The Dem's "Russian Collusion" witch-hunt blows up in their faces & now reveals they were the ones colluding to defraud

The Dem's "Russian Collusion" witch-hunt blows up in their faces & now reveals they were the ones colluding to defraud voters of their right to a free, fair and democratically-run contest.

__________________________

This opinion piece--which reads nothing like an editorial commentary but, rather, like a news report--

(The Hill) Was Lynch coordinating with Comey in the Clinton investigation? || By Sharyl Attkisson, opinion contributor — 01/21/18 04:05 PM EST
(6,265 reader comments) (The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill)

--details the real election scandal and it's one which those obsessed with undermining Trump refuse to recognize, turning their two blind eyes to this unfolding scandal.

It puts the lie to this site's exclusively-anti-Trump-obsessed scandal-mongers' supposed concern for the welfare of the nation when they don't want to know about real political scandal right under their fucking noses.

"Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

"The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation — a commitment she made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.

"And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information.

"On July 1, 2016, as the Lynch announcement became public, Page texted Strzok:

Page: 'And yeah, it’s a real profile in couragw (sic), since she knows no charges will be brought.' "

The text messages seem to indicate that some within the FBI were making investigatory decisions based on Trump’s ascendancy among the Republican field of presidential candidates. On May 4, 2016 Strzok and Page had the following text message exchange:

Page: And holy shit Cruz just dropped out of the race. It’s going to be a Clinton Trump race. Unbelievable.

Strzok: What?!?!??

Page: You heard it right my friend.

Strzok: I saw trump won, figured it would be a bit…Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE…

Page: It sure does. We need to talk about follow up call tomorrow.

“MYE” stands for “midyear exam” and was the FBI case name for the Clinton email investigation.

The text exchanges also indicate the FBI substituted, and then omitted, damaging language in FBI Director Comey’s July 5, 2016 statement that recommended Clinton not be charged. The original draft noted that Clinton had improperly used personal email to contact President Obama while abroad in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. According to the text exchange, an FBI official then removed President Obama’s name and stated that Clinton had simply emailed “another senior government official.” In the final statement as delivered by Comey on July 5, both references were omitted entirely.

Other texts suggest Strzok and Page intended to subvert rules governing preservation of their discussions about FBI matters. In April of 2016, Page texted:

Page: so look, you say we text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can’t be traced…

In previous text messages produced to the House of Representatives, Strzok and Page discussed needing an “insurance policy” in the event Trump were to become president. The newest batch of text messages turned over on Friday show that in February of 2016, Page texted Strzok that then-candidate Trump “simply can not (sic) be president.”

There's your fucking election-collusion scanal. What are you going to do about it?

I know: you're going to ignore it and pray that it goes away.

________________________________

Other Related stories and reports-----

at The Hill:

"Sessions announces DOJ probe of missing FBI text messages"
By Olivia Beavers - 01/22/18 08:32 PM EST
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/370204-sessions-says-he-will-leave-n...

at the blog Dances With Bears (http://johnhelmer.net/) -- by John Helmer, U.S. independent journalist based in Russia :

Glenn Simpson Chases His Shadow into a Black Hole

Really? Really?

LOL!

Yes, really ---though you are completely free to pretend that you just don't get this.

From the outset, President Obama, his present and, later, former Secretary of State, Hilllary Clinton who, as Obama was well aware from the time he himself ran for president, intended to succeed him in 2017, (having in effect made a tacit understanding to that effect) and the Director of the F.B.I. (D-F.B.I.), James Comey, first appointed by Obama in 2013, all had to know that they were mutually implicated in a complicated mess by which all three had been and were continuing to connive in the objective to, first, clear Clinton's path to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and, once gained, second, to help her discredit her key opponent Donald Trump, through the search for and the use of innuendo intended to help in ruining Trump's appeal through an effort at character-assasination.

Using serving officials--even when these cooperate willingly-- within the Justice Department, an agency of the Executive branch of the federal government, as a presidential campaign tool to deliberately seek, find and use supposed leverage through privately-held data collected by official and unofficial means, is precisely what President Nixon was ultimately suspected of having done; and it was for this that he faced virtually-certain impeachment and conviction and, to avoid these, he resigned in July of 1974--the key difference being that, in Nixon's case, this malfeasance was in furtherance of his own presidential re-election bid whereas here, in the present case, Obama's role is in aid of his former secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. But apart from that the main features are similar in character.

The implication of Obama, Clinton and Comey in the same slimey clandestine affair really isn't that hard to grasp. Republicans in the U.S. Congress are able to understand it.

Agents within Comey's F.B.I. and people in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign both came to share the same conduits for what is called "opposition research"--or the search for 'dirt', compromising information about one's political opponent, especially during an electoral campaign. The mutual information was the now-imfamous Steele dossier, first commissioned by Republicans opposed to Trump's nomination and, later, encouraged in further development by both one or more active F.B.I. agents and by Clinton presidential campaign operatives.

Through secret text messages and off-government-account e-mail traffic, Obama, Clinton and Comey could keep themselves informed of the development of the Steele dossier's contents and potential use agaisnt Trump. Obama's staff could even attempt to make the dossier the basis of a request for FISA-warrants to place Trump or members of his campaign under NSA and other U.S. intelligence agency surveillance. Again, this, essentially, but in a clumsier and less sophisticated way, is what Nixon's "White House 'Plumbers' " were all about.

When the existence of Clinton's secret (and illegal-for-official-use) home-based e-mail-server became known, Obama at first tried to lie about his ignorance of its existence, saying he first heard of it like others had--through press reports. But that was a stupid blunder on his part since he'd been personally engaged in using the unofficial Clinton e-mail address to send to her and receive from her e-mails which were specifically supposed to be off the official record of government activity and, thus, not known in their subject-matter or their contents to the rest of the executive branch's members.

In order to befog and cover up this burgeoning potential scandal, Democrats and these principals--Obama, Comey and Clinton--hit on the idea of launching an investigation into alleged "collusion" between the Trump campaign and various unnamed and shadowy operatives in Putin's Russia, using information they'd come to know through the Steele dossier and all supposedly eventually tied to some imagined diabolical scheme by Putin, and supposedly, in the worst-case scenario, personally in league with Trump or, in a less terrible scenario, simply duping Trump to do Putin's bidding. That whole thing was devised and launched as a program of smoke-and-mirrors to distract public and press from the actual scandal the discovery and publication of which threatened key top officials in the White House, the F.B.I. and the Clinton presidential election campaign. This fateful decision, on their part, was the equivalent of the Watergate burglars' having placed tape over the door-latch--tape noticed by the night-watchman, Frank Wills--and leading to their discovery and arrest--and Nixon's ultimate downfall.

Critics--some of them from panic and others from their being parroting-morons--will attempt to dismiss and discredit this story as yet more wild conspiracists' theorizing, first, last and always the product of conspiracy-obsessed wackos (because "conspiracy" itself is ridiculed as invariably the product of dementia; that gambit should make you prick up your ears). The people who take that tack are out and out shit-holes.

>1 proximity1:

Especially for you.

>4 Limelite:

Laugh while you can.

Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!

… …

That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity,
Commodity, the bias of the world,
The world, who of itself is peised well,
Made to run even upon even ground,
Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,
This sway of motion, this Commodity,
Makes it take head from all indifferency,
From all direction, purpose, course, intent:
And this same bias, this Commodity,
This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,
Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France,
Hath drawn him from his own determined aid,
From a resolved and honourable war,
To a most base and vile-concluded peace.
And why rail I on this Commodity?
But for because he hath not woo'd me yet:
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand,
When his fair angels would salute my palm;
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,
Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Since kings break faith upon commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

______________________

Trump's election was a regular fucking laugh-fest, wasn't it? :



God! How you people deserve the moral shithole you make and live in!

See (and try to explain away Sharyl Attkisson as a member of the tinfoil-hat brigade) :

from The Hill,

"Democrats and many in the media are taking the side of the intelligence community, calling the Republican efforts partisan. House Democrats are said to be writing a counter-memo.

" 'We need to produce our own memo that lays out the actual facts and shows how the majority memo distorts the work of the FBI and the Department of Justice,' said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

"Meantime, the Department of Justice has officially warned the House Intelligence Committee not to release its memo. It's like the possible defendant in a criminal trial threatening prosecutors for having the audacity to reveal alleged evidence to the judge and jury.

"This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans. “Don’t be irresponsible and reveal sources and methods,” they plead.

"As for me? I don’t care what political stripes the alleged offenders wear or whose side they’re on. If their sources and methods are inappropriate, they should be fully exposed and stopped."

As walls close in on FBI, the bureau lashes out at its antagonists || By Sharyl Attkisson, opinion contributor — 01/25/18 01:50 PM EST

"Operation Sabotage the Memo"
What are Adam Schiff, the Justice Department and the FBI trying to hide? || By Kimberley A. Strassel | Jan. 25, 2018 7:09 p.m. ET
_________________________________________

" Rep. Adam Schiff has many talents, though few compare to his ability to function as a human barometer of Democratic panic. The greater the level of Schiff hot, pressured air, the more trouble the party knows it’s in.

"Mr. Schiff’s millibars have been popping ever since the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he is ranking Democrat, last week voted to make a classified GOP memo about FBI election year abuses available to every House member. Mr. Schiff has spit and spun and apoplectically accused his Republican colleagues of everything short of treason. The memo, he insists, is 'profoundly misleading,' not to mention 'distorted' and 'political,' and an attack on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He initially tried to block his colleagues from reading it. Having failed, he’s now arguing Americans can know the full story only if they see the underlying classified documents.

"This is highly convenient, given the Justice Department retains those documents and is as eager to make them public as a fox is to abandon the henhouse. Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes had to threaten a contempt citation simply to get permission for his committee to gain access, and even then investigators had to leave Capitol Hill to view them, and were allowed only to take notes. Mr. Nunes has no authority to declassify them. The best he can do in his continuing transparency efforts is to summarize their contents. Only in Schiff land is sunshine suddenly a pollutant.

"The Schiff pressure gauge is outmatched only by the Justice Department and the FBI, which are now mobilizing their big guns to squelch the truth. That included a Wednesday Justice Department letter to Mr. Nunes—written by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd, designed as a memo to the media, copied to its allies in Washington, and immediately leaked to the public. And the department wonders why anyone doubts the integrity of all its hardworking professionals." ... (more at the following link)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/operation-sabotage-the-memo-1516925395

Antidote to nonsense posted by proximity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8XzWBadFiU

RE :

Trump poised for clash with DOJ over classified memo
|| By Katie Bo Williams - 01/26/18 05:56 AM EST

the following is found under The Hill's "Policy" section. There's a separate section called "Opinion"; so I gather that this is not an "opinion" article.

"Allowing the committee’s memo to become public unimpeded would be a slap in the face to the Department of Justice at a time when Trump’s efforts to influence its activity are under intense scrutiny.

And yet, that's a fucking opinion, Katie Bo's opinion, unless someone in authority told her to write that-- not a piece of "news" reportage-- and it doesn't belong outside an opinion-page of a newspaper.

I don't really need Katie Bo's opinion as to what the memo's release would be as far as "the Department of Justice" 's view of it is concerned. I suppose that the Department of Justice can have one of its spokes-persons speak for it. Last time I checked, the DoJ was a department under the Executive branch of government and, like it or not, President Donald Trump is the chief of the Executive branch of government. So, as I see it, if the boss wants to figuratively "slap the face" of one of his subordinate departments, then that department's figurative face gets "slapped." Don't like it? There's the door: leave. No one is forced to remain in the president's employ.

"Special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be homing in on whether Trump obstructed justice by “fighting back” against the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Meanwhile, a recent drumbeat of headlines have highlighted interactions between the president and Justice officials considered an unusual breach of the historical firewall between the department and the White House. "

Says who?

Obstruction of justice is a criminal offense. If there is evidence of it, then, in this case, a federal grand jury, not Robert Mueller, would be the ones to "home in" on the matter of whether there is actually evidence warranting issuing a billl of indictment for obstruction of justice.

On the other hand, if it's impeachment rather than a criminal court trial which Katie Bo has in her editorialist's mind, then that is a matter for the House of Representatives to take up--per the Constitution's provisions. In that case, the House members are required to vote out a bill of particulars under which the president is charged and these members then sit in judgement of this bill, debating whether the facts support a conclusion that the president's alleged behavior merits his being "impeached", at which point the matter moves to the Senate for actual trial--under Senate rules.

In each case, a majority of members present and voting--and you can bet all eligible members would be present and voting--should determine each question:

House: "To Impeach or not to impeach?"

Senate: "To convict or not to convict?" a.k.a. "Guilty or not guilty?"

And on none of these do we need Katie Bo's opinions---

like this bullshit obiter dicta, for example:

"Meanwhile, a recent drumbeat of headlines have highlighted interactions between the president and Justice officials considered an unusual breach of the historical firewall between the department and the White House."

Katie, fuck your "drumbeat of headlines." And go back to journalism school and ask for a refresher course on the distinctions between news-reportage and opinion-column writing, you moron.

>7 proximity1:

Whassamatta? Didn't you get your Putin Beefcake Calendar?

All will be over when Counsel Mueller asks Trump, "Did you order my firing?" Figure it out for yourself.

>8 Limelite:

Brillant: you make yourself the advocate of a perpetual deadlock in government relations which is proof even against a situation—such as at present—in which the same nominal party holds all three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial (because, yes, the Supreme Court is, practically by default, always an extremely right-wing institution, rarely showing any capacity for broad-mindedness).

And you'd introduce this nightmare into a political atmosphere which is already pure poison, deadly to reason and perspective, hostile to common-ground.

Thus, whenever any faction can combine into a force in the Congress which chooses to rid itself of a president who it simply doesn't like for any reason (or even for no reason at all) and a president no matter how popular with the public, all that is necessary is to arrange a pretense on which to appoint a special prosecutor; and that, in a poisoned political atmosphere, that is child's play: a pretense for the appointment of a special prosecutor whose task is simply to get the president, by any means, however foul, --that can always be arranged.

Then, once appointed, the special prosecutor sets to work to hound and harrass the president, using the flimsiest of excuses to probe into imagined schemes of wrong-doing and finally testing to its limits the president's patience and endurance until, when he can bear no more, the president fires the special prosecutor, thereby triggering his enemies' cue to remove him by impeachment and trial for having “crossed a 'red line' in conduct.”

Yes, America and Americans richly deserve the perfect political shit-storm they've so fiendishly arranged for themselves. Using it to get rid of Trump would effectively drive yet another nail in sane government's coffin--for the vile precedents you set today shall be taken up and used over and over again tomorrow, when it may be your idea of a good president who is in the cross-hairs of a special-prosecutor's gun-sight.

When it comes to taking a needlessly shitty and stupid situation, one barely imaginably so, and making it even worse than it already is, Americans' imaginations know no bounds.

_______________________________________

ETA : by Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist news journal:

Government

"What To Expect From The House Intel Memo On Surveillance Abuse"

|| Little is known about the document. What we do know is that the memo details potential abuses by federal authorities related to the Steele dossier and secret surveillance warrants obtained by the Obama administration.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/25/what-to-expect-from-the-house-intel-memo-on-...
... ...

If there really is nothing to the Trump-Russia collusion theory, it poses something of an existential crisis for those who bought into the theory as their best hope for removing the elected president. That includes the activist left, the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and also elements of the NeverTrump right. Among all the theories and attacks on the president, be they legitimate or illegitimate, the Russia theory is set apart and special because of its impeachment power and key to ousting him. While a few Republicans in Congress are working against those forces, the combined power and messaging coordination of the resistance is formidable.

You can see this already with how minor messaging points are blown up into large stories. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told journalists he was not allowed to see the House Intelligence Committee memo. That’s true, since the only legal access right now is for House members and Burr does not serve in the House but the Senate. It would at the very least require a vote of the entire committee to change those access protocols without violating rules. Still, a combined messaging campaign arose out of this talking point.

Earlier, resistance-allied journalists pushed the talking point that the FBI wasn’t allowed to see the memo alleging abuses at the FBI. These journalists were apparently confused as to which of the two entities has oversight of the other. The FBI is an inferior subordinate agency. Perhaps that’s a reasonable confusion in light of FBI behavior in recent years, but divided government is a real thing that remains. But the document might also encompass other agencies. Why would the FBI get a preview before other agencies? In any case, expect a lot of drama and pushback against the document.

_____________________________

See also:

" Top Senate Democrat: The House Intel Memo Is Sloppy And Baseless. Also, I’ve Not Read It" ||

'I have not seen the memo, but I think it is sloppy, careless, and again, I think has no grounding in fact.'
|| January 25, 2018 By Bre Payton

Link: http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/25/top-senate-democrat-house-intel-memo-sloppy-...

>9 proximity1: I understand the disconnect! proximity1 thinks his interlocuters read his posts!

>9 proximity1: None are so blind as he who will not see. You persist in consistency. Good conservative trait. However, like too many conservatives, you persist in being consistently wrong and on the wrong side of history.

The investigation into Trump's activities has nothing to do with his popularity. You are right, most Americans dislike him. But the investigation has everything to do with treason, corruption, obstruction, fraud, money laundering, all the obvious criminality Trump has engaged in, along with his felonious henchmen, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller's investigation.

Oddly, no one has brought up whether or not Trump is "liked" in discussions of his perfidy, other than you. This ain't "Death of a Salesman," this is the criminal investigation of the Worst President Ever by the most credible law enforcement figure in this country, who just happens to be the most powerful person in America at present beause the man in the oval office is a pathologically lying, corrupt, immoral worm.

But then, you probably think Nixon was railroaded out of office for no reason other than no one liked him, either.

Some folks, many of them Trump cultists, revel in being thought deplorable by "normies." How sick is that?

P. S. FYI, it isn't only Democrats who recognize Trump has got to go. Plenty of Republicans view him as poison, too. Why do you think 31 Republican Congrescritters aren't seeking re-election?

>11 Limelite:

"FYI, it isn't only Democrats who recognize Trump has got to go. Plenty of Republicans view him as poison, too. Why do you think 31 Republican Congrescritters aren't seeking re-election?"

Because they make up part of the controlling elite who are furious that so uncredentialed a person as Trump should presume to break into their private, closed game and, in the process, show them up by beating the pants off the incompetent fool they'd annointed (beating her electorily, that is, under the rule system that stands, but which these elite proved only too ready to throw over as soon as it failed to produce their favored outcome).

Try comedy. You're hiliarious. This, in fact, is one of my key points--which you just didn't and don't get.

You also couldn't be more wrong about thinking that I "probably think Nixon was railroaded out of office for no reason other than no one liked him, either."

In 1972, virtually alone among my school friends, I was vocally opposed to Nixon's re-election (and no one in my family wanted Nixon in any office of public trust). But, when the Watergate affair broke into the open and, again, virtually alone (at _that_ time) among my friends, I criticized Nixon and his people for being a gang of corrupt political hacks and seriously dangerous criminals, my friends tried to dismiss my crticisms as just partisan stuff; so I told them in no uncertain terms: I'd be equally opposed to and outspoken against any office-holder who dared to do such stuff as this-- and I had no doubt that Democrats were in no way immune from becoming similarly morally-lost. After all, the Viet Nam war was demonstrating that in most respects, there was little or no difference morally in Democrats and Reublicans. Nixon took over and super-charged the war from the disaster which Eisenhower and Kennedy first initiated and which Johnson then made catastrophic.

... "this is the criminal investigation of the Worst President Ever by the most credible law enforcement figure in this country,"...

Then why, a year on, are so many Americans--Left, Right and center, asking, "Where's the beef?!?"

... "his felonious henchmen, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller's investigation" ...

It happens that you ignore the fact that these charges have absolutely no connection legally with any illegality you claim Trump has or may have done and, thus, they in no way actually implicate Trump. Thus, bringing them up is irrelevant.

"the man in the oval office is a pathologically lying, corrupt, immoral worm"

All of which your preferred elites have and reguarly do excuse and ignore in any of those who have the key advantage of heing favored by them--the key and only advantage which Trump lacks.

What you and your ilk most revolt at is the idea that someone could actually become president without having passed through and gained your all-important imprimatur. The president can obviously be a pathologically lying, corrupt, immoral worm provided that he's your conceited bunch of self-appointed deciders' pathologically lying, corrupt, immoral worm.

And so, here, the only real problem is that he isn't quite that. Though he did put through the all-important tax-give-away to the richest, he just doesn't have the singing voice to belong in their choir.

______________________________

"Source: Strzok Hadn’t Seen Evidence Of Collusion After 10 Months On Russia Probe"
January 26th, 2018

The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

In the exchange with Page, Strzok was weighing whether to put in for a promotion at the FBI’s Washington Field Office or to go to work for Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who had been appointed special counsel two days before the text exchange.

If anyone had seen evidence of collusion by that point, it would have been Strzok. As deputy director for counterintelligence, he was picked to oversee the Russia investigation in July 2016, shortly after the release of the Democratic National Committee’s hacked emails.

One of Strzok’s tasks in the investigation was to conduct the Jan. 24, 2017, White House interview with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during that interview about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

Strzok believed early on in the investigation that Russia was behind the hack and release of Democrats’ emails. But he saw no compelling evidence that Trump, his family, or top officials in the campaign were involved in the email hacks, the source close to Strzok told TheDC.

As of May 2017, Strzok had not been persuaded that the investigation would be a major case, as it has been portrayed in the press. According to the source close to Strzok, he did not see evidence that the upper echelons of Trumpworld had committed a crime.

Additional information has emerged since Strzok’s text message, and it is not clear if it changed the investigator’s thinking about collusion.

In July, The New York Times reported on a previously-undisclosed June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians with some connections to the Kremlin.

Trump Jr. accepted that meeting after an acquaintance emailed him offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. The real estate executive was told that a Russian government attorney would provide the information, and he readily accepted the offer.

But Trump Jr. and the Russian attendees have denied that any information exchanged hands or that there was any follow-up to the meeting. It has been reported that Mueller’s team was not aware of the meeting until it was reported by the press.

Strzok would not have had much time to dig into that part of the investigation. That’s because he was removed from the Mueller team on July 27, after the Justice Department’s inspector general informed Mueller of Strzok and Page’s text messages.

http://amp.dailycaller.com/2018/01/26/source-strzok-hadnt-seen-evidence-of-collu...

Byron York: Justice Department withholds (i.e. from a Congressional oversight committee) majority of FBI texts
by Byron York | Jan 27, 2018, 9:59 AM

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-justice-department-withholds-majori...

Why is that still the case?

______________________

The Stormy Daniels outrage shows the media still don't get Trump and why he won
by Eddie Scarry | Jan 27, 2018, 12:01 AM

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-stormy-daniels-outrage-shows-the-media-sti...

______________________

This is the essence of the dilemma Trump faces:

"“Special Counsel Mueller is a (so-called) career professional respected by (President Trump's implacable enemies on) both sides of the aisle for (no) good reason, (merely because he happens to share their most deeply-held prejudices and biases--all of which predispose him to start from the assumption that Trump has to go, one way or another)” Mr. Tillis’s office said in a statement on Friday. “(Unlike Trump, he should be able to do his job without elected officials trying to score cheap political points for their own partisan gain) (and, just as important,) (h)e should be able to do his job without (certain House or Senate members'--) elected officials trying to score cheap political points for their own partisan gain --(demonstrating evidence of his (i.e. Mr. Mueller's) being squarely in the camp of those unalterably opposed to Trump).”


Senate Democrats Seek to Protect Mueller From Being Fired
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and EILEEN SULLIVANJAN. 26, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/us/politics/trump-mueller-fired-special-couns...

"One measure, sponsored in part by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, would require a judge’s review to ensure a special counsel is fired for cause and not for political reasons."

While, strangely enough, no such judicial review was thought necessary "to ensure a special counsel is hired for cause and not for political reasons."

______________________________________________

Republicans Have Four Easy Ways to #ReleaseTheMemo — and the Evidence for It. Not Doing So Will Prove Them to Be Shameless Frauds. by Glenn Greenwald and Jon Schwarz
at The Intercept, January 19, 2018,
10:23 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/republicans-have-four-easy-ways-to-releaseth...

“1. Trump can declassify anything he wants.
All classification by the U.S. government has no basis in laws passed by Congress (with one tiny exception that is irrelevant here (https://fas.org/sgp/library/quist/chap_4.pdf)). Rather, all classification is based on presidential executive orders, which rely on the president’s constitutional role as commander in chief of the armed forces. According to the Supreme Court (https://books.google.com/books?id=w_fiIQ20AIQC&lpg=PA15&ots=yxv7u8B89o&dq=%22authority%20to%20classify%20and%20control%20access%20to%20information%20bearing%20on%20national%20security%22&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q=%22authority%20to%20classify%20and%20con), the presidential power “to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from the constitutional investment of power in the president.”

That means presidents can also declassify anything they chose to — for any reason or no reason — as they have done in the past. George W. Bush, under pressure in 2004, declassified (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/ ) the section of the 2001 presidential daily brief headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Barack Obama declassified the Justice Department memos (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/us/politics/17detain.html) produced during the Bush presidency on the legality of torture.

Thus if the House Intelligence Committee merely releases a version of its memo without the supporting documentation, that won’t be just because they don’t want Americans to see it – it will be because Trump doesn’t want us to see it either. Note that GOP House members are insistent that releasing the memo and the underlying source material would not remotely harm national security” ...

“2. The House (and Senate) intelligence committees can declassify any material they possess.
According to the procedural rules of both houses of Congress, their intelligence committees can declassify material (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf) in their possession if the committee votes that such declassification would be in the public interest. It is then declassified after five days unless the president formally objects. If the president does object, the full chamber votes on the question.”

50 U.S.C. § 435

“SEC. 704. IDENTIFICATION, COLLECTION, AND REVIEW FOR DECLASSIFICATION OF INFORMATION OF ARCHIVAL VALUE OR EXTRAORDINARY PUBLIC INTEREST.

“(a) Briefings on Agency Declassification Programs.—(1) As requested by the Board, or by the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate or the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives, the head of any agency with the authority under an Executive order to classify information shall provide to the Board, the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate, or the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives, on an annual basis, a summary briefing and report on such agency's progress and plans in the declassification of national security information. Such briefing shall cover the declassification goals set by statute, regulation, or policy, the agency's progress with respect to such goals, and the agency's planned goals and priorities for its declassification activities over the next 2 fiscal years. Agency briefings and reports shall give particular attention to progress on the declassification of records and materials that are of archival value or extraordinary public interest to the people of the United States.

“(2)(A) The annual briefing and report under paragraph (1) for agencies within the Department of Defense, including the military departments and the elements of the intelligence community, shall be provided on a consolidated basis.

“(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘elements of the intelligence community’ means the elements of the intelligence community specified or designated under section 3(4) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401a(4)).

“(b) Recommendations on Agency Declassification Programs.—(1) Upon reviewing and discussing declassification plans and progress with an agency, the Board shall provide to the head of the agency the written recommendations of the Board as to how the agency's declassification program could be improved. A copy of each recommendation shall also be submitted to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“(2) Consistent with the provisions of section 703(k), the Board's recommendations to the head of an agency under paragraph (1) shall become public 60 days after such recommendations are sent to the head of the agency under that paragraph.

“(c) Recommendations on Special Searches for Records of Extraordinary Public Interest.—(1) The Board shall also make recommendations to the President regarding proposed initiatives to identify, collect, and review for declassification classified records and materials of extraordinary public interest.

“(2) In making recommendations under paragraph (1), the Board shall consider the following:

“(A) The opinions and requests of Members of Congress, including opinions and requests expressed or embodied in letters or legislative proposals, and also including specific requests for the declassification of certain records or for the reconsideration of declinations to declassify specific records.
“(B) The opinions and requests of the National Security Council, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other agencies.
“(C) The opinions of United States citizens.
“(D) The opinions of members of the Board.
“(E) The impact of special searches on systematic and all other on-going declassification programs.
“(F) The costs (including budgetary costs) and the impact that complying with the recommendations would have on agency budgets, programs, and operations.
“(G) The benefits of the recommendations.
“(H) The impact of compliance with the recommendations on the national security of the United States.
“(d) President's Declassification Priorities.—(1) Concurrent with the submission to Congress of the budget of the President each fiscal year under section 1105 of title 31, United States Code, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall publish a description of the President's declassification program and priorities, together with a listing of the funds requested to implement that program.

“(2) Nothing in this title shall be construed to substitute or supersede, or establish a funding process for, any declassification program that has been established or may be established by the President by Executive order.
“(e) Declassification Reviews.—(1) In general.—If requested by the President, the Board shall review in a timely manner certain records or declinations to declassify specific records, the declassification of which has been the subject of specific congressional request described in section 703(b)(5).
“(2) Authority of board.—Upon receiving a congressional request described in section 703(b)(5), the Board may conduct the review and make the recommendations described in that section, regardless of whether such a review is requested by the President.
“(3) Reporting.—Any recommendations submitted to the President by the Board under section 703(b)(5),sic shall be submitted to the chairman and ranking minority member of the committee of Congress that made the request relating to such recommendations.
“SEC. 705. PROTECTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION AND OTHER INFORMATION.
“(a) In General.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to limit the authority of the head of an agency to classify information or to continue the classification of information previously classified by that agency.
“(b) Special Access Programs.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to limit the authority of the head of an agency to grant or deny access to a special access program.
“(c) Authorities of Director of National Intelligence.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to limit the authorities of the Director of National Intelligence as the head of the intelligence community, including the Director's responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure as required by section 103(c)(6) of the National Security Act of 1947 (former 50 U.S.C. 403–3(c)(6)).
“(d) Exemptions to Release of Information.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to limit any exemption or exception to the release to the public under this title of information that is protected under subsection (b) of section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the ‘Freedom of Information Act’), or section 552a of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the ‘Privacy Act’).

“(e) Withholding Information From Congress.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the withholding of information from Congress.

“SEC. 706. STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES.

“(a) Liaison.—(1) The head of each agency with the authority under an Executive order to classify information and the head of each Federal Presidential library shall designate an employee of such agency or library to act as liaison to the Board for purposes of this title.

“(2) The Board may establish liaison and otherwise consult with such other historical and advisory committees as the Board considers appropriate for purposes of this title.

“(b) Limitations on Access.—(1)(A) Except as provided in paragraph (2), if the head of an agency or the head of a Federal Presidential library determines it necessary to deny or restrict access of the Board, or of the agency or library liaison to the Board, to information contained in a record or material, in whole or in part, the head of the agency or the head of the library shall promptly notify the Board in writing of such determination.

“(B) Each notice to the Board under subparagraph (A) shall include a description of the nature of the records or materials, and a justification for the determination, covered by such notice.
“(2) In the case of a determination referred to in paragraph (1) with respect to a special access program created by the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, or the head of any other agency, the notification of denial of access under paragraph (1), including a description of the nature of the Board's request for access, shall be submitted to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs rather than to the Board.

“(c) Discretion To Disclose. —At the conclusion of a declassification review, the head of an agency may, in the discretion of the head of the agency, determine that the public's interest in the disclosure of records or materials of the agency covered by such review, and still properly classified, outweighs the Government's need to protect such records or materials, and may release such records or materials in accordance with the provisions of Executive Order No. 12958 set out below or any successor order to such Executive order.

“(d) Discretion To Protect. —At the conclusion of a declassification review, the head of an agency may, in the discretion of the head of the agency, determine that the interest of the agency in the protection of records or materials of the agency covered by such review, and still properly classified, outweighs the public's need for access to such records or materials, and may deny release of such records or materials in accordance with the provisions of Executive Order No. 12958 ( See: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=3682 )or any successor order to such Executive order.

https://law.justia.com/codes/us/2010/title50/chap15/subchapvi/sec435/

and

http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-50-war-and-national-defense/50-usc-sect-3161.h...
________________________________________

for reference----------

Crooked, hypocritical politicians speak out--- 'Then' and 'Now' :

"What Kind of World Do You Want?
an address by Attorney General John N. Mitchell
before the annual "Law Day" Dinner of the Detroit Bar Association,
Raleigh House, Detroit, Michigan,
May 1, 1969

https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/08/23/05-01-1969b.pdf

(Excerpt)
… ...

"Society has a way of selecting symbols and it is no accident that some of the most violent demonstrations have occurred at some of our most highly regarded universities -­California, Wisconsin, Harvard, Cornell, Duke, Columbia -the universities to which we point with pride as among the leaders of our higher educational system.

"Furthermore, it is undeniable that, while violence-prone activists represent a small percentage of our students, some of their actions have struck a responsive chord to a whole generation: so responsive, in fact, that the activists receive at least tacit support or neutrality from many other students
...

"As Professor Freund said prophetically, a year ago, our students accuse us of hypocrisy: that our laws, while pretending to be equal, give preference to the rich; that our politics, while pretending to be honest, are tools for the influential; that our scientists, while pretending to be humanitarian, build machines of war; that our economic prosperity, while pretending to affluence, leaves some citizens hungry; that our religion, while pretending to be pious, is conveniently indifferent. I would be less than candid with you if I did not admit that their accusations are sometimes true. I cannot deny that the world of my generation may appear hypocritical to the generation of our sons. Neither do I deny that my father's generation appeared hypocritical to me as his father's did to him.

"What our sons must remember is that we have today in this nation more equality in the law, more honesty in politics, more ethics in science, more people employed and less people hungry, and more religious dedication to the problems of society than at any other period in our history and than in any other nation in the world.

"Our progress may be too slow for our sons. But it is good faith progress; and cautious advancement is no justification for destruction.

"A decade ago we saw the 'silent generation' going quietly from the university to earning a living.

"Today, we have the 'involved generation' who are interested in the problems of our society. They are active in civil rights, in poverty, in hunger, in education for the poor, in job retraining, and in partisan politics. I welcome this generation's demand that the university not be an extraterritorial community removed from society, but that it and its members deeply involve themselves with the problems of the day.

"But if they are to assume a role as adult activists in a community, they must also assume the obligations that go with adult citizenship. And one of the primary obligations upon which we exist is a simple maxim, carved above an entrance of the Justice Department in Washington, which says: "Law alone can give us freedom. Where law ends, tyranny begins."

"Campus militants, directing their efforts at destruction and intimidation, are nothing but tyrants.

"But there are others who share the blame by failing to act --university administrators must take firm and immediate action to protect the rights of faculty members to teach and of other students to learn. Faculty members should stop negotiating under the blackmail threat of violence.

"Apathetic students should stand up for the rights of those who wish to pursue civility and scholarship in the academic community. To the extent that they remain neutral or refuse to act,they are all accessories to the tyranny we are now witnessing."

____________________________________________

(excerpt)

(Opinion | The New York Times) “We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us”

(by Susan E. Rice, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama, 2009-2013 then White House National Seurity Advisor, July 2013 – January 2017)

" It is well documented that Americans are ever more divided: along party, ideological, socio-economic and cultural lines; by geographic, demographic, racial and religious differences. Our political polarization hampers our ability to tackle important national issues, whether immigration, infrastructure, timely budgeting or closing Guantánamo. The recent government shutdown and the looming threat of another underscore this problem.

"The same policy stagnation afflicts our ability to confront the most pressing threats to our security, from North Korea to the risk of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, from pandemic disease to Russian aggression. Our ability to counter such outside menaces is increasingly undermined by our collective failure to work together. Indeed, the most significant, long-term threat to our security may be our domestic political polarization.

"America’s adversaries exploit the vulnerability created by our dysfunctional democracy. Today, in contrast to Sept. 11, a terrorist attack is more likely to divide than unite us, as we saw after Benghazi, San Bernardino, Calif., and, most recently, Niger. This makes us an even more attractive target, as our enemies benefit not only from the initial attack but also from the lasting consequences of a more fractious, fragmented America.
… …

"Our divisions impede our ability to defend against foreign adversaries. Two of the three congressional investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election are foundering over partisan efforts to distract from mounting evidence supporting the intelligence community’s high confidence that such meddling occurred. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, and the F.B.I. have also been subjected to outrageous and dishonest assaults on their integrity and professionalism.
Even the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can’t agree on the Russian threat. The ranking Democrat, Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, recently released a well-documented report outlining how President Vladimir Putin of Russia has undermined democracy in his own country and in Europe. It contains smart recommendations on strengthening our security. But the committee’s majority declined to join in issuing the report.

"Now, with midterm elections just nine months away and the Russians seemingly undeterred, neither the administration nor Congress has taken discernible action to reduce our vulnerability to electoral interference. There appears little prospect that our leaders are ready to “put country over party,” even to confront the most serious foreign threat to our democracy since World War II.

"Domestic divisions are longstanding, but they are worsening to an extent not seen since the Vietnam era. Many factors have contributed: unregulated money in politics; partisan gerrymandering; cable news and social media, which allow us to filter the information we consume; and political segregation along geographic lines. All have accelerated the atrophy of the political center in favor of extremists on both left and right.

"We lack civil discourse across ideological boundaries, such that college professors issue trigger warnings and students seek to block campus speakers whose views they find noxious. And now we have a president who fuels political, racial and religious fissures from the White House bully pulpit and gives comfort to white nationalists. Worse, many of his congressional allies serially defend or ignore his behavior.

" know of no silver bullet to address our deepening domestic divisions. I do know we need to acknowledge and defeat them with the urgency a wartime adversary warrants. We need to demand leaders who aim to unite rather than divide us. We need to stop demonizing “the other,” and explain, listen and learn from one another. We need to teach our children, and reteach ourselves, that facts are facts. There is no eliding truth and falsehood.

"We need to know basic civics, our founding documents, how to think critically, and to distinguish the bogus from the truthful. We need social media to require truth in advertising, so that foreign adversaries can’t stoke discord undetected. We need to reform campaign finance and end gerrymandering. We need to fix our electoral vulnerabilities and hold our adversaries accountable, as bipartisan legislation just introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, and Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, rightly aims to do.

"Above all, we need to decide whether we want to remain the world’s pre-eminent power — a strong, cohesive beacon of democracy — or if we are content to allow our national autoimmune disorder, like a flesh-eating disease, to devour our body politic. President Trump’s State of the Union address next week has the potential to be pivotal. Some will no doubt be comforted if he somehow manages to strike a unifying tone. But what truly matters is whether his actions can finally match any short-lived words."

New Book: McCabe Initiated White House Meeting That Led To Leak |
This story gives a glimpse into how the original Russia narrative may have been spread around to overly compliant journalists and other members of the 'resistance.'

By Mollie Hemingway
January 29, 2018 (The Federalist)
____________________________________

The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story authored by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo was “bullsh-t.”
…

It was headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence” and was sourced to not one, not two, not three, but four “current and former American officials.” It was just like every other similar story Americans have read or seen in the past year — no indication that the three reporters had verified, much less seen, the underlying evidence, but lots of threatening language insinuating treasonous collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, all sourced to high-ranking but anonymous officials.

CNN’s Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto, and Evan Perez reported a very similar story, also sourced to anonymous officials. Sciutto is a former Obama administration appointee who is close to Obama administration officials. Perez has extensive ties to Fusion GPS, the Democrat-funded firm that created the Russia narrative.

McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this story was not true. Priebus pointed to the televisions that were going non-stop on the story. He asked if the FBI could say publicly what he had just told him. McCabe said he’d have to check, according to the book.

McCabe reportedly called back and said he couldn’t do anything about it. Then-FBI director James Comey reportedly called later and also said he couldn’t do anything, but did offer to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the matter later that week, suggesting they’d spill the beans publicly. You’ll never guess what happened next, according to the book:

'Now, a week later, CNN was airing a breaking news story naming Priebus. According to ‘multiple U.S. officials,’ the network said, ‘the FBI rejected a White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to U.S. intelligence.’

'Priebus was stunned by the implication that he was pressuring law enforcement. Had he been set up? Why was the FBI leaking this information when one of its top officials had initiated the conversation?'

Question:

Can you read and grasp the significance of the above? What does it suggest to you?

If you can't follow the implications of the elements in the above, it's an indication of how much trouble the the country is in.

To put our situation in the frame of the Nixon Watergate scandal, you have to imagine that, instead of winning re-election in 1972, Nixon lost and the unthinkable happened, Senator George McGovern became president.

Now, the Watergate break-in was already public knowledge (1) so, now, January of 1973, McGovern becomes the 38th president of the United States. Louis Patrick "Pat" Gray III, is Director of the F.B.I., having been appointed by Nixon the previous June and confirmed by the Senate.

Unlike the history that has come down to us, in this scenario, you have to imagine that Director Gray is a fully-committed supporter--not of McGovern, the new president, but rather fully-committed to Nixon's defense and protection from investigation and prosecution. Instead of vigorously investigating the clear connections between the Watergate break-in and the White House 'Plumbers,' the D-F.B.I. withholds files from Congressional committees investigating the affair. But, still more, it actually attempts to entrap and inculpate the McGovern White House, which it, through Gray's direction, is having investigated for presumably having attempted to win the election of 1972 through clandestine support from foreign states' leaders.

Despite there being virtually no actual credible evidence of this, Gray avidly persues the investigation because he knows that, unless he can discredit McGovern, the Watergate scandal may continue to come to light and, in the process, implicate many in the former Nixon administration--including members of the F.B.I., which had been a party to early use and sharing of "opposition research" on McGovern, who, remember, was never supposed to win the election.

So, there's no "Deep-throat" in the F.B.I.-- no second-in-command, Associate Director Mark Felt--to aid the press trying to uncover the facts of the still-largely-hidden scandal. Why? For one thing, to place the situation in today's framework, the near-totality of the national press is aligned, blatantly, openly, with Nixon and his now-out-of-power administration. So, instead of being a major factor in bringing the events of the Watergate to lignt, the national press, The New York Times, of Abe Rosenthal, The Washington Post of Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee, are squarely behind Nixon and his former administration staff---John Erlichman, H.R. Haldeman, Charles Colson, Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, the Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, James McCord--the press makes these men out to be heroes rather than a gang of clandestine operatives who tried and, incredibly, failed to keep McGovern from becoming president.

And Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox?-- (who is in the role of Robert Mueller here) --he's working hard to gather "proof" that McGovern is guilty of "collusion" with foreign agents in the course of the previous election. There's no Leon Jaworski because McGovern, who had considered firing Cox, actually didn't do so in the current scenario-- Nixon's many supporters (in both parties) in the House and Senate warned him (i.e. President McGovern) not to bother a hair on Cox's head while Cox works single-mindedly toward the false implication of McGovern in a wholly fabricated affair designed specifically to distract the public's attention from the Watergate scandal, now hanging over former President Nixon's head.

Today, just over a year later, it's nearly February, (1974)--and in the preceeding year, the new (President, McGovern), has been subjected

to this:

"...did anyone believe that in the year (1973) the losing side in an American election would immediately dub itself the “Resistance”—channeling the World War II nomenclature of the guerrilla campaign against the Nazi occupation of France? Or that the defeated candidate (Richard Nixon) would formally embrace the imagery of liberationist patriots fighting a Nazi-like (McGovern’s) occupation of the United States?

(continuing fronm the above citation) --

"One ingredient for removing a president would entail a nonstop effort by the opposition to use the courts, the legislative branch, the investigatory agencies, and the administrative state to discredit, undermine, and remove an elected government. In modern terms, that might entail opponents suing to challenge the legitimacy of the election, perhaps by charging in court that according to “experts,” voting machines were dysfunctional and thus some state tallies were null and void.

"The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states. It might also include an effort to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.

"A resistance might sue under the 25th Amendment to find the president non compos mentis, accompanied by a popular campaign to clinically diagnose the president as mentally unfit or physically decrepit. Or a resistance might use the courts to seek the removal of an elected president on grounds he was a rank profiteer and had violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution—or to file suits with cherry-picked liberal judges to delay and stop the president’s executive orders. On the petty side, an organized effort to discredit a president would range from boycotting the Inauguration to deliberately holding up and delaying confirmation of his appointees.

"In fact, in just (McGovern’s) first year we have seen all these things and more.

"Pop Culture Provocations

"Any “resistance” aimed at removing a president would also involve the proverbial street and popular culture. A good way might be to implant to such a degree the idea of killing or harming the president that it would become something more than just a sick fantasy, but become contextualized as an act of near patriotism across the broader culture. Celebrities accordingly might dream out loud at rallies of blowing up the White House. Or a movie star might announce to his audience his hopes for a repeat of a John Wilkes Booth-style assassination. Or a state legislator might post hopes that someone would kill the president. Or a rapper might release a video in which the president is shown shot. Or a comedian on camera might hold up a facsimile of the bloody severed head of the president. Or a New York troupe might perform public plays in which the president each evening is ritually stabbed to death.

"We might also see and hear ad nauseam from actors and other celebrities expressing desires to beat him to a pulp, or hang him, or shoot him—all the insidious efforts not of those easily disregarded as unhinged, but of those with public personas, and with the effect of incrementally normalizing violence against the president. Late night comedians might vie with each other in their profanity and scatology, ridiculing the president with references to him fellating a foreign leader. Who knows, a secret service agent might even post a brag that she would not be willing to “take a bullet” to defend the likes of this president. Or a left-wing zealot might think shooting Republican congressmen was doing his part to thwart the evil (McGovern) agenda.

"All that, too, transpired in (McGovern’s) first year.

"Red, anti-(McGovern) states might seek to nullify federal law, in the fashion that the states of the Old South insisted that they were not subject to federal jurisdictions. California, for example, might declare itself a sanctuary state, a declaration that would forbid federal immigration agents from enforcing fully the law. Or the states might incessantly sue the president’s administration on everything from immigration to environmental policy—such that every two weeks California is ritually filing a new suit in a friendly court to curtail federal government jurisdiction over state residents. The California governor might declare the president an immoral agent who had no fear of God, as grandees in his state talked of Calexit, a secession from the president’s United States. Or the California legislature might dream of subverting the new federal code curtailing state tax deductions in adolescent ways that would earn any taxpayer who tried such a con an IRS indictment.

"In fact, in just (McGovern’s) first year, we have seen all those efforts transpire as well.

"Control the Media, Control the Narrative

"In historian (Gary Allen’s) semi-serious ("None Dare Call It Conspiracy"), control of the media is essential to abort a leader’s term. Ideally, a resistance should hope to so influence or enlist popular television, radio, electronic media and print journalism to ensure that 90 percent of all coverage of the president would be classified as negative. Reporters would issue fake news reports, ranging from stories that the president deliberately phoned a foreign leader and threatened invasion, or in racist fashion had insulted minorities by removing the bust of a black civil rights icon from the West Wing. Some reporters would use on-air obscenity and scatology in expressing their hatred of the president, in efforts to normalize the once abnormal. The more theoretical would ponder the need to jettison disinterested reporting, claiming that the danger of (McGovern) justified biased coverage. The deep-state media might brand as believable a fake-news, tell-all book about the secret and private lives of the (McGovern) inner circle.

"All of that happened in 1973. And it’s still happening.

"What better way to derail a presidency would there be than to allow a blank-check special counsel to search out alleged criminal activity on the part of the president? We have seen FBI Director (Patrick Gray) confess that he deliberately leaked, likely illegally, confidential notes of a meeting with president (McGovern) to the media, with the expressed intent of creating a “scandal” requiring a “special counsel”—a gambit that worked to perfection when (Gray’s) close friend, former FBI Director (Cox*) was appointed.

"To facilitate those efforts, the counsel would appoint to his team several attorneys who despised the very target of their investigation. In fact, many special investigators have given generously to the campaign of (McGovern’s) past political opponent (Richard Nixon) and in at least one case had worked previously for the (Nixon) Foundation. Note that after nearly a year, the (Cox) investigation has not indicted anyone on collusion charges and is unlikely to. Rather, in special counsel trademark, low-bar fashion, it is seeking to indict and convict suspects for not telling the whole truth during interrogations, or violating other statutes. As (...)—once one of the FBI’s lead investigators in the (Cox) investigation—concluded of the “collusion” allegation to his mistress (...): there was “no big there there.”

"The FBI itself would have earlier trafficked in a fraudulent document funded by the (Nixon) campaign to “prove” (McGovern) and his team were such dangers to the republic that they required surveillance under FISA court warrants and thus should surrender their constitutional rights of privacy. The ensuing surveillance, then, would be widely disseminated among (Nixon) Administration officials, with the likely intent that names would be unmasked and leaked to the anti-(McGovern) press—again, in efforts to discredit, first, the (McGovern) campaign, and later the (McGovern) transition and presidency. A top official of the prior Department of Justice would personally consult the authors of the smear dossier in efforts to ensure that its contents would become useful and known.

"In fact, all that and more has already transpired.

"Subversion as Plain as Day

"Key officials of the prior government would likewise weigh in constantly to oppose the subsequent (McGovern) agenda and demonize their own president. (George H. W. Bush) (U.N. Ambassador), (Henry Kissinger) (National Security Advisor), and (Alexander Haig) (Deputy National Secruity Advisor) would warn the country of the threats posed by their successor, but fail to disclose that they had previously requested to view FISA surveillance of the (McGovern) team and to unmask the names of U.S. citizens which predictably soon appeared in media reports. Former Secretary of State (William P. Rogers), according to the Jerusalem Post, assured a prominent Palestinian government leader, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President (McGovern's) demands.” (Rogers) reportedly further assured the Palestinian representative that the president may not be in White House for much longer and would likely not complete his first term. In sum, the former American secretary of state all but advised a foreign government that his own president is illegitimate and thus to be ignored or resisted in the remaining time before he is removed.

"If any of these efforts were undertaken in (1969) to subvert the presidency of (Richard Nixon), popular outrage might well have led to criminal indictments. If Hollywood grandees had promised to do to (Richard Nixon) what they boast doing to (George McGovern), the entire industry would have been discredited—or given the Nixon investigatory treatment.

"Indeed, in many cases between (1969-1973), U.S. citizens the (Nixon) Administration found noncompliant with its agendas became targets of the IRS for their political activity or monitored by the Justice Department. The latter included reporters from the Associated Press and (Daniel Schorr) of (CBS) News. Many a journalist’s sources were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917. In another case, a filmmaker had his parole revoked and was scapegoated and jailed to advance a false administration narrative about the death of four Americans in (...). Still others were surveilled by using fraudulent documents to obtain FISA court orders.

"Everyone should be keen to distinguish conspiracies from conspiracy theories. The above are real events, not the tales told by the paranoid.

In contrast, unhinged conspiracy theorists, for example, might obsess yet again over the machinations of multibillionaire and leftist globalist bogeyman (David Rockefeller), and float wild yarns that he would fly to Davos to assure the global elite that he considers (McGovern) “a danger to the world,” while reassuring them that the American president was “a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 1976—or even sooner.” "

( a 'riff' on Victor Davis Hanson's commentary, "From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies," January 29, 2018)



_________________________

(1) "On June 17, 1972, just six weeks after Gray took office at the FBI, five men were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington, D.C..

Gray first learned of the Watergate break-ins on June 17 from Wes Grapp, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles field office."

* Admittedly, with Archibald Cox an avid Nixon defender and Special Prosecutor investigating "President McGovern" in the above counter-factual history, we cannot combine all the details in one and the same individual; thus, here, F.B.I. Director Pat Gray's "close friend," Archibald Cox--as Robert Mueller--cannot also be a stand-in as a former Director of the F.B.I. If only history had been otherwise and, instead of succeeding Patrick Gray, William Ruckelshaus had preceeded him as director of the F.B.I., and only then gone on to become, instead of Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor investigating Nixon's Watergate scandal, our counter-factual story as presented here would better cohere.

Now I see who Barney must have been referring to when he said someone was turning this group into a private blog!

I should add that I don't agree with Barney. I am free to choose to read or not read any posts, and I have no wish to prevent anybody posting if they feel the urge, as long as it is within the TOS.

SOTU will be interesting...

>17 John5918: I fully agree, jtf. It is difficult to fight back the urge to find some way to make sure the poster in question realizes NO ONE reads most of what he writes, but once we find inner peace, it is easy to just scroll down to a more interesting contributor.

"Lessons from history?"

and "Lessons from history"---

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." ...



-- Gerald R. Ford, Jr.
Remarks upon being sworn in as the 38th president of the United States,
August 9th, 1974.

One month later...



September 9, 1974

______________________

and, this, to reflect upon--

Why We’re Underestimating American Collapse
|| The Strange New Pathologies of the World’s First Rich Failed State by Umair Haque

_____________________

again, from the past:

"I am Richard II, know ye not that?" --Elizabeth I, of England to William Lambarde, August 4, 1601

"On August 4, 1601, William Lambarde 'presented her Majestie with his Pandecta of all her rolls, bundells, membranes, and parcells that reposed in her Majestie's Tower at London,' so goes the story, and as she turned over the pages, 'her Majestie fell upon the (text of the play--Edward Oxford's, writing as 'William Shakespeare,' as she herself well understood*) ("The) reign of King Richard II, saying , 'I am Richard II, know ye not that?' "

(Hist. Comm., Fourth Report (London, 1874) col. 300.) Cited in Campbell, Lily B., Shakespeare's 'Histories' : Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy, 1947, Huntington Library Publications, p. 191)

________________________

Queen Mary (Mary I) of England (Feb. 1516-Nov. 1558) , a confirmed Catholic, was an elder half-sister of Elizabeth the First (September 1533-March 1603) , the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boylen --which English Tudors often pronounced "BULL-en"-- and who would later succeed Mary as queen. Mary reigned only briefly-- from July of 1553 to November of 1558.

Since well before Mary's accession to the throne, England, Scotland and Wales were riven with religious strife between Catholics and Protestants. It produced bloody conflicts and Mary had many Protestants put to death in her relatively brief reign (earning her the nick-name "Bloody Mary") for their refusal to profess and adhere to Catholic doctrine just as, later, Protestants put many Catholics to death for refusing to follow the Church of England--the head of which was, first, King Henry VIII and, upon her succeeding Mary, Elizabeth the First.

So, owing to the circumstances of her birth, Elizabeth's very legitimacy as monarch (from Mary's death in November of 1558 ro Elizabeth's in March of 1603) was rejected, denied, or objected to (if only in private) by many Catholics and very seriously questioned by others of strict traditional sentiments and was for much of her reign until the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, a highly sensitive political issue among her counsellors and their peers, whether friendly or otherwise. The Catholics under Elizabeth's rule of course had to conceal their adherence to Catholicism since failure to attend the Protestant worship services was a serious and seriously-punishable criminal offense. (from May, 1559)

"Imp out our drooping country's broken wing,
Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt,
And make high majesty look like itself,
...

________________

* my notes or amendations to the original citation (as above between the parentheses).

>20 proximity1:

Thanks, proximity. I did enjoy reading this one, or at least the second part of it.

I believe failure to attend a protestant worship service on a Sunday remained an offence on the statute books (albeit not a serious one, with a fine of one shilling or something similar) until the 20th century.

Yes, protestants put many of us left-footers to death, but to be fair, we did the same to them whenever one of ours was in power.

On a slightly different tack, there was a recent TV programme in UK about the coronation of Elizabeth II, in which she was interviewed holding the crown and making some rather wry (or dry) humourous comments about it. Ironically the bloke who runs the coronation of the protestant monarch is none other than the Catholic Duke of Norfolk. 'Er Majesty (Gawd bless 'er) also talked us through the various stages of the coronation, one of which is a formal recognition or identification of the monarch-to-be, to ensure that s/he is not an impostor.

>20 proximity1: notes or amendations to the original citation

Uh, no. They were reading Lambarde’s Pandecta, not the text of some play. See the conversation or a more recent investigation.

Are there really any serious Oxfordians still?

>22 MMcM: Are there really any serious Oxfordians still?

No.

Things should not end with McCabe's dismissal. He should face a criminal investigation by prosecutors who aren't his hand-picked friends. There are plenty of them.

Fiat justitia ruat cælum.

__________________________

(from The National Review)


Hillary’s ‘Sure’ Victory Explains Most Everything

by Victor Davis Hanson || January 30, 2018 4:00 AM

Stretching or breaking the law on her behalf would have been rewarded by a President Clinton.

What exactly were top officials in the FBI and DOJ doing during the election of 2016?

The Page-Strzok text exchanges might offer a few answers.
Or, as Lisa Page warned her paramour as early as February 2016,
at the beginning of the campaign and well before the respective
party nominees were even selected:

One more thing: she (Hillary Clinton) might be our next president.
The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear.
You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?

The traditional way of looking at the developing scandals at the FBI and among holdover
Obama appointees in the DOJ is that the bizarre atmospherics from candidate and President
Trump have simply polarized everyone in Washington, and no one quite knows what is going on.
Another, more helpful, exegesis, however, is to understand that if we’d seen a Hillary Clinton
victory in November 2016, which was supposed to be a sure thing,
there would now be no scandals at all.

That is, the current players probably broke laws and committed ethical violations not
just because they were assured there would be no consequences but also because
they thought they’d be rewarded for their laxity. On the eve of the election, the New York Times
tracked various pollsters’ models that had assured readers that Trump’s odds of winning
were respectively 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent, and less than 1 percent. Liberals howled
heresy at fellow progressive poll guru Nate Silver shortly before the vote for daring to
suggest that Trump had a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College. Hillary
Clinton herself was not worried about even the appearance of scandal caused by transmitting
classified documents over a private home-brewed server, or enabling her husband to shake
down foreign donations to their shared foundation, or destroying some 30,000 emails. Evidently,
she instead reasoned that she was within months of becoming President Hillary Clinton and
therefore, in her Clintonesque view of the presidency, exempt from all further criminal exposure.
Would a President Clinton have allowed the FBI to reopen their strangely aborted
Uranium One investigation; would the FBI have asked her whether she
communicated over an unsecure server with the former president of the United States?

According to a FOX News report, the F.B.I.'s Inspector General has informed members of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee that the bureau has been able to recover all the "lost" or "missing" text messages from a five-month period from December, 2016 to May 2017 between two F.B.I. employees involved in the bureau's so-called Russian election-influence probe and the Clinton private home e-mail server matter.

That should produce a wealth of interesting data on what was going on in these two related affairs.

___________________

A side note to reply to >23 AsYouKnow_Bob: and >22 MMcM:

First, post 23 is sheer nonsense. In what's known as the "Shakespeare Authorship Question", the ranks of people holding the Oxfordian view-- Edward, Earl of Oxford as the pseudonymous "Shakespeare" --grow with each passing year. The Stratfordians know this and it worries them--because many Stratfordians cannot help but recognize themselves as intellectual frauds. What they fear is that this recognition may become the prevailing view.

As for post 22, the issue here regarding the import of Elizabeth's remark is one that divides Stratfordians themselves to the extent that there is any current difference of opinion about it. Unitl this alleged "recent" investigation, the view among most Stratfordian "scholars" did not dispute the significance of the Lambarde conversation.

The trouble now--or, since that time-- is that Oxfordians have been able to make better sense of the conversation as supporting their intepretation of authorship.

It is completely typical of Stratfordians' disingenuity that this article should be cited in support of their claims. Read it. It does not in general support the conclusion that is implied above. As is usual from Stratfordians, post 22's author depends on readers' general ignorance and their not taking the trouble to actually read the sources cited. Unfortunately, that expectation is often proved out in fact: readers very often simply don't know and don't care to trouble themselves to find out.

LOL!!

"The Final Year", the greatest Crash-and-Burn story caught on film since--well, since this:



the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg calls at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in Manchester Township, New Jersey, May 6, 1937.

____________________________________

FERGUSON: The Final Hagiography of the Obama Team
4:00 AM, Feb 02, 2018 | By Andrew Ferguson
http://www.weeklystandard.com/ferguson-the-final-hagiography-of-the-obama-team/a...

The Final Year (2017)
1h 29min | Documentary | 19 January 2018 (USA)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7215444/

Message hidden because you blocked the member (show)

>27 timspalding:

F.Y.I. Tim,

In fact, despite this following (appearing on my page):

"Message hidden because you blocked the member (show)"

1) Not only had I not "blocked"your profile/messges---I was not even aware that this was possible; on the contrary, I was under the impression that regular members of LT cannot block your posts/profile.

and, perhaps more interesting, for the very first time in my experience here

2) where, normally, the "(show)" appears in blue-hyperlink format, above, it does not. Instead, it's plain B&W with no functionality --

So I am not able to read what >27 timspalding: says. And, thus, cannot respond to it.

How's _that_ for dialogue?!

;^(

P.

_____________________________

P.S. Just wondering-- is this post "visible" to others? Could a participant ( whose posts I don't ignore) please respond to let me know? Thank you.

Worth reading/ listening to:

DiGenova: FBI Thinks They Can Defy Government Oversight, Are Independent Of The Executive

Posted By Ian Schwartz || On Date February 1, 2018

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/01/digenova_fbi_thinks_they_can_d...

Joe diGenova is a former U.S. Attorney.

______________

Reporter Kimberley Strassel was exactly right when she wrote in The Wall Street Journal (Opinion pages) (https://www.wsj.com/articles/memo-reading-for-nonpartisans-1517530297),

Feb. 1, 2018 7:11 p.m. ET

"The White House looks set to release the House Intelligence Committee memo on 2016 government surveillance abuses, which means the attacks on the document by Democrats, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the media are going to get wilder. To help navigate through the spin, here’s a handy guide for what to look for, and what to ignore: " ...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/memo-reading-for-nonpartisans-1517530297

Under U.S. law National Security Act, (1947) , the president of the United States is vested with original, primary authority to classify as "restricted," "secret," or "top secret" information obtained and held by the U.S. government, its agents and departments and offices and to declassify such previously classified information-- at his personal and sole discretion. The president does not need the approval of Congress, its committees or, still less, subordinate agencies of the executive branch--of which he is the chief officer. Nor does the president need the approval or opinion of a court or of the FISA court.

>27 timspalding:

Tim, I have to say I'm a bit confused by this post.

>30 John5918: I can't speak for Tim, but what he posted is what I see on the majority of posts in this thread. ;)

>31 .Monkey.:

Actually, me too!

>28 proximity1: I think he's trying to say that he's blocked your posts.

I find >27 timspalding: the most sensible post on this thread so far.

>35 Collectorator: Thank you for prompting me. I had not thanked Mr. Spalding for being my puppetmaster--probably because with him around I no longer need to think for myself. Thanks Uncle Tim.

>33 jjwilson61: & >35 Collectorator:

Oh! (Homer S. head-slap) "Doh!" Of course, that's it. Yes, now I see. Thank you! I should'a, ourght'a etc.

Of course. He's blocked my posts so he needn't see them. I knew this and didn't imagine that this was simply a reminder--as though I needed one--that he blocks my posts.

Good job, Tim! I, too, block numerous participants' posts.

I see the Republicans' House memo--ALL committee Democrats voted against allowing its release--was released. So, obviously, the Republic shall surely fall to ruin in the next few hours or minutes.

I cannot recall a single case during the whole of the Watergate affair where the House Judiciary Committee or Senate select committee on Watergate voted on a strictly partisan line to do or refuse to do something. In every case without exception Republicans, loyal to the idea that government was a two-party matter and that credible evidence of very serious malfeasance and crimes done from the White House meant that they wereobligated on principle to join their Democratic party opponents to get at the truth. Throughout stubborn denials and refusals from the White House--our use of "stone-walling" comes from this episode--Republican House and Senate members-- Sens. Howard Baker, Lowell Weicker and Edward Gurney taught living lessons in genuine statesmanship. I was fucking proud of what the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, were doing jointly. What a rare and long gone experience that was! Today, when Democrats ought to be serving the interests of non-partisan justice and helping Republicans discover the truth and facts about what appears to have been the most serious abuse of Executive branch power since Nixon's administrations--I refer to the Obama White House and its misuse of the Department of Justice--they're nowhere to be found outside of the ranks of those trying to keep the truth from coming out. They're going to fail in that effort just as Nixon's efforts to thwart the investigations, with Erlichman, Haldeman, John Mitchell and others, failed.

But today, unlike Republicans then--those on Peter Rodino's House Judiciary Committe and Sam Ervin's Senate Select Committee on Watergate, who acquitted themselves admirably in a time of similar political strife, Democrats are writing a very dark page in their annals.

All seventeen Republicans voted that transcripts satisfied the subpoena for recordings; John Conyers joined them. Does that mean it wasn't partisan?

>28 proximity1: I can see your post, posts.

Another dud.

Beware right wingers blatting hyperbole. The whole "release the memo" crowd probably wish they were walking down 5th Ave. right now so Trump could put themout of their misery.

But. . .but. . .I'm totally vindicated!!!

Sure you are. Take it easy fella. Wouldn'tcha know, two of 'em round the bend.

But. . .But. . .I gave them $1.50 more a week! What do these people want from me, anyway?

Release the memo just morphed into "delete the tweet."

Courage, mon brave, even tho' there's not a spine to be found among you. Here, drink this.

Whatizzit?

Kool-Aid.

Uh, thanks.

>38 MMcM:

RE: "All seventeen Republicans voted that transcripts satisfied the subpoena for recordings; John Conyers joined them. Does that mean it wasn't partisan?"

Well, let's see what I actually wrote:

( >37 proximity1: "I cannot recall a single case during the whole of the Watergate affair where the House Judiciary Committee or Senate select committee on Watergate voted on a strictly partisan line to do or refuse to do something." )

So, if your question, in "response" to my point: that there was not a single case of motion adopted or declined on a strictly partisan line vote, is

"Does that* mean it wasn't partisan?"

then---well, here's a reasoning-problem challenge for you: Can you figure out the correct answer based on the information so far mentioned here?

Well, can you?

____________________________

* i.e. a vote in which one or more members of the two main parties is found among both those answering "aye" and those "nay."

P.S.

Though I don't know that you could have had time to check every committee vote, the implication here in your post is that, (LOL!) no, upon searching for an example, you couldn't come up with a single case of a strictly party-line vote on any motion in committee.

Had you actually found one, who here doubts that you'd have posted the example rather than your next-best effort?

Thank you for helping me make my point.

>39 fuzzi:

Thank you for that confirmation.

>41 proximity1:

No, I did not search for this vote, I remembered it. As I think many people of a certain age will, since it is an important link in a chain leading to United States v. Nixon.

Anyway, just for others who might be less familiar because they are too young or grew up elsewhere, but still understand parliamentary maneuvers, I believe that the reason Rep. Conyers voted against this motion (to send the letter) was that he had his own motion to cite the President for contempt of Congress. Not that he thought Nixon in compliance with the subpoena, much less that the transcripts exonerated him. He thought his fellow Democrats didn't go far enough.

Moreover, in an interview the next day on the Today show, Vice-President Ford was asked whether he thought the investigation was partisan. To which he gave, it's true, a vague but hopeful answer in the negative. He also reiterated his conviction that the transcripts, which he hadn't finished reading, vindicated Nixon. Such statements led Rep. Bingham to call for the abolition of the office, as suggested by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in an op-ed that Bingham had entered into the record the day before.

There would indeed come a time when the Republicans would realize that Nixon was a lost cause. But that time was not here yet.

ETA: Sub-head for front-page of Washington Post, May 1, 1974: Initial Reaction on Hill Divided Along Party Lines.
Getty images caption:

Representative Peter Rodino (D-N.J.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, holds a letter May 1, 1974 that the panel will send to President Nixon. The committee, in a narrow vote along party lines, agreed to inform Nixon that his production of transcripts instead of tapes was not in 'full compliance' with the group's subpoena and it still wants the 42 White House recordings.

Added much later for the record: the original vote on the subpoena itself was twenty-one to seventeen, unquestionably along party lines.

>5 proximity1:

I'm still laughing. Harder.
What just blew up in whose face?
Release-the-Memogate
Even Trey Gowdy wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. Oh, he's a quitter, too. What's that make it? 35 Republicans who won't be seeking re-election in '18 because being linked to Trump is poison. They put down the Kool-Aid.

>42 proximity1: you're welcome. I don't generally visit this area due to the inability of some to discuss differences in a rational and civil manner, but stumbled upon this thread by accident.

If you're looking for intelligent and well-researched articles about news and politics, I can recommend one site in particular. A recent article about "the memo" can be found here:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/02/tip-of-the-iceberg-the-pending-i...

>45 fuzzi: Can't find a reasonable argument here, got to conservativetreehouse, or kukluxkangaroo.com, or http//exterminatethebrutesproperlythistime.com, etc. I have to go shit in your tree house now, fuzzi.

You just proved my point. Some people just can't handle anyone having a different point of view. Back on block you go.

I proved that I don't need sites that advertise their bias, nor people who drop in here to take cheap shots at anonymous targets.

The sanest take I've seen on this whole sordid drama is this:

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/03/biggest-nunes-memo-revelations-have-little...

....If you only just started paying attention to U.S. politics in 2017 what I’m about to tell you will blow your mind, so you might want to sit down for this: believe it or not, there was once a time when both of America’s mainstream political parties weren’t screeching every single day that there was news about to break any minute now which would obliterate the other party forever. No Russiagate, no Nunes memo, no Rachel Maddow red yarn graphs, no Sean Hannity “tick tock,” no nothing. People screaming that the end is nigh and it’s all about to come crashing down were relegated to street corners and the occasional Infowars appearance, not practicing mainstream political punditry for multimillion dollar salaries on MSNBC and Fox News.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Americans are starting to look critically at the power dynamics in their country, but the partisan filters they’ve pulled over their eyes are causing mass confusion and delusion. Now everyone who questions the CIA is a Russian agent and the term “deep state” suddenly means “literally anyone who doesn’t like Donald Trump.” Your take on the contents of the Nunes memo will put you in one of two radically different political dimensions depending on which mainstream cult you’ve subscribed to, and it will cause you to completely miss the point of the entire ordeal.
...
There are some problems with the “BOOM! Bigger than Watergate!” exclamations that pro-Trump partisans have been parading around about this, however. The first is that the memo is only an internal communication between Republican congressmen; it’s not a sworn testimony or legal transcript or anything legally binding. It’s basically just some Republican ideas about what happened. The assertions made therein are reportedly being hotly contested by Democrats with knowledge of the situation, which is in turn being disputed by Republicans.

Another thing putting a damper on the GOP’s “KABOOM!” parade is the fact that the memo’s contents are not even entirely new; CNN reported way back in April of last year that sources had informed them that the Steele dossier had been used to get a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign. Additionally, even if every single allegation in the memo is true, the revelations are still arguably far less earth shattering than the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 exposing the NSA’s sprawling domestic espionage network....

Nonetheless, there have been some extremely important revelations as a result of this memo; they just haven’t come from the contents of the memo itself. In the same way that cybersecurity analysts observe the metadata underlying hacked files rather than the contents of the files themselves, political analysts have been pointing out that a lot can be learned about the political establishment by looking at its response to the possibility of the memo’s release.

“Memo is clearly not a blockbuster. We can tell so by reading it. Which makes Dems’ frantic efforts to prevent anyone from reading it seem even more bizarre,” observed TYT’s Michael Tracey. “Veracity of memo’s claims aside, we were told that its release would undermine the rule of law. So, just checking: is the rule of law still in tact?” he added later.

“Now it is clear to all,” WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange tweeted. “The claims about how the ‘Nunes’ memo would destroy ‘national security’ were lies. Classification stickers are used by bureaucrats trying to obtain ‘political security’ for their cronies.”

“One effect of the memo – it’s an example of how extensively we overclassify information,” wrote National Review’s David French. “I’m highly dubious that any information disclosed threatens national security in any way, shape, or form. I’d be willing to bet the Dem response is similarly harmless. Release it.”

Indeed, both the FBI and high-profile Democrats have been claiming that the memo’s unredacted release would pose a national security threat, with California Congressman (and virulent Russiagater) Eric Swalwell going so far to call it “brainwashing.” A CNN panelist wandered completely off the paddock and suggested that yesterday may have been America’s last day as a democracy. Why were they all flipping out so hysterically over a release of information that plainly poses no threat to the American people?

In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?”

Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about?
...

(by all means, continue!)
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/03/biggest-nunes-memo-revelations-have-little...
(and see also Ray McGovern's input in the comments below)

(As an aside: Looks like Johnstone has managed to win her way into the Consortium stable, now under new management -- presumably by the late Robert Parry's son Nat -- with this eulogy: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/this-deeply-held-commitment-a-meditation-on-t...
For good or ill, I can't yet say: Johnstone is a lightning rod. )

This from (Jill Stein's running-mate) Ajamu Baraka is worth reading as well:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/02/liberal-totalitarianism-and-the-trump-diversi...

Over two weeks ago, Business Insider reported that Russian Twitter bots were promoting "release the memo".

Hamilton 68 is tracking content and themes being promoted by Russian influencers online, including attributed sources such as RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik, as well as Twitter accounts that are involved in promoting Russian influence and disinformation goals. Looks like a good site to watch.

ETA Business Insider article about the people behind the Hamilton 68 project.

Oh, good! Nunes' propaganda pamphlet release went so well that he announces there are 5 more in his pipeline. Republicans must be delighted; there's no question Mueller is salivating.

Donald Trump will continue to act like a man who was "totally vindicated" by Memo #1, but no one will believe it. Sad. Maybe he's just having another of his frequent vocabulary moments. This one being his belief that "totally vindicated" means the same thing as "thoroughly implicated."

Mr. "Totally Vindicated's" lawyers lack the belief in their client's snow whiteness that he has of himself. They don't want him to sit in the same room with Mueller and his team and answer any questions about what did he know and when did he know it. Even with them sitting right beside him. Or, maybe they are the ones who don't want to be in a room with Mueller, as a matter of conscience.

Start a pool:

Who'll be criminally indicted first? Donald Trump? James Comey? Hillary Clinton? Loretta Lynch? John Podesta? Eric Holder? Susan Rice? Barack Obama?

The youngsters who worked for the agency that gave technical assistance to Clinton's campaign and helped her run the home-based e-amil server?

Those on her campaign who took hammers and blow-torches to various networked devices which were the repositories of potentially-incriminating messages?

>53 proximity1:

"Totally Vindicated" Occupant's lawyers know he's guilty on conspiracy to obstruct justice (not to mention money laundering, but NY DAs have that case) and their boss will commit perjury if questioned by Mueller.

But lie he will. And the lawyers know it. What does that tell you about your president?

Never in the history of justice has a lawyer advised a white collar criminal not to defend himself when he is innocent and has the means to prove it on questioning. But here are Trump's lawyers admitting publicly that their guy is both too stupid and too psychologically maladjusted to avoid lying when faced by Special Counsel.

And now Dear Leader wants himself a military parade. He's so delusional, he can't decide if he's Nero or Caligula, or if he's Mussolini's great nephew, or Jong-un's twin.

>54 Limelite:

"Never in the history of justice has a lawyer advised a white collar criminal not to defend himself when he is innocent and has the means to prove it on questioning."

Right. And even quite innocent people who are not so fortunate to have "the means to prove (their innocence--though, legally, they should not have to do that) on questioning" have often been counselled to accept a plea-bargain (in the U.S. where this is permitted) rather than risk being convicted and sent away on a long sentence for a crime which they did not commit.

RE: "But here are Trump's lawyers admitting publicly that their guy is both too stupid and too psychologically maladjusted to avoid lying when faced by Special Counsel."

Uhm, where are Trump's lawyers doing this? You neglected to post a source for that claim. Maybe it's based on the ladies at ABC's "The View"?

RE : "But lie he will. And the lawyers know it. What does that tell you about your president?"

I prefer to wait and see if, in the case you allege, he actually does lie. Then, should that happen, we can discuss it.

>55 proximity1: >56 Collectorator:

I enjoy following the NYT, WSJ, and IBT to name just a handful of my go-to sources. Yes, that's a hint. I guess you would know about The View. My TV stays on NBC cable stations and C-SPAN for information. Perhaps you get your media opinions from WWE, FOX, and BLAZE?

As to sources regarding Trump's lying under oath, I'll let you find them. They're all over the Internet. Google is your friend. Ditto his lawyers' opinions of their client. And consult your own life (when it's listening to credible reporting, or when you're reading substantiated web sites (not Breitbart, Infowars, & Reddit, of course). If your memory fails you, many legitimate news sources are keeping ticker counts of Trump's lying since inauguration day. Well OVER 1,000 so far.

Why do you suppose Wingnuts are foaming at the mouth over "perjury trap"? Why do you suppose the Trump Crime Family and its henchmen, as well as the Rabid Right, and Trump's puppet masters are putting out all these diversionary schemes. I mean, how klugy is the "Release the Memo" movement, created by Russian trolls and repeatedly touted by State TV mouthpiece, Dean Hannity?
The gang that couldn't shoot straight were expert marksmen in comparison to the Trump coterie and their campaign to discredit the Dept. of Justice, the FBI, and the IC.

The hypocrisy of Trump supporters who stake claims on family values, fiscal conservancy, law and order, homeland security, and "patriotism" has been exposed for what it is. Enthusiasm for white supremacy; moral rot; no tax but spend spend spend; corrupt law enforcers (Joe Arpaio) and judges (Roy Moore), and law makers ( most recognizable and recent -- Craig, Stevens, DeLay, Crapo, Renzi, Vitter, Rogers, Issa); border wall building; false flag-wrapping, religious testing, gun worshipping.

But then, you're fine with that and lie about it. Just like Trump.

>57 Limelite:

"As to sources regarding Trump's lying under oath, I'll let you find them. They're all over the Internet. Google is your friend. Ditto his lawyers' opinions of their client."

LOL!! :

D.A. : "Your honor, the prosecution asks that Exhibit C, with its sub-parts numbers 1 through 89, be entered in the record."

Defense: "Objection, your honor."

Court: " Mr. _(D.A.)_____, 'Google' may be your friend, but it is no friend of this court. Objection sustained. "

D.A. : "Exception."

Court: "Noted. Next?"

______________________________

"The gang that couldn't shoot straight were expert marksmen in comparison to the Trump coterie and their campaign to discredit the Dept. of Justice, the FBI, and the IC."

Actually, this attempted comparison of yours is rightly applied not to Trump and his gang but, rather, to Obama, and the Clanton--excuse me--the Clinton gang.

Strange: Unlike of The Tombstone Epitaph of yore ('once upon a time in the west'), today's press is now backing the modern-day counterparts of the Clantons and the McLaurys against Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp and John "Doc" Holliday.

"O tempora o mores", huh? LOL!

RE:

"The hypocrisy of Trump supporters who stake claims on family values, fiscal conservancy, law and order, homeland security, and "patriotism" has been exposed for what it is. Enthusiasm for white supremacy; moral rot; no tax but spend spend spend; corrupt law enforcers (Joe Arpaio) and judges (Roy Moore), and law makers ( most recognizable and recent -- Craig, Stevens, DeLay, Crapo, Renzi, Vitter, Rogers, Issa); border wall building; false flag-wrapping, religious testing, gun worshipping.

But then, you're fine with that and lie about it. Just like Trump."

--- Blah, blah, blah.

Indeed? Well, I do despise hypocrites.

Fiat justitia, ruat cælum ---for all concerned, Arpaio, Moore, etc. and the press.

I, not you, state what I'm "fine with." (LOL!) There'll be plenty of time for me to be concerned about my moral-alignment if and when it should happen that I start to find myself in accord with the views of the likes of you.

Of course you're self-satisfied. As is Trump. Of course you attack Obama, still the most popular president whose ACA is the best legislation for our nation's health since SS. As does Trump. Of course you attack me for not spoon-feeding you links that you can find and read, but you won't because you can't face the reality of being proven wrong. Just like Trump can't be bothered reading the 10pp Democratic Memo of Correction and Repudiation to the Nunes Propaganda Pamphlet, "It's too loooonng."

I strew your thread with verified Truth and non-alternative Facts, and you react as expected. Just like Trump.

How The Media Buried Two Huge FBI Stories Yesterday (The Federalist)
|| Two explosive stories about the FBI's handling of the probe into Russia and the Trump campaign were downplayed by a suddenly incurious press corps. ||


By Mollie Hemingway
February 8, 2018

"For more than a year and a half, the media have gone all-in on reporting every possible angle of President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. No story update has been too small, no encounter with a Russian too inconsequential, and no anonymous source too sketchy to generate outsize coverage and histrionic claims from major media.

"But as the Russian collusion story disintegrates, another interesting story ascends. Investigations by multiple congressional committees as well as an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Justice have shown irregularities in the handling of the most politically sensitive probes in recent memory: the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information while secretary of State and the investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged nefarious ties with Russia to meddle in a U.S. election." ...

________________________________

Who Is Christopher Steele? (The Wall Street Journal)
|| The man who revealed a vast international conspiracy but didn’t know his own client. ||

By Kimberley A. Strassel, Feb. 8, 2018 7:15 p.m. ET

“America has been inundated by the words dossier, memo, collusion, FISA, Carter Page. They all come back to the actions of one man: Christopher Steele. Which is why the only news that matters this week is that the former British spy’s credibility has been dismantled.
“To the extent the U.S. press has focused on Mr. Steele, it has been to portray him in heroic epic style. A Washington Post profile told how Mr. Steele, a former MI6 agent who left in 2009 to start his own firm, felt 'professional obligations' to take his dossier to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s how 'worried' and 'rattled' and “alarmed” he was about the Trump -Kremlin “plot.” The FBI welcomed this “well-trusted” source, who had provided information in the past, as a 'peer'—only later to let our hero down.

“This is the narrative put forward by Mr. Steele and his paymaster, Fusion GPS. They and their press friends have an obvious interest in propagating it. But the new facts about Mr. Steele’s behavior destroy this tale, and show how badly the FBI got snookered.” …

>58 proximity1:

Prosecutor: So why, proximity, do you need someone else to do your research for you when it is so easy for you to find on your own.

Judge: Verdict ready: Logorrhea in vaccum. Sentence: proceed as you wish.

>60 proximity1: Two explosive stories about the FBI's handling of the probe into Russia and the Trump campaign were downplayed by a suddenly incurious press corps. ||

Most journalists can tell when they're trying to be played.

>62 jjwilson61:

LOL! Yeah, tell it to "The View" (ABC News), The New York Times, CNN, and other major MSM which have had to dismiss some of their "star" reporters for gross incompetence in fact-gathering and checking.

You (almost) never fail to amuse, JJ.

Russia Investigation Blows Up in the Faces of 13 Russians. One America pleads guilty to colluding by means of knowingly selling bank accounts and identities to enemy players.

Meanwhile Dur Hairbrained goes berserk on Twitter as his mental illness explodes in the face of Tweeters who still read his twitty tweets. Begins to choke on "hoax." Brain muddled over irrefutable "meddled."

Indictment states Russian defendants’ operations were “supporting the presidential campaign of them-candidate Donald J. Trump.” Il Capo Narancia turns green, knowing he didn't win the election -- the Russians did. Now knows Americans believe he is illegitimate president.

The Russians didn't spend $1M a month trying to make him prez by corrupting purple states' elections, Bernie Sanders' and Jill Stein's campaigns, and political rallies with advertisements, Internet trolls, fake identities, and Russian agents on the ground without affecting the outcome of the election. They were successful in affecting the outcome of the election, they even bragged about how cheap it was for them to be successful beyond what they imagined. None of it would have been possible without the knowledge and cooperation, i.e. collusion of the Trump campaign.

Ask Steve Bannon and Richard Gates. That's right! the indictments came after Bannon appeared before Mueller for 20 hours last week. And guess what! Gates has flipped like a hot cake on the flattop and will be spilling his guts to Mueller any day now.

Lift a cold one in salute -- it's Mueller Time!

P.S. Historians have already rated The Donald as the Worst President Ever after only a year in office. While, at the same time, President Obama's presidential ranking soars. Look it up yourself. HAPPY PRESIDENTS' DAY

>64 Limelite: None of it would have been possible without the knowledge and cooperation, i.e. collusion of the Trump campaign.

All of it would have been possible without the cooperation of Trump. I suspect real history is going to record him as a hard-to-move object that was handled to achieve what little wasn't random stupidity. Even the Trump campaign I think is going to be largely independent of the Russians; maybe Steve Bannon did something exceptionally stupid in that field, but the astroturfing the Russians were doing was cheap and low-risk, and I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of Russian collusion. The Russians probably saw in advance what we see right now; Trump's campaign would lie about stupid things and leak information, so directly working with them was just going to be trouble.

>65 prosfilaes:

Good thing, then, that collusion isn't the only crime Mueller is investigating but is the only crime Trump claims he's vindicated from. Don't be misled by his twittering. None of us have any idea what Mueller has discovered, in fact, except that he has meddling pinned to Russian organized crime with such surety that the Orangeman no longer clings to the hope of hoax.

Just because we don't know who those 13 are, doesn't mean that Trump and his minions don't, nor does it mean that Mueller doesn't know the connection between them and The Usual Suspects.

Even if you and I don't see the direct links is no more surprising that neither you nor I -- nor anyone else -- knew that Mueller knew and had indicted those 13 Russians and three entities. That was a total surprise.

Look, we're dealing with a manipulating criminal in Trump. Look at the machinations he went through to hide his pay-off to the porn star. Fake shell company. Payment to a fake name, not her "professional" name. Payment through a cutout. Tax fraud, tax fraud, tax fraud and conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Plus a cover-up of tax fraud. No 1099 and "payment" to a fake name.

Al Capone was a gangster over and above being found guilty of tax evasion. Trump is a treasonous crook over and above being as guilty as Al Capone.

>64 Limelite:

"The Russians didn't spend $1M a month trying to make him prez by corrupting purple states' elections, Bernie Sanders' and Jill Stein's campaigns, and political rallies with advertisements, Internet trolls, fake identities, and Russian agents on the ground without affecting the outcome of the election."

Actually, yes--if they did all that--it was, in fact, and despite your claims, "without affecting the outcome of the election". Even "your" preople admit this. That's now part of the record.

But, go ahead if you like: claim that, as a whole, American voters are so stupid, so gullible, so easily led, that Russia, a state which, in so many other respects is hardly getting along, can round up a few internet troll-talents, spend a few million USD., and in a matter of a few months, overturn and thwart the combined efforts of a ten-year long, carefully-planned Hilliary Clinton juggernaut in concert with the virtual totality of the power's-ass-kissing Mainstream news organizations and organized money and all the polling and public-relations talent that ship-loads of billionaires' cash can buy, make a laughing-stock of the U.S. electoral processes which, before the Russians ever got involved, Hilliary and Obama had already corrupted.

Yes, go with that. Is suits you and the public you defend and salute.

There was _no_ talent in the Trump campaign, huh? Trump "owes" his victory and his office to Vladimir Putin?

I'd be ashamed to peddle that kind of bullshit nonsense--just as I'd be ashamed to claim that missles, not jet airliners, were responsible for the damage done on Sept. 11, 2001 at the NYC World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

____________________________

By the way, this:

"(Indictment states Russian defendants’ operations were) “supporting the presidential campaign of them-candidate Donald J. Trump.”

is not a violation of any U.S. or, for that matter, state criminal statute. If it were, you, perhaps, and Mueller, certainly, would have cited that. There'll be no charge and no trial on any such criminal count as Russians' openly or clandestinely "supporting the presidential campaign of them-candidate Donald J. Trump.

Another bomb goes off in guess whose faces -- NOT Liberals! Mueller flips another flap-jack!!

Gates plea deal: GUILTY!

A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign pleaded guilty on Friday to fraud and lying to investigators in the special counsel inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and is expected to cooperate with the investigation.

Appearing with his attorney in a Washington courtroom on Friday afternoon, Mr. Gates changed his plea, acknowledging that he participated in the financial conspiracy with Mr. Manafort.NYT

That's guilty of defrauding the government. Extensive scheme hand-in-hand with Manafort to defraud banks in order to secure loans, using false statements and forged documents; hiding $Ms of their laundered money in offshore bank accounts and both failing to report, plus lying about their existence to the IRS; colluding with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) "to discuss the situation in the Ukraine" concerning establishment of shell companies in the Ukraine through which to funnel laundered funds. And lying about everything to the FBI.

The men worked in various capacities with Viktor F. Yanukovych, the onetime Ukrainian president and a longtime ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia

Humiliation Day for Trump Campaign/Transition Official, February 23, 2018.

While the government outlined the charges against him, Mr. Gates grew red, his eyes cast downward.

Not the look of an innocent man, amiright?

>68 Limelite:

Be sure and have your explanatory comments ready when Mueller's cases fall apart.

For example--

His case against Flynn? Care to bet on that? My bet is that Mueller will see it fall apart. Which shall happen-- the court throws out the charges or Mueller rescinds them?

LOL!

Enough. I’ve tried to ignore this idiocy as it becomes increasingly detached from reality, but this is too much.

First,
None of the charges against Manafort or Gates involve things they allegedly did while working for Trump and are tied to Russia.

Even The Guardian admits,

“Both Manafort and Gates were indicted last October for alleged crimes that pre-date their work for the campaign and did not involve any allegations of wrongdoing involving the Trump campaign or Russia.”

This CNBC article says,

“The charges stem from alleged conduct that does not relate to work that Manafort and Gates performed for the Trump campaign.”

They quickly try to mute the impact of this admission by adding,

“However, some of their alleged crimes occurred while they were working for Trump and afterward.”

However, none of those alleged crimes involved Russia or the election.

An indictment quoted at that link alleges that they fraudulently applied for bank loans by lying about their income. They also sent funds to Cyprus and the Seychelles illegally. Etc. None of this has anything to do with Trump, Russia, or the 2016 Presidential election.

- - - - - - - - -
BTW, the two admissions above are the exception. The wording about this air-burger in the media is more often something like “Mueller has uncovered evidence of crimes in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.” Note they don’t say that the alleged crimes involved the election. Or involved Russia. The wording is obviously designed to mislead.

Second,
>64 Limelite: “The Russians didn’t spend $1M a month... without affecting the outcome of the election.”

What a bizarre statement. In any case,

Hillary Clinton spent $969 million on the race. Trump spent $531 million.

Wishful false thinking. Mueller is building a case; applying pressure; climbing the chain in the same way a prosecutor goes after ordinary organized crime bosses. What Manafort and Gates did as per the indictment of additional charges against Manafort, which you can read online, continued when they were working for DJT.

Manafort is known to be a shady character, who hired himself out to Putin's Ukrainian puppet and the surrogate Russian political machine in Ukraine; he was known to be desperate for big amounts of cash up until he associated himself with the Trump campaign in '16, when suddenly his money troubles went away. He laundered money through shell companies and false bank accounts skimming some along the way. Apparently, he owed millions to Russian oligarch, Cypriot bank records show. His quid pro quo for having his debts forgiven was offering certain Russian contacts access to high level Trump campaign and admin officials and arranging meetings with them.

Gates knows all the details of such arrangements, having remained with the admin even after Manafort was fired. (Remember why?) So does another pro-Russian Republican congressman, Rohrabacher, who is "Person 'A'" in the original indictment and is probably sweating bullets as I type.

Thread by thread, Mueller is untangling the skein of corruption, collusion, and cover-up. Members of DJT's family will be going down soon. They will throw him under the bus as one by one the already indicted have flipped. Dying in prison for tax evasion, participating in money laundering, taking illegal political contributions, and colluding will be the charges.

Why else do you think Trump had a personal server in his Tower that spoke only to another server belonging to Alfa bank (and rarely to another owned by Spectrum Health, Education Sec'y. Betsy de Vos' family business), a founder of which just saw his lawyer and son-in-law plead guilty to lying about what he did in the Russia collusion probe to the FBI? This was going on in the Spring of '16.

Choose better sources to read the writing on the wall. Breitbart, Reddit, and InfoWars won't help you with facts but those propaganda machines may make you feel like you don't have your heads buried in the sand banks of the River de Nial.

And a little history lesson. Nixon was impeached and was an unindicted co-conspirator who was forced out of office NOT because he personally broke into the Watergate. But because he tried to cover up that oppo research burglary because it was attached to his campaign. Perhaps as went Nixon, so will go Trump. But I suspect he won't be let off so "gracefully."

There was nothing graceful about Nixon's pardon by Ford. It was a gross act of betrayal of the public's trust in institutions and laws.

Trump's words and deeds indicate, if anything, about some supposed scandal, that he has and he had nothing to do with it and has therefore neither made any effort to cover anything up nor any need to do so.

People who know how to read and think above the level demonstrated by Trump agonistes have already figured this out---and carefully and clearly explained it. Trump's persuers, at this point, are deranged fanatics who should be under psychiatric care in a hospital. And, for more than a few of them, that hospital-stay should be under the supervision of their primary custodial authorities, the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

>72 Limelite:
Err, no. Nixon wasn't impeached. He resigned in order to avoid the process.

I don't have crystal ball to tell me what Mueller will end up with, specifically, but I suspect it will broadly parallel its historical precedents. I.e., you start with one thing and finish with something else.

With Nixon, investigation of the Watergate break-in led to revelations of the secret taping and "dirty tricks" and other such shenanigans, and the wholly unrelated but important corruption of Vice-President Agnew, who resigned after revelations of money-laundering and accepting bribes earlier in his career.

With Reagan, investigation of circumventing the Boland amendment to channel money to the Contras revealed the scheme of secret arms sales to Iran.

With Clinton, investigation of Whitewater real estate dealings led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

With Trump, well, we'll see. His campaign involved much improvisation and was a seat-of-the-pants organization. He's needy and weak and is the sort of person who could be played by a more calculating person like Putin. His attitude to Putin personally is certainly nauseating. But I think it unlikely there was some carefully thought-out conspiracy. Confirmation of financial shenanigans by him and his circle, not necessarily related to 2016, seems a more likely outcome of this investigation. But this remains speculation. Still too soon to say what will hold up in court.

The Senate didn't convict him and he was forced out when members of his Party personally called on him to say they would convict him if he didn't go peacefully. Some folks like to cling to the belief he "resigned," it seems more "honorable" to them.

Agnew is to Nixon as ?? is to Trump. One has so many choices. Corruption, as is widely said, is a dead fish; the rot starts at the top.

One doesn't have to qualify conspiracy with such niceties as "carefully thought out" for it to be criminal and prosecutable. And "shenanigans" may be a gentlemanly descriptor for fraud, forgery, and money laundering, but people in the reality community use the accurate nouns to describe the activities they match.

The additional Friday indictments of Gates and Mueller clearly identify the felonies committed between 2015 and ongoing in 2017; those charges include continuing involvement at a cover-up, continuing and point to the continuing quid pro quo collusion between the Trump campaign, via its chair ("make me whole with OVD*" to whom Manafort owed millions of dollars) and co-chair to sell access, aka corruption, for debt forgiveness from .

The evidence already in the record establishes that Trump's first "foreign policy" act as president (within in hours of taking the oath) was an attempt to remove sanctions on Russia put in place by Obama to punish Russia for "meddling" in the Ukraine. Further evidence of collusion with Russia by Trump himself is his 2018 refusal to implement Congressional sanctions against Russia for its "meddling" in the '16 presidential elections.

Now, why would he refuse to perform the functions of the Executive as per the Constitution if he doesn't owe the Russians BIG TIME. After all, Manafort is the one indebted to OVD, not (allegedly) The Donald. So why this stubborn reluctance by him in 2018 -- unless the price he sold America for to Putin demands it?

What Trump did in 2017 immediately after taking office and what he did in 2018 -- and compounded -- is collusion: the agreed upon return following prior cooperation with a partner for something they did for you in order to achieve a desired outcome by both parties.

And Mueller is sitting on mountains of evidence, beyond the public hill of it I described here, that dates from prior to, during, and a long year after Trump ran for prez.

*OVD Oleg Deripaska

>75 Limelite:
Sorry if "shenanigans" grates. I'm quite happy (so to speak) with "felonious" or "manifestly corrupt" or "ass-sucking sleazy", if you prefer. Whatever. My larger point is not about language register or, sad to say, justice but about what might stick against powerful and well-connected people.

Remember, a guy like Oliver North walked. He even made a profitable career afterward, based on his actions. I don't like this at all. But I'm not surprised by it.

>71 Carnophile:

Of course she did. Here's one of the reasons why.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-conquered-facebookwithout-russian-ads/

>72 Limelite: Mueller is building a case; applying pressure; climbing the chain... Thread by thread, Mueller is untangling the skein of corruption, collusion, and cover-up. Members of DJT's family will be going down soon. They will throw him under the bus...

Any day now! Aaaaaaaany day now!

Your faith is touching.

Manafort is known to be a shady character, who hired himself out to Putin's Ukrainian puppet and the surrogate Russian political machine in Ukraine...

He did Ukraine work before he worked with Trump, as already noted. Even the left-wing Guardian admits this.

he was known to be desperate for big amounts of cash up until he associated himself with the Trump campaign in '16, when suddenly his money troubles went away.

Actually, the investigators themselves say the exact opposite:

“prosecutors claim that after Manafort and Gates saw their income dwindle from 2015 to at least January 2017...”

>72 Limelite: Why else do you think Trump had a personal server in his Tower that spoke only to another server belonging to Alfa bank...

It didn’t speak to it. There was a Russian computer that repeatedly looked up the Trump computer’s DNS address. That’s it.


“...the unusual (Russian) server activity, which was akin to looking up someone's phone number thousands of times.”

Well, shit! Russia tried to access Trump computers! Ah, I fondly remember when Russia allegedly hacking into Democrat computers was evidence that they were working against Dems. But if they try the same thing with Trump (who apparently had better security procedures than Hillary “illegal server” Clinton, by the way) - then it’s evidence that they’re working with him! Riiiiiight!

What does the New York Times - those hardcore pro-Trump partisans! - say about this?

FBI agents “even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.”

>72 Limelite: a founder of which just saw his lawyer and son-in-law plead guilty to lying about what he did in the Russia collusion probe to the FBI? This was going on in the Spring of '16.

Man converses about Ukrainian events from 2012. Investigators get him on process crime.

Dutch citizen Alex van der Zwaan pled guilty to lying about a phone call on the subject of Ukrainian politics in 2012. He told the FBI he last spoke to Gates in August 2016. It was actually September.

The subject of the 2016 recorded phone call, prosecutors said, was a 2012 report prepared by van der Zwaan’s law firm about the jailing of former Ukrainian prime minister...

This is how desperate the anti-Trump crowd is.

>77 Limelite: Did you read the title of your own link?

"How Trump Conquered Facebook - Without Russian Ads."

That bastard!

Well, swatting down all this horseshit is, er, fun, but the stuff I looked into all turned out to be vaporware, and I have other things to do.

>72 Limelite:
>79 Carnophile:
The Alfa Bank server shit again?

http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/debunking-trumps-secret-server.html#.WpNAinxG1...
http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/in-which-i-have-to-debunk-second-time.html#.Wp...

I posted those when they came out. This shit just doesn't die, does it?

There are plenty of trees to bark up. It's advisable not to bark up trees that have been uprooted.

>83 davidgn:

If you think you're debunking a prior commenter's claims, maybe it would help if you referenced those in your post--hence, tying what you've debunked to its source-post--- hmm?

E.g at >72 Limelite: "limelite" gives us his specialty--nonsense--in this "little history lesson":

"And a little history lesson. Nixon was impeached and was an unindicted co-conspirator who was forced out of office NOT because he personally broke into the Watergate."

and, at >75 Limelite:, even after having been corrected in his faulty summary of historical facts, "limelite" _persists_ in the erroneous view that President Nixon was "impeached" when, as those who were paying attention already know, he was never impeached.

Thus, "limelite's" lame reply

"The Senate didn't convict him and he was forced out when members of his Party personally called on him to say they would convict him if he didn't go peacefully. Some folks like to cling to the belief he "resigned," it seems more "honorable" to them."

is laughably absurd.

For, those who can think, might reason that, if the Senate--which is solely empowered under the Constitution's Article I, Section 3, Clause 6, to try and to render verdicts in cases of impeachment of a president-- had failed to convict Nixon, then those of Nixon's party could not have pressured him since, obviously any trial and "failure of conviction" in the Senate ( i.e. acquittal, which could only happen after first being "impeached," ) means that the president remains in office, having, at least in the instant case, survived an impeachment by the House of Representatives and a trial on the articles of impeachment in the Senate.

So, it is laughably absurd to argue that, after the Senate's supposedly having tried and failed to convict Nixon, "members of his Party personally called on him to say they would convict him if he didn't go peacefully."

Just as this, too, is an absurd false portrayal of historical fact:

"Some folks like to cling to the belief he "resigned," it seems more "honorable" to them."


While Nixon's resignation was, it is true, tendered under direct and obvious pressure from members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, who were assuring him that, unless he resigned, his certrain impeachment and trial and conviction and removal from office would follow, the fact remains that he did, in every sense, figuratve and literal, tender his resignation by a letter,

>84 proximity1: Right, done.

>83 davidgn: Indeed.

How you Trumpsters feeling today? Still convinced there's no there there? Sure, I sympathize with those who cannot see -- because they're medically blind. But for those who choose to deny what everyone else sees, well I just laugh at them.

The reality community is quite happy with you being in LaLa Land. But, to ignore the fact that Manafort had a history, not a mere recent past, which is all you want to see, is deliberate drawing of the veil. Sorry, the facts have a liberal bias. Manafort was in financial trouble because he was no longer being paid by the Ukrainian oligarchs he worked for prior to 2015. Don't you read factual matter? Only allow yourself to be exposed to the Brreitbart and InfoWars ilk, eh? Sad. He wasn't just starting out in his nefarious career during the period of the indictment, which you should know because it's an uncontested and widely publicized fact.

It long ago ceased to amaze me that the right wingers, and especially the Trump Bot Army revel in their stubborn stupidity. After all, they're overwhelmingly bigoted on every level from skin color to religion to gender. It should no longer amaze you that, so far, every inch of territory you thought you occupied in "Completely Vindicated!" territory has been snatched out from under your feet by Mueller's probe. All those people you believed to be uninvolved in felonious lying, corruption, collusion, and cover-up have -lo!- been guilty of one or all four. Tut tut.

Narrow minded conservatives love nothing more than parsing, symantics, and the narrow view. It protects them from having to defend defenselss opinions that can't be verified by the facts. I'm surprised Special Counsel Mueller's indictments aren't food for your souls. They are extremely narrow and tightly focused. Legal scalpels, not legal mallets. He uses them as tools to flay the guilty, not as documents to give wing nuts a thrill like watching the military parade march loudly by. Thus, Mueller inexorably builds his case and leaves the field strewn with the rotten and the rotting. Haven't you noticed? Of course not! Trumpskies are all about instant gratification. You haven't the patience or the necessary attention span for the wheels of justice to do what they do best -- to grind slowly and exceedingly fine.

Too bad. That will still be the way what's left of the most inept and corrupt administration in US history gets mashed to a pulp. Jared, Donnie Baby, Ivanka, (Eric may be just slow-witted enough to have been too stupid to learn how to be a grifter), and Papa Don are going to be grist for the mill. One by one, the rats are fleeing the wormy Ship of State, voluntarily scooting out the door before their hems get soiled; being smited and booted out by the petulant Diaper Donner-in-Chief who couldn't lead a dog on a leash ("I hire only the best people. The best!" BWWAAHAHAHA!!!); or falling beneath the wheel of Counsel Mueller's Mill of Justice team that are a helluva lot smarter lawyers than the idjit con-man in the Oval Office is a con-man, and are distinguished because they love their country more than the lining of their pockets.

Come 2019, you look me up.

Any day now. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaany day now.

Since this thread started, and you and others started complaining that there was nothing "there," and nothing was happening, Mueller has indicted Gates and Manafort with additional crimes, and Gates pled guilty. He pled guilty, among other things, to crimes that hadn't even occurred yet when this thread started—namely, lying to the FBI about his previous crimes. He is cooperating. Mueller also reveled another indictment, of Richard Pinedo, previously sealed, who is now also cooperating. And another of Alex van der Zwaan, who pled guilty and is now cooperating. And he indicted 13 Russians and three Russian organizations in a whole slew of crimes.

That's in less than two months.

"Integrity"?

Mueller, former director of the Bureau, has to worry about being himself the target of a congressional investigation which reveals his possible active or passive complicity in conspiracy to commit fraud and obstruction of justice.

See you in the visitors' gallery of the courtroom; juries shall decide how well--and legally--Mueller has conducted these special-prosecutor investigations. Then, perhaps, a federal grand jury will turn its attention to Mueller's own record and actions as a sworn law enforcement officer.

>89 timspalding:. Re-read 78 - 80.

Your mentioning Alex van der Zwaan is particularly strange, since - as I already noted - he pled guilty to lying about a phone call on the subject of Ukrainian politics from 2012. The “lie” was that he told the FBI he last spoke to Gates in August 2016. It was actually September.

You proudly hold up this example, so I guess you regard it as some of the best “evidence” of a “conspiracy” between Trump and Russia to fix the 2016 election. What the fuck? Seriously, what has happened to the left in recent years?

You also wrote, of Gates, "He pled guilty, among other things, to crimes that hadn't even occurred yet when this thread started."

Quite. And this thread was started in January 2018. Fact: Events that occur in January 2018 or later can't affect the election of November 2016.

>91 Carnophile:

"Seriously, what has happened to the left in recent years?"

This "happened".

and we've had Hell to pay ever since.

Judge making decisions about disposition of Cohen evidence officiated at George Soros’s wedding.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-kimba-wood-the-judge-presiding-over-the-mich...

https://pagesix.com/2013/09/20/political-bigs-expected-at-george-soros-wedding/

Unless there’s more than one federal judge named Kimba Wood.

George Soros? Isn't he the real Che Guevara, who escaped the Bolivian jungle and re-made himself as a Neoliberal false target of right wing lunatics?

(Vox.com) Former top spy James Clapper explains how Russia swung the election to Trump
“It stretches credulity to conclude that Russian activity didn’t swing voter decisions.”
By Sean Illing || May 31, 2018, 8:10am EDT

... ...

Sean Illing

I’ll ask you straightforwardly: Did the Russians swing the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor?

James Clapper

Yes, and I say so in the book. But let me make a couple of points to clarify. First, when we published our official intelligence community assessment of Russia’s interference in our election in January 2017, we didn’t make any definitive calls about whether or not the outcome of the election was impacted. And we didn’t make any calls of this sort in our classified briefing for President-elect Trump either. We, the intelligence community, didn’t have the charter or authority to do that.

But now I’m speaking as a private citizen, having left government service and knowing what I know about what the Russians did, how massive the operation was, how diverse it was, and how many millions of American voters it touched. When you consider that the election turned on 80,000 votes or less in three key states, it stretches credulity to conclude that Russian activity didn’t swing voter decisions, and therefore swing the election.

"“I’ve spent more than 50 years in the intelligence world, and I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff, but nothing affected me as much as our apathetic reaction to Russia’s interference in our presidential election”"

Sean Illing

You’re reluctant to say that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, but, as you put it in the book, “the dashboard warning lights were all lit.” And the evidence has only mounted since. Speaking as a private citizen, do you believe there was collusion?

James Clapper

Well, I certainly wondered about it when I saw the frequency of meetings between people in the Trump campaign and people with ties to the Russian government. And we’ve learned a lot about these and other connections since we published that intelligence community report in January 2017. But I saw no smoking-gun evidence of collusion before I left the government, and I still haven’t. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence and reasons to be suspicious, but no smoking gun as of yet.

My hope is that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team will resolve this one way or the other. The country badly needs a resolution on this issue because it hangs over us like a cloud right now. I’m certainly not saying there was no collusion; I just haven’t seen any direct evidence of it yet.

____________________________________________

... ..."in preparatory sessions before meetings with the news media before the election, (his own) aides pressed Mr. Obama to respond to criticism that he should speak out more about Russian meddling. 'I talk about it every time I’m asked,' he responded. 'What else are we going to do? We’ve warned folks.' "

"He noted that Mr. Trump was already claiming that the election would be manipulated if Hillary Clinton won. 'If I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged,' Mr. Obama said." ... ...

_______________
(The New York Times) " How Trump’s Election Shook Obama: ‘What if We Were Wrong?’ " || By Peter Baker || May 30, 2018

___________________________

If you voted in the 2016 U.S. presidential election for Trump or for Clinton, I assume you were there, present, when you marked your ballot--in whatever form that took.

Tell us: were any Russians with you at the time? In the polling-booth or, sitting next to you, if you marked an absentee-ballot at the kitchen table?

If "Russians swung the election" in favor of Trump voters, how did these Russians get to the ballots and ensure that they were 'correctly' marked in favor of Trump without arrousing the suspicions of the voters themselves?

Who marked your ballot paper?

You did?

Were you marking it according to your own views or had Russian agents corrupted your judgement by convincing you to act contrary to your own preference in the matter? How'd they do that?

Through argument? Propaganda (i.e. advertisements intended to influence you) ?

Aren't those the usual tools by which one candidate or another seeks to "interfere with" potential voters' deciding to vote for the candidate's opponent?

Suppose the Russians did influence you-- as long as you came to your decision by your own means and efforts of weighing and judging the competing arguments, does it matter if Russians had an interest in one or the other of the candidates or that you may have listened to and been favorably impressed--for whatever reasons, 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'wrong'--to cast your vote as you did?

Did you need 'protection' from, 'shielding' from these messages? Why? Because they were persuasive ? Wasn't it your objective, ultimately, to be persuaded in one way or another?

Was your decision based on the points you saw and heard argued pro-and-con or not?

>93 Carnophile:

1. That article doesn't mention it. But it is so. Are you laundering something from Breitbart?
2. I'm sorry, but "so"?

>96 timspalding: I can understand almost nothing of post 96.

You say "that article" doesn't mention it, but there are two articles, and one of them does.

You admit the claim is true ("it is so"), then suggest that I'm "laundering" something (?). The suggestion seems to be that "laundering" is something bad, but since you admit that it's true, what exactly is bad?

There's a gratuitous swipe at Breitbart, which makes me think - along with other such swipes from other lefties lately - that Breitbart must be awesome and I should check them out more.

"so"? So she can be presumed to be biased against Trump, since Soros is a person of the left and hates Trump's politics.
Qualification: If Wood has presided over tons of such ceremonies of prominent people all over the political spectrum, then never mind.

But otherwise, as you know quite well, if the positions were reversed - if a judge had officiated at Trump's wedding and were handling a legal matter pertaining to Soros - then the left would go ballistic.

Indeed, on the "Russia" retardation, we've been getting a lot of "Someone in Trump's campaign once talked to a Russian! Probable cause of crimes!"

>97 Carnophile:

Sorry, am a bit dizzy. Tim figures among "lefties"? Tim can respond to that better than I, so I leave it to him.

If I'm not mistaken (and please correct me, I'm all ears), Soros contributed to Republicans for more than a decade, in the U.S. context, but then he gravitated to Democrats' agenda, broadly speaking, around 2004, after the debacle of George W's foreign policy.

Soros' story is mixed. And it's decidedly more international, not merely an affair of American parochial politics.

As for your sarcastic dismissal that "Someone in Trump's campaign once talked to a Russian! Probable cause of crimes!", may I add a nuance?

I wish I knew the absolute facts in these stories, but I don't. Neither do you. I hope the larger truth will eventually emerge.

Your dismissal is demonstrably inaccurate, though, for anyone interested in facts, as far as we know them to date.

A more honest description would be that some individuals in Trump's campaign have voluntarily pleaded guilty to lying under oath about their contacts with Russian government employees.

Where this leads, I don't know.

Neither do you.

But there's no reason to bullshit about it just because you have personal animus about people on a talk thread that you've never even seen.

Get a grip. Get over yourself.

there are two articles, and one of them does

I didn't think there was. Comment retracted.

Sorry, am a bit dizzy. Tim figures among "lefties"? Tim can respond to that better than I, so I leave it to him.

I think Trump is a disgrace, leading us to ruin and probably a literal traitor. Hence I'm a lefty. Didn't you get the memo?

voluntarily pleaded guilty to lying under oath about their contacts with Russian government employees

Pish posh—who hasn't lied under oath about secret meetings with Russian government employees?

As I have said before, there are virtually no "lefties" in mainstream US political culture. There are certainly some who are less right wing than others, but both main US political parties are well to the right of centre by global standards.

"Section 3.

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies ( "enemies", here, presupposes a state of declared war with the United States), giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

"The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." ... ...

it's tiresome to have to repeatedly correct people's common misunderstanding of what, under the Constitution, "treason" means.

The people who ratified the Constitution were, unlike us, very familiar with English legal practice and history concerning treason. For centuries, English people were liable to be tried, convicted and executed (rightly or wrongly on the facts) for acts labelled "treason" which sometimes amounted to merely having said (privately) things critical of the reigning monarch or established policies which were particularly sensitive matters.

In addition to executing the "traitor", if he or she was a member of the nobility, the convict's family was formally disgraced, their royal grants of titles, lands and privileges revoked and made obsolete or awarded to others or they reverted to the crown's possession. So heirs of the convicted were made outcasts of noble society--this is what "attainder" means; though it wasn't that uncommon that eventually at some point this was attenuated in its severity or even reversed and a second, third or later generation restored to certain titles and privileges and land.

>98 krolik: A more honest description would be that some individuals in Trump's campaign have voluntarily pleaded guilty to lying under oath about their contacts with Russian government employees.

No. A more honest assessment would be that even after
• a persecution, going back to 2016 (!),
of
• illegal infiltration and spying,
• obtaining warrants based on fabricated evidence,
and
• violating attorney-client privilege by raiding Trump’s lawyer’s office

they still can’t get anything remotely related to the insane fiction of Trump and Russia subverting the 2016 election.

All they can get is guilty pleas to process crimes, extracted under threat of ruinous financial consequences of fighting the false charges in court. Flynn had to sell his house to pay his legal bills.

A couple of decades ago liberals would have been horrified by the foregoing precedent-setting destruction of protections for American citizens. The rich and powerful are more likely not to need them, by the way. Non-rich-and-powerful people like, say, us, are more likely to actually need those protections.

But leftists are now too far gone with utter derangement in their immediate desire to "get" Trump to see the terrible danger in all this. Their insanity in their desire to undo the election of 2016 has made them completely heedless.

>99 timspalding: Trump is... probably a literal traitor.

The “traitor” thing is no doubt projection based on the fact that the FBI and others tried to undo the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election by using evidence they knew was fabricated to obtain warrants, etc. That actually IS treason, in the literal sense of attempting to overthrow the legitimately-elected US government.

>104 Carnophile:

It really amazes me that anyone could believe this stuff. I guess when you decide that all news sources not "on your side" are lying to achieve some nefarious partisan end, you can believe almost anything--whatever your side tells you. It is the death of reason. It's goddamn frightening.

>102 Carnophile:

Your word "persecution" is interesting, as a sense of victimhood permeates so much of American conversation nowadays, among people of all political persuasions, including the President himself.

It's a curious phenomenon and a marker of our times.

There are victims and persecuted people in this world, to be sure. But overuse of such language has made the subject harder to talk about. The potency of words gets diluted. Precision is sacrificed.

I suspect you might agree with at least some of the above.

Probably where we're more likely to disagree concerns the examples.

Perhaps we'll always disagree. I'm not holding my breath for a kum ba yah moment.

In the meantime, though, as I muddle through this world, it makes more sense to me to keep it verifiable and precise, where possible. Rather than use what you refer to as "insane fiction" as my benchmark (I don't), I'm merely assuming that if people plead guilty to lying under oath, I can probably believe them.

As for Michael Flynn selling his house to pay his legal bills, it would be more accurate to say that he sold one of his houses.

Other reports describe him as spending his time surfing in Rhode Island. There's nothing wrong with that.

But he's not exactly composing his letter from a Birmingham jail.

>106 krolik:

Thanks for this. I was also interested in the dilution of the meaning of the word persecuted. I would say that I work in a part of the world and with some of the people you refer to who are persecuted. I suspect a lot of them would be relieved and grateful if their only "persecution" was being investigated by the FBI.

>103 Carnophile:

Yep.



Artist's depiction of reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, (shown, standing, at center) observing Democrats at a meeting, June 14th*, to discuss potential new measures by which they hope to get rid of President Donald Trump. (Illustrator: Jessie Willcox Smith)

________________

* 72nd birthday of Donald J. Trump.

>105 timspalding: It really amazes me that anyone could believe this stuff. I guess when you decide that all news sources not "on your side" are lying to achieve some nefarious partisan end, you can believe almost anything--whatever your side tells you. It is the death of reason. It's goddamn frightening.

This is the purest example of projection I have seen in my decade on LibraryThing.

This is not just a matter of two people, each accusing each other of being ideologically blinded. My side is provably the truth - using documentation largely (or totally?) from your own side's news sources, by the way.

Your side is, e.g., trying to argue that a 2012 conversation involving someone Trump never worked with, about Ukranian politics, is somehow evidence that Trump committed some crimes involving Russia in 2016. Yes, it IS “goddam frightening”... because a person who made himself believe that could literally make himself believe anything.

And right on cue, the IG’s report quotes FBI employees Strzok and Page, both of whom worked on Mueller’s Russia investigation:

"(Trump is) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page, who also worked on Mueller's staff, responded.

"No. No he won't. We'll stop it," Strzok texted back.

>110 Carnophile: And you seem to think that finding two people out of the entire FBI who have a bias against Trump somehow taints the whole FBI. That's quite a stretch.

>112 jjwilson61:

I think you're referencing the wrong post - probably should be >110 Carnophile:, not >100 John5918:.

>106 krolik: Your word "persecution" is interesting

Trump is being persecuted. Rogue intelligence agencies violated the law, in several ways, in their fanatical determination to subvert the 2016 election.

>114 Carnophile:

Whether what you say in your second sentence is true or not, I have no idea. But you stlil dilute the meaning of the word "persecution".

>106 krolik: it would be more accurate to say that he sold one of his houses.

Don’t change the subject. The point is, his legal bills were high enough that he had to sell a house to pay them.

And that’s WITH his guilty plea! Imagine what his legal costs would have been if he hadn’t pleaded guilty, and fought it out! That’s the POINT!

This also provides the response to this:

“I'm merely assuming that if people plead guilty to lying under oath, I can probably believe them.”

He pled guilty - to "lying" about discussing foreign policy after the election - for the same reason that, if someone stuck a gun in your face and said, “Confess to starting the London fire of 1666!” you would.

And you don’t get to say, “I can probably believe them” and then ignore the parts you don’t like - e.g., that the conversation took place after the election and was not about the election.

>112 jjwilson61: And you seem to think that finding two people out of the entire FBI who have a bias against Trump somehow taints the whole FBI.

The damning things are the list of items in my post 102 above. Whether one agent or 10,000 agents were responsible for all that is a secondary question.

That said, we now have an explicit statement of intent to use the FBI to subvert the will of the people. The left-wing party line that this is somehow *impossible* - that all FBI agents are known to be totally perfect agents of God who are beyond any sort of scrutiny - now can be refuted in one word:

Strzok.

That was always an insanely retarded party line, obviously, but now it’s even more obviously insanely retarded than it was before.

We have intelligence agents admittedly trying to destroy democracy and dictatorially install their own preferred head of state into the government. That is, to carry out an anti-democratic coup.

And the reaction from the left, as far as I have seen, has been either to deny it, or to excuse it and minimize it.

"Yawn. So a junta of intelligence agents tried (and is STILL TRYING) to terminate democracy and establish their own dictatorship where the people's will is laughed at and ignored. Yawn. No big deal. What are you "conservatives" getting your panties in a twist about?"

As if this wasn't the most horrifying political event for the US in a generation or more. As if, in a sane society, Strzok wouldn't have been put on trial for treason already, over his earlier-revealed "insurance policy" remark.

>117 Carnophile:

To the extent that there is either a left wing or a left wing party line in the USA (both of which I doubt), I would say that people who care about human and civil rights, the equality of everyone (even millionaire businessmen who run for president) before the law, and good governance, have generally been suspicious of the FBI and certainly would never claim "that all FBI agents are known to be totally perfect agents of God who are beyond any sort of scrutiny". The fact that in this case many people are supportive of the FBI suggests that they see some grounds here for the FBI's scrutiny.

>115 John5918: Whether what you say in your second sentence is true or not, I have no idea. But you stlil dilute the meaning of the word "persecution".

WHAT THE FUCK!? If intelligence agents going rogue in order to bring you down isn't persecution, what the fuck would be?

>115 John5918:

I like how in your first sentence you admit you don't know what happened, then in your second sentence you say you're sure what happened isn't persecution.

Go away, John.

>121 Carnophile: For the record, John, your instincts guided you well. The intelligence agents mentioned above, Page and Strzok, were fucking and sending email to each other. They both were opposed to Trump. None of their behavior has been linked to any activities against Trump. There is no indication that the following--

"(Trump is) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page, who also worked on Mueller's staff, responded.

"No. No he won't. We'll stop it," Strzok texted back.

--is anything other than lovers talk about fighting as any citizens would to try to stop someone as egregiously unfit as Trump from becoming president, or someone like Obama, or Clinton, or Gore, or Bush.

There is not even a hint of malfeasance of any kind outside of fucking while working together.

>120 Carnophile: If intelligence agents going rogue in order to bring you down isn't persecution, what the fuck would be?

A pair of low level intelligence agents? It might be a violation of their code of conduct, or illegal if they do more than talk about it, but it is not persecution.

Serious allegations have been made against an individual and some of his cronies in the USA. Is it not the duty of the FBI to investigate? This does not presuppose guilt - he and his accomplices are innocent until proven guilty. As far as I understand it the FBI is not the prosecuting authority but that is the role of a different organ, the Distrct Attorney (at least in the UK it is not the police who prosecute but the Crown Prosecution Service, an independent agency). And it is not the DA who determines guilt or innocence, it is a third independent organ, a judge and jury. Persecution?

I have lived most of my adult life in countries where your "junta of intelligence agents" (>118 Carnophile:) actually do persecute people. They "disappear" them from off the streets and then torture them, holding them without trial for long periods of time. Their case is not passed to an independent prosecuting agency and they never have the luxury of a judge or jury. They are often simply murdered while in detention. That's persecution.

>118 Carnophile: We have intelligence agents admittedly trying to destroy democracy and dictatorially install their own preferred head of state into the government.

I've lived through that as well. A coup d'etat against a democratically elected government. In my experience they don't use a police investigation followed by an independent prosecuting process followed by a trial by judge and jury. They tend to flood the streets with troops and kill anyone who gets in their way. That's persecution.

>121 Carnophile: in your first sentence you admit you don't know what happened

Not as well worded as it could have been, perhaps, but I was referring to your expressed opinion, not to "what happened". But the point is that whether your opinion is correct or not, it is not persecution.

>122 RickHarsch: Page and Strzok, were fucking and sending email to each other. They both were opposed to Trump. None of their behavior has been linked to any activities against Trump.

Strzok was also the FBI agent who officially signed off on the bureau's decision to launch its Russia investigation in July 2016.

>123 John5918: A pair of low level intelligence agents...

Even if that were true, it would be irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the cop who plants cocaine on you to put you in jail is a beat cop or the Chief of Police.

But it’s not true.

Peter P. Strzok II... is a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. Strzok was the Chief of the Counterespionage Section and led the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server. Strzok rose to become the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, which is the number two position in that division, and led the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

Rogue intelligence agents used fake evidence to try to take the President down.

John: “Some people are murdered! So you can’t say anything else is persecution!”

>124 Carnophile: THE(!) agent who officially signed off...the Almighty Strzok!

>125 Carnophile:

If two agents have behaved improperly or illegally, there are measures that can be taken against them. It is a dilution of the word persecution to apply it to a case such as this.

>127 John5918: That is absolutely right. And the desperation of supporters of someone as despicable as Trump comes into focus when they attribute great and malign powers to individuals who have none of the kind they are attributed. This guy has bosses, and had bosses, and if his bosses wanted Clinton prosecuted they would have done so despite this guy's editing--which he did not do in secret, by the way. He also does not have the power to kick off an investigation like Mueller's nor did he at the time it was said he 'signed off' on it.

I like how in 118 I said, And the reaction from the left, as far as I have seen, has been either to deny it, or to excuse it and minimize it.

and then >127 John5918: weighs in with, "Dude, intelligence agents using fake evidence to take someone down totally isn't persecution!"

>129 Carnophile:

Not me. I would never use a word like "dude".

>130 John5918: That's called content analysis, John, and Carnophile rejects analysis, apparently of any kind.

Rachel Maddow formally surrenders the last shreds of her sanity:

https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/07/21/maddow-feels-very-palpable-that-the-p...

Media’s RussiaGate greatest hits: A 2-minute video of reporters saying, a jillion times, “the walls are closing in,” “this is a tipping point,” “the beginning of the end (for the Trump Presidency),” and “this is a real bombshell,” etc., etc.:

https://twitter.com/RoibearddeUna/status/1084558218444107778

Apparently some lefties are now saying that the Mueller investigation should be investigated, because Mueller is obviously a Russian agent or something.

The New York Times stamped their little foot with a piece titled "We Don't Need To Read The Mueller Report," LOL.

>135 fuzzi:

Since I've spent a good chunk of my life living by (albeit not in) the Nile, I'm just wondering what is the significance of this picture?

>133 Carnophile:

;^)

"Trump is in trouble."

"The walls are closing in on Trump."

"Have we reached a 'tipping-point'?

"Trump may have to resign."

"Mueller knows a lot more than he's telling us."

"These indictments are only the tip of the iceberg."

LOL!!!!

" 'Bad news'! Apparently there's no evidence on which to base a charge that Trump colluded with the Russians to gain an advantage in the 2016 presidential races."

"bad news" !?!?! Liberals "disappointed that the allegations against President Trump didn't pan out!?! He wasn't, after all a Kremlin "mole," or--and surely this just isn't possible, is it?--Trump's just so smart, so good at it, that Mueller, with all his skill and resources, couldn't discover the goods on Trump.

>136 John5918: perhaps it's just an American expression, referencing living in denial.

The old OLD JOKE is "living in De Nile", as when someone refuses to accept the truth.

>136 John5918: I believe those are silhouettes of two characters from the movie, The Lion King. They lived a rather carefree existence, but I'm not sure why they would be characterized as "living in denial".

Google can be your friend:

https://lionking.fandom.com/wiki/Living_in_De_Nile

>136 John5918: In other words, blame Disney.

>135 fuzzi: They were indeed in denial. What's weird is how many of them really seem shocked by the Mueller report. I assumed they didn't really believe the Russia thing, but maybe some of them did? It's like a mini election night 2016 all over again.

... “But the investigation has everything to do with treason, corruption, obstruction, fraud, money laundering, all the obvious criminality Trump has engaged in, along with his felonious henchmen, some of whom have pleaded guilty to charges brought by Mueller's investigation."
________________

— “limelite” (Edited: Jan 27, 2018, 5:27pm)

(REUTERS)


In another Trump win, court tosses Democrats' suit over his businesses

by Jan Wolfe | Politics | February 7, 2020 / 3:27 PM /

_________________

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
"A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by Democratic lawmakers that accused Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings, capping a week of political victories for the Republican president.

"A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the more than 210 House of Representatives and Senate Democrats lacked the required legal standing to bring the case, reversing a lower court judge’s decision that had allowed the case to proceed.

"Two days after being acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial, Trump hailed the ruling as a 'total win,' telling reporters that 'it was another phony case.' Elizabeth Wydra, a lawyer for the lawmakers, said they were disappointed in the decision and were weighing their next steps.” …
… ...

From Sharyl Attkisson, writing at The Hill (Washington, D.C.)

(from The Hill (Washington, D.C.)) | "Was President Trump spied on as part of Carter Page wiretapping?" | By Sharyl Attkisson,
| opinion contributor — 03/02/20 09:30 AM EST

|| (The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill)

Sharyl Attkisson references this news report, from 16 May, 2016 in her opinion article :

(from IEEE Spectrum ) "NSA Can Legally Access Metadata of 25,000 Callers Based on a Single Suspect’s Phone" | Edward Snowden's revelations may have tightened the NSA's leash, but the agency can still request tens of thousands of records for each case |
By Amy Nordrum | 16 May 2016 | 19:00 GMT (© Copyright 2020 IEEE Spectrum)

Dems say the Russians stole our election in 2016 for like $100,000 of Facebook ads (and not all of their ads even supported the same candidate).

Reality: Michael Bloomberg couldn’t even steal the Democratic nomination with half a billion dollars in ads.

If only he'd been smart enough to hire some Russians!

Republicans say the Russians had nothing to do with interfering in our election; it was the Ukrainians acting on orders from Joe Biden they claim.

Reality: Donald Trump couldn't even win the popular vote so he personally asked the Russians for help to make him win. They did. The entire Intelligence Community confirmed it.

If only Republicans weren't such easy marks for Trump's con!

>146 Limelite: LOL! Idiotic bullshit.

Donald Trump didn't actually have to win the popular vote as a national aggregate in order to claim victory in the presidential race --a long-standing fact which, as it happened, apparently someone on Trump's campaign seems to have understood. Who knows?! Maybe someone even leaked this fact to Trump himself. If so, he apparently understood its significance.

The idiot dumb-fuck bitch, Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, seemed to have been blind-sided by the same "news". For she went into a deep funk, terribly piqued that, having won many thousands more votes in California than strictly necessary to gain its electors, but not enough votes in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin or Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, she wasn't awarded the presidency as she felt was her simple due after having put in such long, self-serving, effort convincing herself she was right up there with God-anointed Royalty

Goodness! Could it be that the fucking Russians themselves actually read the details of the Electoral College system and applied this understanding to what Limelite claims was their underhanded effort to aid in painting the Democrats as hapless nit-wit fucks in the 2016 presidential race? How dared they?! How dare any foreign-based person, group, interest, ever venture to speak unflatteringly about the U.S. corporate-media's darlings standing for public office!?! And how dare Americans take any notice of those foreign "interventions" should they occur?

What Democrats need is better voter-seclusion and brain-washing tactics and methods so that Americans are NOT tainted by inconvenient commentary which tends to show their party's fifth-rate schmucks to be fifth-rate schmucks which they are. When they get their way, at last, if allowed to do so, Democrats shall impose severe censorship on the American public so that only a favorable trickle of their own biased crappified assessment of the facts gets through to the voters.

Then and only then shall we achieve democracy, whining politically-correct-liberal-feminist-people-of-color-LGBT-what-the-fuck-have-you style.

Now, shsshhhh! Don't anyone tell that addle-pated fool, Joe Biden, about any of the above. Let him find out the same way that Hillary did. By getting his sorry ass kicked by the Electoral College system despite winning lots of "popular ballots" in lots of places in which they add nothing to his Electoral College-tally.

The American electoral processes are brutally Darwinian and they long have been. For better or worse, they "select" severely for clever political cunning and plain common sense and, conversely, severely against incorrigible dumb-shits.

Perish the thought that Democrats, dumb-ass jerks that they are, might themselves think of hiring paid Russian or Ukrainian shaddow-dwellers to dig up compromising things--oh! wait! ...

They actually did that!--- and, despite their fond hopes, what they paid for in anti-Trump "dirt" "turned out" to be so much worthless and error-filled and falsified bullshit--not that they cared to consider that possibility or on that basis to reject it.

So much the worse for today's Democrats.

Now, dear readers, we find ourselves in the election year of 2020 and the calendar affords us the fresh opportunity to review and judge the conduct over the past three years of these Democrats.

If, as I see it, you consider that you, as a good-faith citizen, expecting some minimum of inter-party general fair-play and comity, have instead been very, very badly abused by the bloody-minded and politic-destroying efforts of the Democrats, then this November is your opportunity to send them a message that they're never going to forget.

>146 Limelite: Donald Trump couldn't even win the popular vote so he personally asked the Russians for help to make him win. They did. The entire Intelligence Community confirmed it.

You are a perpetual source of delightful comedy.

I don't know which I love more.

On one hand, we've got the other-worldly notion in your first two sentences that after the election Trump asked the Russians to retroactively help him win the popular vote, and they did. This one is deliciously weird due to the implied time travel and the fact that Trump did not, in fact, win the popular vote. Or maybe you're not crediting Trump with time travel capabilities. Perhaps you're only crediting him with the ability to predict the future election outcome. It's hard to tell.

On the other hand, we're treated to the notion that the "entire Intelligence Community" confirmed that Trump asked Russia for help - "personally" - but that Mueller somehow forgot to put this key fact into his report.

>147 proximity1: Donald Trump didn't actually have to win the popular vote... a long-standing fact which, as it happened, apparently someone on Trump's campaign seems to have understood. Who knows?! Maybe someone even leaked this fact to Trump himself. If so, he apparently understood its significance.

Bingo. Unlike the Smartest Woman In The World™, Trump actually read the rule book.

>150 Carnophile:

Might just be worth noting that that is not the title of the Fox News article you link to, which is actually "Ex-spy Christopher Steele ordered to pay damages over 'inaccurate' dossier claims". And having read it and glanced at the court record, it looks to me as if the damages were for breaching the Data Protection Act and for "breaches of duty" in not paying "closer attention, a more enquiring approach and more energetic checking" rather than for "hoax lies".

that is not the title of the Fox News article you link to

I know. I didn't say it was.

The damages were for making false allegations. E.g.,

British ex-spy Christopher Steele must pay damages to two Alfa Bank partners for publishing "inaccurate or misleading" material in his infamous dossier, including claims the banks funneled "illicit cash" to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a British court ruled Wednesday.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/fresh-evidence-obama-ordered-up-the-phony-russiaga...

So is this fake news?

>153 Cubby.R.S.: Excellent quote from that article on Biden, who was in at least one Obama White House meeting regarding Flynn:

Biden told ABC last month, “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.” Was he lying, or has his memory grown that bad?

>154 Carnophile:

You really know we're all in trouble when it becomes ontologically problematic to state with clarity and reliability that a distinction exists between a leading presidential candidate's factually-untrue comments as, on the one hand, mistaken or, on the other hand, knowingly false.

Say what one will about Trump, when he spouts whoppers, he actually knows and understands both that they are whoppers and why stating them makes some tactical or strategic sense from the point of view of partisan politics.

In general Trump's supporters, unlike his partisan foes, are quite aware of when he's stretching the truth for the sake of making his opponents' heads explode with rage.

Biden's venality in this case, on the other hand, is purely that of a self-serving lie the purpose of which is to attempt to hide his own culpability. Instead of fibbing about something which "everybody knows anyway," he's fibbing about things which he hopes to ensure remain unknown to as many, and known to as few, as possible.

Indeed, and my opinion is that when Biden said that he was, in fact, lying his ass off.

Wait, lying suddenly matters to y'all? When did that happen?

>156 Carnophile:

That's right.

The operative words being, "when Biden said that..."

The whole problem is in the question: Could Biden even recognize today what he'd said as being his own words or their value as factual or false?

Now the doubt in this matter is no joke. It's wholly practical and of the most actual and urgent importance.

This situation is deplorable.

A big part of what makes it that is the fact that so few Democrats even give enough of a damn to care that Biden's capacity is so diminished.

So far, at least, Trump hasn't claimed to be Donald Trump's husband. And he's consistently made his pursuers look like friggin' morons.

Wait, diminished capacity suddenly matters to y'all? When did that happen?

>158 proximity1: In that regard, the current word around the camp fire is that Biden's campaign is going to try to hide his degraded mental function by avoiding the debates. One possible excuse I heard is that they're going to insist on Trump releasing his tax returns, or Biden won't debate him.

>160 Carnophile: Trump releasing his tax returns

A Norwegian would wonder why anybody would or could resist releasing their tax returns, since everybody's tax returns are published openly each year. A reasonable person in most other parts of the world would wonder why anybody would object to their tax returns being released (unless perhaps they had something to hide). In the USA, apparently, it's a big and controversial issue. Strange.

There are at least three reasons to withhold his tax returns.

One, anything innocent will be seized upon by the left and treated as corrupt. "Trump has income from a resort in Georgia, and Georgia used to have slavery, therefore Trump's pro-slavery!" Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

This is especially likely (cough, 100% certain) if the returns are released to Congress but not to the public, because then the Dems will do their usual lying their ass off about them.

Two, by refusing to release them, he keeps Dems in a lather over them, because they'll reason exactly the way you just did, inferring that there must be evidence of a crime in them. This is good because (a) it keeps the left's refusal to accept the election of 2016, and consequent persecution of Trump, in the voters' eyes, which will be helpful to Trump this November, and (b) it distracts the left from other things they might be doing that would be more politically useful to them/harmful to Trump.

Three, leftists are assholes. Giving them anything they want just encourages them to make more demands.

>162 Carnophile:

I shudder to think of these people sitting on a jury at a murder-trial. Can you imagine them? God (or Perry Mason) help the poor white defendant on trial for his life on a charge of first-degree murder in which the victim was black!

Now, then, if the accused is black, well, no worries:

Foreman: "Not guilty! your honor, so say we all."

Judge: "We haven't heard any evidence presented yet."

Foreman: "No need, your honor. We've discussed it. The defendant is black, the victim, white. The victim surely had it coming. Not guilty. Case closed. And take that portrait of George Washington down!"

>161 John5918: It wouldn't be for most of us, and I don't think most presidential candidates have stressed much about it. For Trump, I think a big part of it is that he's lied for decades about how much he's worth, and he doesn't want anyone to know.

>163 proximity1: I do fear that sort of thing happening, especially since the black juror who raised his fist in a Black Power salute after the not guilty verdict at OJ Simpson's criminal trial.

https://www.thewrap.com/oj-juror-who-raised-black-power-fist-salute-black-panthe...

A just-declassified document demonstrates that the "Russian collusion" claims were never seen as credible even by the F.B.I.'s investigators.

A three-year hounding of President Trump was initiated and continued on the basis of nothing more than baseless rumor and fanciful "seeing things" that simply weren't there.

This is bullshit; it has been exposed for its worthless character and the people who seized on it and tried to make out of it a basis for beating on Trump were a bunch of damnd fools, led by their fanatical desire to undermine Trump.

They won't-- they don't dare-- look at the facts that show them up as the fucking moronic fanatics that they've been and insist on continuing to be.

This stuff is just embarrassing. No wonder they won't face it.

(from the site "Just The News") New Russia probe memos expose massive errors in NYT anti-Trump story, Steele dossier |
By Sharyl Attkisson | Last Updated: July 17, 2020 - 11:30pm

"Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has released two newly-declassified documents related to government surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign in 2016.

"The first document, withheld from public view until now, is a 57-page summary of a three-day FBI interview in January 2017 with Christopher Steele’s so-called 'primary sub-source' in the anti-Trump allegations and 'dossier.'

"According to the analysis by Sen. Graham's office:

'The document reveals that the primary 'source' of Steele’s election reporting was not some well-connected current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian-based contract employee of Christopher Steele’s firm. Moreover, it demonstrates that the information that Steele's primary source provided him was second and third hand information and rumor at best.'

"Critically, the document shows that Steele's 'primary sub-source' disagreed with and was surprised by how information he gave Steele was then conveyed by Steele in the Steele dossier.

"Document number two, also withheld from public view until now, takes apart a New York Times article written by Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo.

"Comments made by then-FBI agent Peter Strzok undercut a litany of claims made in the Times article, which was entitled: 'Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contact With Russian Intelligence.'

Claim in NYT article: "Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials."

"Note by Strzok: 'This statement is misleading and inaccurate as written. We have not seen evidence of any individuals in contact with Russians (both Governmental and non-Governmental)' and "There is no known intel affiliation, and little if any (government of Russia) affiliation(.)' F.B.I. investigation has shown past contact between (Trump campaign volunteer Carter) Page and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation), but not during his association with the Trump campaign.'

"Claim in NYT article: '... one of the advisers picked up on the (intercepted) calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump's campaign chairman for several months ...'

"Note by Strzok: 'We are unaware of any calls with any Russian government official in which Manafort was a party.'

"Claim in NYT article: 'The FBI has obtained banking and travel records ...'

"Note by Strzok: 'We do not yet have detailed banking records.'

"Claim in NYT article: 'Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, and how many of Trump's advisers were talking to the Russians."

"Note by Strzok: 'Again, we are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intel officials' and 'Our coverage has not revealed contact between Russian intelligence officers and the Trump team.'

"Claim in NYT article: 'The FBI asked the NSA to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls ...'

"Note by Strzok: 'If they did we are not aware of those communications.'

"Claim in NYT article: 'The FBI has closely examined at least four other people close to Mr. Trump ... Carter Page ... Roger Stone... and Mr. Flynn.'

"Note by Strzok: 'We have not investigated Roger Stone.'

"Claim by NYT: 'Senior FBI officials believe ... Christopher Steele ... has a credible track record.'

"Note by Strzok: 'Recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of sub-source network.'

"Claim by NYT: 'The FBI's investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring (2016).'

"Note by Strzok: 'This is inaccurate ... our investigation of Manafort was opened in August 2016.'

"Claim by NYT: 'The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort's communications, but it had the NSA closely scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.'

"Note by Strzok: 'This is inaccurate ...'

"There is as yet no explanation in the documents or from the New York Times as to the identities of the four "American officials" who apparently provided the misleading and false information; or what their motivation was. " ...

...

>166 proximity1:

Thanks for posting.

I used to think everyone would know at some point, that the media is betraying us. But honestly, Progressives are quite content to ignore it. They continue to post meaningless articles with swaths of the BS agenda, and ignore that 50% of what their fighting for is lies and the other half has been lied about. They won't look at it.

They're more than "content" to ignore it, they're determined to ignore it.

They've spent three years hounding and lying about a sitting president--whom they went so far as to impeach and put on trial!--on false pretenses and by groundless claims which
were never warranted by the facts as they were known.

This was only one in a continuing series of manufactured hoopla.

>166 proximity1: Devastating. If it wasn't already clear that the whole thing was BS, that would settle the issue.

>169 Carnophile: And since it wasn't, it doesn't.

Sorry, I know you have a hard time with reality but you're going to have to face it eventually: your guy is a Russian agent. You are so deep into your own hole that you actually support an agent of the Russian government for a second term as president. Why do you hate America so much, and why don't you just leave and go back to Russia?

(oh, boy, I guess the three-man circle-jerk is going to come after me now... ho hum...)

There, there. (Gently pats kiparsky on the head.)

>171 Carnophile:

LMFAO!! :^)

Say!, just answer the man, won't you?!: Why do you hate America so much?!

Or, ( >170 kiparsky: ) as the Spanish Inquisitors used to say, "Confess!, sinner! confess!"

___________________

Here, Carnophile, this post is for your amusement.

and this, too,

Heirs of The New York Times-founder-families, the Ochs-Sulzbergers, now resolve to go about from place to place upon their knees.*

None of this comes as news to me. I've been aware of the family connections in the ownership of the New York and the Chattanooga Times since I was a young teenager.

Of course, back then, in the bad old days, my reaction of surprise was more in the vein of "Oh! Wow! Who knew? Chattanooga family of newspaper publishers 'made good,' in buying out and taking over publishing The New York Times" rather than, "Chattanooga Slave-holding newspaper family buys New York's Times daily newspaper."

How naive I was!

__________________

* They're reported to have said, "Really, we thought it over and decided that it was the least we could do."

In other news which is neither new nor "news"

Cancel-culture logic demands that 'Democrat' go into the dustbin of history. | By Sergiu Klainerman & John Londregan | July 16, 2020 6:30 AM

__________________

"American society is in the middle of a destructive hysteria of self-flagellation and denial. The symbols and exemplars of American society are now the objects of an unprecedented iconoclastic purge. What started as another iteration of perennial and often reasonable calls to dismantle statues of Confederate leaders has metastasized into loud denunciations of American icons such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial has been defaced in Washington, while statues of Columbus are routinely toppled, and even statues of abolitionists and the great Union general Ulysses S. Grant himself were not exempt from the depredations of the vandals. As we write this, we hear calls for the musical "Hamilton" to be canceled because progressives are no longer happy with some of the positions taken by the historical Hamilton.

"Nor have names been spared from the epidemic of destruction. Throughout the country, protesters are demanding to change the name of any institution associated with historical persons deemed imperfect by current standards. Princeton University has renamed its Woodrow Wilson School, and some are now urging Yale University to shed its onomastic association with slave trader Elihu Yale. What about Columbia University? Perhaps both 'Washington' and the 'District of Columbia' will need to be expunged from the name of our capital?

"How far will all this go? Shall we also change the names of months? We might start with July, which honors Julius Caesar, who by common standards committed genocide against the Gauls, and August, named after the man who put the last nail in the coffin of the Roman Republic and declared himself emperor — both were also slave owners themselves as well as leaders of vast slave empires. We understand that the names 'Messidor' and 'Thermidore' are available. And how exemplary a person, according to present sensitivities, was Amerigo Vespucci? Was he really better than Columbus? Perhaps we should also change the name of America?

"In all this frenzy of name changes, one culprit is conspicuously missing. Up to the 1960s the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, poll taxes, and literacy tests for voting. The first Confederate Congress was dominated by former Democrats. While one might argue that these Democrats left their party when they left their country, their party certainly continued to stand by them: In the contested presidential election of 1876, the Democrats allowed the Republican Rutherford Hayes to assume office despite the stronger claims of their own candidate, Samuel Tilden, in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South." ...

I have in mind a certain fellow from America's past. This fellow was born in the 1850s in the American southeast--in the very heart of what was to become, within just a decade of his birth there, the Confederate States of America.

Before the war that would tear this region of the nation apart and see this fellow's town of birth burned to the ground, the area had been home to the Cherokee, the Seminole, the Muscogee Creek, the Shawnee and the Natchez tribal people, all of which tribes once populated this part of the country dating from, of course, colonial times and long, long before that and long before the arrival of any European explorers and eventual settlers to this area.

But following the arrival and settlement of those Europeans, eventually, these and other tribes were, over a number of decades, forcibly driven westward from the the lands on which they lived* and largely out of the territory of the American southeast. That's why today we find a Muskogee county in Oklahoma as well as a Muscogee county in far western Georgia.

Now, back to the family history of my subject, born in the American south of the 1850s. One of eleven siblings, he had, among them, a brother wo became a member of South Carolina's state legislature and fought in the Second Creek War (1836). We shouldn't imagine that his brother was fighting on the side of the Creek indians.

It ought not have escaped the reader's attention that this fellow himself and his entire family, his own, his parents' and later generations, were personally quite implicated in the events which marked southern American society before, during and after the Civil War.

As a boy of about eleven years old when the war began, he of course was too young to enter the conflict as a soldier. He survived the war, his home town was rebuilt and in that same town, which became a major city, he started a business.

Virtually every American, with few exceptions, since the early 1900s has grown up knowing and enjoying his company's main product right down to every reader here.

The man in question was Asa Griggs Candler (b. Dec. 1851- d. Mar. 1929), founder of the Coca-Cola® Bottling Company (1892) of Atlanta, Georgia and Atlanta's 41st mayor (1917 - 1919).

Say, I wonder about a couple of things—

first, what do you suppose the lives of most of the Black people of early 20th-century Atlanta, Georgia were like?

and, second, are you now or have you ever been a Coca-Cola® drinker?

Well, are you going to give up drinking that beverage and all of its maker's related products?

Hmm? If you don't abandon your use of these products, how is that morally any different than leaving those Confederate soldiers' statues standing undisturbed? And don't American Blacks themselves share this same duty to give up buying and drinking Coca-Cola® products?

Well, don't they?

The only way I can account for angry mobs of protesters pulling down statues of Confederate soldiers of the Civil War and then, later, enjoying a refreshing Coca-Cola® is that they just have so damn little acquaintance with so much of the rest of their country's history—either that, or, well, they somehow just don't give enough of a damn when it comes to certain other legacies.

__________________

* I specified "the lands on which they (these indian tribes) lived" because, generally speaking, unlike the Europeans' view of real-estate property, the tribal people didn't regard land as their own legal property. They were living as their ancestors had lived on it: only by grace of the spirit-world they worshiped as their masters and the makers of the world of men and everything in it.

$ wc /tmp/proxys_latest.txt
73 1184 7163 /tmp/proxys_latest.txt
$

Just sayin'.

>172 proximity1: Wondering if the NYT's outrage will now focus on itself. Hmmm...

The newspaper, as we say in Tennessee, "might could" do that except that it's paralyzed by the dilemma which springs from a set of conflicting historical facts.

The founder-family were Southerners and eminent in the society of the slave-holding south, though they'd come there from Ohio, later to become such a notable contributor to the Union's Army of the Republic. In addition to this, they were originally German-Jewish immigrants to America.

Thus, their self-condemnation as, self-evidently, White southern elite racists, also exposed them to the charges of being antisemitic bigots, and, German anti-semites, to boot!

U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings before the Judiciary Committee, 28 July, 2020; 2141 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. :

(from the opening statements (C-SPAN video link))

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R.-OH.) ..."Susan Rice (under oath), here's what Susan Rice says, 'I don't recall intelligence I would consider evidence of a conspiracy.' How about (then-Director of National Intelligence (agencies)) James Clapper? (under oath) 'I never saw any direct evidence that someone in the Trump campaign or someone in it was conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.' ...

and here, quoting then-F.B.I. Deputy Assistant Director and Chief of the Counterespionage Sectio Peter Paul Strzok II, ...'No, no he's (referring to Trump) not (going to be elected). We'll stop it.'" ...

>176 proximity1: Those are part of a striking pattern of anti-Trumpers saying very different things under oath from what they say when they’re not under oath. E.g.,

1. Hidden For Two Years: Crowdstrike Admitted Under Oath That It Had No Evidence At All That the DNC Servers Were Hacked by Russia.

2. Publicly, Former Obama Defense Official and Current Congressional Candidate Evelyn Farkas Claimed She Had Direct Evidence of Collusion. Under Oath, She Admitted She Had No Evidence, But Just "Felt" Like There Was Collusion.

Persecute the President: Because Dems have a feeling.

>177 Carnophile:

Exactly. This farce is now a complete ruin.

The National Review Online :
(Politics & Policy)
New Disclosures Confirm: Trump Himself Was the Target of Obama Administration’s Russia Probe | By Andrew C. McCarthy | August 1, 2020 6:30 AM

____________________

"Assertions that the focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous

"Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.

“I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.

“As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the F.B.I. — but green-lighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.

“Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted F.B.I. reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?

“My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the F.B.I. to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. F.I.S.A. surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.

“The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the F.B.I. and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago — particularly by the investigation led in the House by then–Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).

“Congress’s investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the F.B.I.’s presentation of “facts” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).

“Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and F.B.I. failed to comply with House information demands back in 2017–18, when Republicans led the relevant committees.

...

"The Obama administration and the F.B.I. knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.

"You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a long-time U.S. senator with a strong National-Defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyber-espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.

“So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.

“Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 'briefing' of Trump, the F.B.I. formally opened 'Crossfire Hurricane,' the code-name for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia sub-files, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.

“There was no case file called 'Donald Trump' because Trump was 'Crossfire Hurricane.' The theory of “Crossfire Hurricane” was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.” ...

"But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administration’s investigative agencies to monitor his party’s opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trump’s name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it."

_________________

(bold-face emphasis added)

YOU LOSE

Trump 2016 campaign head colluded with Russian spy: Senate report

The Senate report, the final product of a three-year investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016, described numerous incidents in which the Trump campaign actively sought the help of Moscow and WikiLeaks to damage the campaign of Trump rival Hillary Clinton.
(SNIP)
Much of the Senate report repeats the conclusions of the Justice Department special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller.

>179 Limelite:

You crack my shit up! with such idiotic garbage as that.

LOL! Who TF cares what Mueller's shit-ass preordained Cover-Our-Own-Asses "inquiry" "found" and "reported"?!?!

Robert Mueller, former F.B.I. director, is himself going to face criminal felony indictments and trial before all this is over.

Mueller has got to be praying that Biden gets elected. Otherwise, even the best criminal lawyer would be lucky to get him a plea-bargained reduced prison-sentence.

_________________

"Mueller outlined numerous contacts between the campaign and Russia, but, because his focus was on whether criminal acts took place, he simply concluded that there were no grounds for charges."

See you at the polls--the proper place to decide the resolution of these matters.

There was, indeed, both "collusion" and a concerted, determined criminal conspiracy mounted and perpetrated during the 2016 presidential race. The Obama administration and the F.B.I. under the direction of the then-director were the perpetrators of them.

>180 proximity1:

"This Is What Collusion Looks Like"

Russian election interference and Trump campaign collaboration with Russian spy not "a hoax." And no amount of denial and deflection will erase that fact.

Still a fawning Trump supporter, I see. Still looking to cover for the Worst President Ever. Still allied with your fellow Republican spineless senators, who admit their support for a president whose campaign was and remains "A grave counterintelligence threat to America." Just too cowardly to admit the truth in the report they helped write, or even acknowledge that the intelligence facts and their oaths bind them to oppose his reelection.

As revealed in his letter to Vlad, Trump is Putin's premier "clingy fangirl." After the US Senate Report publication and from your remarks, evidently you remain Trump's.

Proximity1 has mentioned this in another thread, but I wanted to get it into one of Russia threads:

Newly released texts show that FBI agents and analysts were so worried by slimy "Russia" investigation, they bought liability insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits.

https://www.scribd.com/document/477364140/Explosive-FBI-Texts-Show-Internal-Furo...

On January 10, 2017, an FBI analyst said in a chat to other ones, “we all went and purchased professional liability insurance.”

(Collusion)

‘Get Trump’: F.B.I. Whistle-blower On Mueller Team Details Real Reason Flynn Was Targeted | The case agent managing the FBI's investigation of Flynn told Department of Justice attorneys that a desire to "get Trump" was a major factor underlying the case against Flynn. (The Federalist (Washington, D.C.)) By Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway | 25 September, 2020

U.S. attorney Jeff Jensen, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) case agent for the original investigation of former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and who later worked on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel blew the whistle on myriad problems that plagued those investigations from the very beginning.

F.B.I. Special Agent William Barnett told Department of Justice (D.O.J.) investigators that the handling of the probes troubled him so much that he threatened to quit working on it in one case, and threatened to go to the Inspector General in another. According to the summary of Barnett’s interview, he said there was never any basis for the bizarre “collusion” theory the agency and the special counsel relentlessly pursued, to the point that agents made jokes about how they could take any piece of information and claim it was evidence of collusion. He said the Special Counsel Office (SCO) pursued Flynn simply as a means to “get Trump” and viewed F.B.I. investigators as a “speed bump” slowing down the work of the attorneys leading the inquisition.

The broader Trump investigation was “opaque,” the case theory was “supposition on supposition,” the Flynn probe in particular was “unclear and disorganized,” and its predicate was “not great,” Barnett told investigators. According to the interview notes, he felt there was “little detail concerning specific evidence of criminal events.”

When Barnett was first placed on the case in 2016, he said he assumed he’d have a better understanding of why the investigation into the Trump campaign was launched as he read through the evidence. But “after being involved in the investigation for six weeks, Barnett was still unsure of the basis of the investigation concerning Russia and the Trump Campaign working together, without a specific criminal allegation.” Much was made over the Republican National Convention platform amending a proposed change in support of “lethal assistance” to Ukraine to “appropriate assistance.” While some at the F.B.I. attempted to claim this was a sign of collusion with Russia, he characterized the theory as “groping.”

After moving in 2016 to close the Flynn investigation for complete lack of any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Barnett was instructed in early 2017 to keep it open and investigate Flynn for a Logan Act violation. The F.B.I. didn’t even have a code for the Logan Act, a never-used, centuries-old law prohibiting private citizens from corresponding with foreign governments. Flynn was not a private citizen, but the incoming National Security Advisor for President Trump when he made phone calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, so even if the law were deemed constitutional, it would not have applied to Flynn. Barnett had to research the Logan Act, as he was unfamiliar with it, but “did not see the Logan Act as a serious stand-alone charge.”

... ...

DONALD TRUMP GUILTY! So say Republican senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Read it and weep as the witches writhe, condemned.

This report confirms that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. It confirms the worst suspicions about Trump’s relationship with Russia, filling in the holes left in the report from former special counsel Robert Mueller. As Trump excuses Russian President Vladimir Putin placing bounties on U.S. troops and Russia continues to interfere in our democracy to aid Trump’s reelection, this report makes clear that there is no such thing as a coincidence with Trump and Russia.

The report from the Republican-led panel details close political coordination among the Trump campaign, Wikileaks, and Russian intelligence and operatives in 2016.

HILLARY CLINTON NOT GUILTY; REPUBLICAN, JOHN RATcliffe GUILTY! Intel chief releases Russian disinfo on Hillary Clinton that was rejected by bipartisan Senate panel.

Former top officials were aghast at the move by John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis. . ."

Have another glass of Kool-Aid and toast "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" for same old, same old's sake.

>184 Limelite: Your link is a "Center for American Progress" link with the headline STATEMENT: U.S. Senate Report Confirms Trump Campaign Colluded With Russia, CAP’s Neera Tanden Says

That is, it's a Center for American Progress link that says, "Center for American Progress calls Trump guilty."

Cool, I can easily establish Hillary Clinton's guilt.

STATEMENT: Carnophile calls Hillary Clinton Guilty.

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I'm not going to pretend I'm your friend, but if I were I'd be worried about you. The Russia thing has... done something to you psychologically.

>185 Carnophile: That's sort of funny, I think many of us see the words "the Russia thing" and for some reason we think of you.

>185 Carnophile:

Thank you for NOT being a friend! I'm not going to pretend not to be proud of my enemies.

>185 Carnophile:

In my adult life I've feared for the nation's well-being many times--

when Nixon was re-elected in the defeat of George McGovern in 1972,

even more when Ronald Reagan was elected twice,

and, especially, in 2000, when George W. Bush was first elected in an election which saw the open subversion of the normal, standard rules and procedures of electoral law and politics first subverted by various polling places and, then, that subversion was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to halt the re-count of votes in Florida, effectively assuring the election for Bush over Gore. In this, my shock and outrage wasn't that Gore had "lost" the Electoral College vote but won the popular vote. No, the Court's ruling effectively gave the Bush campaign the Electoral College majority.

Had Bush won that fairly, I should not have objected that he may have at the same time failed to win a majority of the popular vote. That's isn't how we determine the presidential election. It's determined by the E.C. vote tallies. But, under the fairly-applied rules, a proper, regularly concluded and legally required re-count should have indicated Gore's rightful victory.

That Gore so easily and quickly conceded and so meekly accepted the Supreme Court's illegal intervention still stands to his everlasting shame--and, in itself, nearly demonstrated that he lacked, after all, the stuff and gumption which we ought to demand in a serving president, making that highway-robbery-loss in a weird way a kind of blessing in disguise.

But, in our present circumstances, I'd trade without a moment's hesitation our circumstances today and accept in return the dark and dismal days as they seemed to me in 1972 - 2000, accept any and all of yesterday's liberals and conservatives--those who favored either Nixon, Reagan, Bush or their opponents--in trade for the fools who now regard Trump as a racist promoter of racism, who claim Trump dismissed the Wuhan Virus as a "hoax", who insist that Nancy Pelosi's and Adam Schiff's impeachment effort was justified rather than what it obviously was: their effort to forestall the disclosure of their own illegal conspiracy to thwart and overturn a legal and proper presidential election outcome.

I'd have the Watergate Scandal back in a heart-beat if I could trade the present Russia-Colusion fiasco for it.

Trump's enemies today have no idea how they ought to be sweating bullets in fear that he does not recover--though many of them are already on record as openly wishing for the W.V. to carry him away and think that should deserve to be at least secretly, if not openly, cheered and welcomed-- have no idea how their own best interests and those of the nation as a whole should lead them to be bent in prayer, hoping and praying for his prompt recovery and return to the White House after the Nov. 3rd ballot.

Not "new", of course, but the confirmation is welcome. Many of us knew these were indeed the unacknowledged facts of the matter.

Now they've been confirmed by fuck-head liar and Obama-appointee, John Brennan's own handwritten notes; neither readily nor voluntarily turned over to investigators, the notes had to be pried from the people holding them by official order:

("D.N.I. Declassifies Handwritten Notes From John Brennan, 2016 CIA Referral On Clinton Campaign’s Collusion Operation") ... "Top U.S. intelligence officials were so concerned heading into the 2016 election that the Russians were aware of and potentially manipulating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s plans to smear Donald Trump as a Russian agent that they personally briefed President Barack Obama on the matter, newly declassified Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) documents show. C.I.A. officials also requested that the FBI investigate Russian knowledge of the Clinton campaign’s collusion smear operation.

"Newly declassified handwritten notes from former C.I.A. Director John Brennan show that the U.S. intelligence community knew in 2016 that Russian intelligence was actively monitoring, and potentially injecting disinformation into, Clinton’s anti-Trump collusion narrative. The intelligence concerning Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s campaign plans was so concerning to Brennan and other national security officials that they personally informed Obama of the matter in the Oval Office in the summer of 2016. The handwritten notes from Brennan were declassified by Director of National Intelligence (D.N.I.) John Ratcliffe and provided to Congress on Tuesday afternoon.

"According to the declassified notes, Brennan and the U.S. intelligence community knew months prior to the 2016 election that the collusion smear was the result of a campaign operation hatched by the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. " ...
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(Emphasis added)
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By Sean Davis | October 6, 2020 | The Federalist (Washington, D.C.)

There's not a shred of cover left in the fiasco of the Hillary Clinton conspiracy to frame Donald Trump with false, malicious accusations intended to undermine, first, his 2016 election-bid and, next, his presidency's first term in office.

Do the Clinton cabal's aiders-and-abettors give a good damn about this outrageous scandal? Obviously they don't.