr has taken one for the team. TRUMP has consistently insisted that people on "his team" be loyal to him. He got a partisan AG to cover his ass. regardless of what's in the report they are easing into an election year without any albatross around their neck. now they're talking about the DOJ working with the White House at redacting the damned thing before anybody else sees it.

yeah, the media got carried away and used bad faith and bla bla bla. the fact remains we are seeing a power grab the likes of which we've never seen -- in true TRUMP fashion -- brazenly, out in the open, for all to see.

I was already tired of the Left's circular firing squad and the fucking bayonets they issued Monday morning are only making it worse. I don't hate Russians, I don't want World War 3. I DO think TRUMP is fixing things so they can't be fixed and I really think something needs to be done about it. that something that needs to be done about it is that people need to fucking NOTICE it.

He's going to call somebody ugly or stupid on Twitter then this will go down the same Newshole that so many other things have gone down.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 26 Mar 2019, 21:50

I don’t really think the media DID act in bad faith (actually, maybe cable news did, I don’t know, I don’t watch it). I just don’t think there’s enough room for nuance in the reporting or in people’s brains. I also don’t think Barr is acting in bad faith. I definitely do agree that had Clinton or Obama had even one tenth of the dirt on them that is out there on Trump, the Articles of Impeachment would’ve already been voted out of the House.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Sneelock » 26 Mar 2019, 21:54

shit, if HRC had won then the proceedings would have started on Day ONE.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 26 Mar 2019, 22:20

Its a really fun thought experiment to replace Trump with any recent Democratic President or candidate and play out any one of these scenarios in your mind.

It’s actually not fun at all.
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.

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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Jimbo » 26 Mar 2019, 23:00

Speaking of circular firing squads, I've been thinking about how Jimmy Dore's got it in his head that the establishment Dems would rather keep Trump than have a progressive/socialist in office. There is an MSNBC video of Dem pundit Donnie Deutsch saying he'd vote for Trump over Sanders. I speculate that it has something to do with their stock portfolios being defense stock heavy. I also think the "anti-semite" smears come from this camp. Of course a Biden or Harris would be fine but no way could they beat Trump at this point but a Gabbard or Sanders might. As you can see little support for them from the DNC it'll probably be Trump 2020. And maybe Pence 2024. :?

If you were a rich Dem depending on your stocks for your living would you want your next Prez to be a threat the banks and Wall St.?
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Snarfyguy » 26 Mar 2019, 23:35

Betsey Devos defends deep cuts to Special Olympics program.

DeVos, a school choice advocate from the Grand Rapids area, said her department had to make "difficult decisions" but defended the cuts as part of a Trump administration effort to cut the federal deficit and debt.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ ... 278388002/

You know what would have cut the deficit? Not passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

But I forgot: cruelty is the point.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Charlie O. » 27 Mar 2019, 00:46

bobzilla77 wrote:I think we are so opposed to that guy on a gut level we are abandoning common sense and it leaves us easily manipulated. There were a lot of bombshell Revelations that smoldered out as apparent bullshit. Wapo printed lots of them. Thus has been a high profit period for them. Turns out they have a capacity for bullshit when their readership craves it.

WaPo may get a little carried away (I certainly got kinda sick of Jennifer Rubin), but... I saw/see very little outright bullshit there.

Margaret Sullivan posted this yesterday, and... I reckon she's right.

It should be no surprise to anyone that President Trump’s reaction to the Mueller report is to attack reporters for doing their jobs.

That’s exactly what he has been doing for years. It’s a predictable political strategy — an ugly, undemocratic one — that works as a way to feed raw meat to his base.

And it should be no surprise that his media echo chamber — led by Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity — is calling for the heads of journalists whose work Hannity couldn’t begin to emulate even if given 100 years.

As for the rest of the harsh criticism that’s being leveled at journalists who dug into the connections between Trump, as candidate and president, and Russia, it’s largely misguided.

Fairly typical of this was conservative writer Rich Lowry, who said the three biggest losers from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report were “the media, the media, the media,” which he described in a tweet as “obsessed & hysterical for 2 years.”

There are calls for a “reckoning” on news coverage.

All right, then. Here goes.

I reckon that American citizens would have been far worse off if skilled reporters hadn’t dug into the connections between Trump’s associates — up to and including his son Don Jr. — and Russians. That reporting has not been invalidated.

I reckon that the felonious lying to the public about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow remains a scandal — and that we know about this in large part because journalists were doing their jobs aggressively.

I reckon that the hard-nosed reporting about former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn — roundly denied, you might recall, before it was proved — was an early sign of the venality that was to follow.

I reckon that reporting by The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, CNN, Bloomberg News, the Daily Beast, Mother Jones, ProPublica and others drove forward a national conversation that needed to happen. As Americans saw with their own eyes Trump’s bizarre efforts to ingratiate himself with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, that reporting mattered and provided context.

And that shouldn’t be forgotten or swept aside now.

And yes, I reckon that endless speculative threads and the explosions of tiny cannons on Twitter were ridiculous and over the top — and that the cable pundits who made a living off such speculation aren’t really journalists anyway.

It’s important to acknowledge the value of the serious journalism because there’s a real risk that news organizations will take the edges off their coverage of this subject now.

You could see it starting to happen over the weekend.

It was strange, for example, to see Scott Pelley’s lead-in to CBS’s “60 Minutes” erroneously describe the Mueller report’s findings in a way that Trump might have scripted: He flatly stated that the report, as described by Attorney General William P. Barr, exonerated the president.

In fact, Mueller came to no such conclusion on obstruction of justice, and on the contrary stated clearly that his investigation did not exonerate him.

Perhaps cowed by the criticism — which came from the left as well as the right, most notably from author Matt Taibbi — some news organizations may back down from aggressive coverage of Trump.

That would be a serious mistake. With some regrettable and damaging exceptions — individual stories that seemingly went too far — reality-based news outlets have done quite well on this story.

And it’s far from over. So this is no time to retreat.

What would be a good idea, though, is to be less obsessed with this subject to the exclusion of others that are far closer to home for most Americans: health care, the economy, affordable housing and crime.

“We’ve done two listening tours across the U.S. in the past two years, and it was striking how Trump, Russia and Mueller just never came up,” HuffPost Editor Lydia Polgreen told me Sunday. As a result, “we haven’t invested heavily in covering the Trump/Russia story in terms of enterprise.”

Similarly, I’ve been thinking of Christine Radwan, a Trump voter (and former Democrat) I interviewed in rural New York state in 2017.

When I asked her whether possible Russian collusion mattered to her, she paused and then answered thoughtfully: “Yes, it’s important, but not as important as our economy and what’s happened to our middle class.”

This observation is worth thinking about, and acting on.

But that’s not to suggest that serious news organizations should drop the Trump/Russia story, which is still playing out.

Nor should they allow themselves to be bullied about the important work they’ve done, and must continue to do.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/serious-journalists-should-be-proud-of--not-bullied-over--their-russia-reporting/2019/03/25/4adbe146-4ef0-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html?utm_term=.613cd8534393
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Snarfyguy » 27 Mar 2019, 03:20

"Fake news!"

*eye roll*

I would downgrade Taibbi from "author" to "writer."
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Jimbo » 27 Mar 2019, 04:44

Snarfyguy wrote:"Fake news!"

*eye roll*

I would downgrade Taibbi from "author" to "writer."


I'll make it easy for you. Choose one Tabbi point you disagree with and make a make a counterargument.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Sneelock » 27 Mar 2019, 05:55

Take out my trash, rotate my tires and fix me something to eat.
Make it snappy.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Snarfyguy » 27 Mar 2019, 13:28

Taibbi's first line: "Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media."

Counterpoint: no, it's not.

Then: "As with most press coverage, there was little pretense that the Mueller probe was supposed to be a neutral fact-finding mission, as apposed to religious allegory, with Mueller cast as the hero sent to slay the monster."

This is just as overheated and purple as the stuff he's railing about.

Etc.

To the extent the media got out ahead of its skis, it was doing its job. Considering the number of passes Donald Trump gets, I'd say he's way ahead of the game.
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby Snarfyguy » 27 Mar 2019, 19:00

House Dems: get that guy Whitaker back on the stand.

It seems pretty clear Trump's former acting AG flew the coop so he wouldn't have to answer to the Inspector General about obstructy conversations he had with the president.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/03/2 ... m-justice/
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Re: President Donald J. Trump

Postby bobzilla77 » 27 Mar 2019, 21:01

Still Baron wrote:I don’t really think the media DID act in bad faith (actually, maybe cable news did, I don’t know, I don’t watch it). I just don’t think there’s enough room for nuance in the reporting or in people’s brains. I also don’t think Barr is acting in bad faith. I definitely do agree that had Clinton or Obama had even one tenth of the dirt on them that is out there on Trump, the Articles of Impeachment would’ve already been voted out of the House.



I started to notice a few weeks ago that a lot of supposedly bombshell stories were starting to get "corrected." The only time Mueller's office spoke publicly, to my recollection, was to come right out and say that a particularly salacious accusation that was in the news cycle, was not accurate.

I've seen in the media the last couple days, people pushing the idea that the report obviously contains evidence of impeachable offenses which the AG is choosing to ignore. I think if it was being that wildly mischaracterized, we would hear from Mueller's office for a second time.

You know one thing that struck me this weekend, before the release, I was watching a documentary about Theranos. The lab company that defauded investors out of hundreds of millions on technology that never worked as advertised. There was a behavioral analyst talking about a test they designed to see if they could tell when people are lying to them. The first test was done on the basis that subjects had the opportunity to lie about something that would benefit them financially, and the lie was un-provable. They determined that people did indeed lie sometimes, and standard lie detectors were effective in measuring this. Then they ran the test again with the only change being, the money would go to the subject's favorite charity.

Not only did people lie more when the benefit went to charity, the lie detector completely stopped working. The brain no longer recognized lying as bad or wrong and stopped sending the signal that the detector is intended to measure.

This suggests that people working on something they think will be of great benefit to humanity, are capable of not just lying, but doing so and basically, no longer recognize that they are lying. This really struck me and I am thinking about it a lot in terms of these events. Matt Taibbi pointed out, while many journalists and their new orgs must have had reason to question some of the stories running around, they recognized that doing so would be beneficial to Trump. And the anti Trump forces were so powerful, no one wanted to be on the wrong side of them.

They sure made a lot of money freaking us out. WaPo is recommended to me by google so often, I've hit their paywall.
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