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#952 Feb 06 2018 at 8:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Except the House GOP voted to block the official Democratic response to the memo
Not remotely true.

No, there was literally a vote the same day (Jan 29) as the vote to release the memo and the vote for the Democratic response was literally voted down in the House Intelligence Committee along party lines. This is using the actual definition of "literally", by the way. They then (after I had posted that) eventually voted to release it, a week after the initial vote so they could ensure the Nunes Talking Point Memo had time to circulate unimpeded.

See, when you're just telling the plain truth, it doesn't take another three paragraphs of nonsense to spin it.
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#953 Feb 06 2018 at 8:48 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Except the House GOP voted to block the official Democratic response to the memo


The entire Trump/Russia collaboration investigation ultimately rests on this one piece of political opposition research laundered through a few sources to the FBI, even then requiring those at the top of the FBI (and possibly folks at DoJ) to look the other way and just kinda not mention the fallacious source when going forward with said investigation. The whole point is that the people behind this knew that it was all BS from the start, but went forward anyway.

Which is somewhat problematic.


I will admit your statement confused me so I maybe you could clarify it for me. By using word "ultimately" you are saying it is just that "opposition research" it was based on, or does it allow some wiggle room to say "of course, there is <blank>" later on. Not to mention, I am not sure what you think "fallacious" means. Words have set definitions for a reason. Putting them together in haphazard fashion could be seen as somewhat problematic.

Cryst, G. Rs are already distancing themselves and you are still on last Friday's talking point. Didn't you get the memo ( ah-ha) ?
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#954 Feb 07 2018 at 8:57 AM Rating: Good
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angrymnk wrote:
Cryst, G. Rs are already distancing themselves and you are still on last Friday's talking point. Didn't you get the memo ( ah-ha) ?
It took him about a week to catch up to the conservative shift from hating 45 to their all insisting he's the next messiah. But there's pretty strong evidence he still lives in the 1980s so it's to be expected.

Edited, Feb 7th 2018 10:32am by lolgaxe
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#955 Feb 07 2018 at 9:28 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I suppose at least part of the philosophical issue here is that conservatives tend to believe that the federal government shouldn't be doing anything that's "non-essential" in the first place. And yeah, from there it gets progressively more contentious.
Which is ironic because in theory the military and veterans programs are like 60% of the "non-essential" spending.


How do you figure that? Here's where the scope of legislative power (and thus, legislative funding) is defined. Note, that there are 6 different items listed which touch on aspects of maintaining a military, from dealing with piracy on the seas, to declaring wars, to funding an army, and a navy, a militia, etc.

No mention of funding healthcare, or providing assistance for the poor, or housing for the homeless, or education funding though. So explain to me how you are deciding what is essential and what is non-essential?
Was just trying to use your definition from the previous page. I must have misunderstood you.
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#956 Feb 09 2018 at 10:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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NOT REMOTELY TRUE!!!
Bloomberg wrote:
President Donald Trump on Friday declined to release a House Democratic rebuttal of a Republican memo alleging bias and misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department early in their investigation of Russian election interference.
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#957 Feb 10 2018 at 10:56 AM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
NOT REMOTELY TRUE!!!
Bloomberg wrote:
President Donald Trump on Friday declined to release a House Democratic rebuttal of a Republican memo alleging bias and misconduct by the FBI and Justice Department early in their investigation of Russian election interference.


Oh, don't get facts get in front of good narrative. That said, Trump seems to be handling it better than I expected ( given the two bad options he was given ). Maybe he is finally listening to advice he is getting.
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#958 Feb 13 2018 at 10:51 AM Rating: Excellent
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angrymnk wrote:
Maybe he is finally listening to advice he is getting.
That moment when you realize the voices in your head are smarter than you are.
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#959 Feb 13 2018 at 12:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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The Air Bud rule is a lie.
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The Kansas Secretary of State’s Office ruled that a dog cannot serve as the state’s governor despite the official filings by a dog’s owners, KWCH reports.

“While there is nothing specifically written that says a dog cannot run to lead the state, the secretary state’s office says man’s best friend is not capable of serving the responsibilities required of the governor.”
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#960 Feb 13 2018 at 12:52 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
whatever article wrote:
the secretary state’s office says man’s best friend is not capable of serving the responsibilities required of the governor.
I'm pretty sure a dog can harass their secretary just as well as any bipedal nominee.
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#961 Feb 13 2018 at 7:58 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Except the House GOP voted to block the official Democratic response to the memo
Not remotely true.

No, there was literally a vote the same day (Jan 29) as the vote to release the memo and the vote for the Democratic response was literally voted down in the House Intelligence Committee along party lines. This is using the actual definition of "literally", by the way.


Yes. Because the minority memo was not complete, just as I said in the full paragraph which followed the one sentence you just quoted. The entire point of the minority memo was to block release of the majority memo, nothing more. The current info about it is that it's chock full of classified sources and methods, likely intentionally so as to act like a form of poison pill. Note, that Schiff made three motions that day:

1. He moved to have the minority memo released to the full House for examination. This was passed. So it's not like there's stuff in there that a small number of intelligence committee members are trying to hide from the full body.

2. He then moved to have the FBI and DoJ examine both memos (not just the majority one) before they could be voted on for public release. This was clearly intended to just delay or even prevent the majority memo from release, by lumping both into the same process. The key point here being that it appears that Schiff's memo was designed to not pass a security audit, so that if both were lumped together, neither would be able to be released.

3. Failing that, he moved to have his memo released jointly to the public. Again, clearly designed to ensure that if one had security issues (his, shockingly), neither would be released.

Not surprisingly, they didn't go for either of the second two motions. And why should they?

Quote:
They then (after I had posted that) eventually voted to release it, a week after the initial vote so they could ensure the Nunes Talking Point Memo had time to circulate unimpeded.


Yup. Key word: "unimpeded". Because the entire point of Schiff's memo wasn't to increase the information the public had about this issue, but to impeded the release of the info in the majority memo. Again, we haven't seen the contents of his memo, but from what I've been hearing, it's a huge nothing burger filled with classified stuff, specifically designed to make it impossible to release (at least not with massive redaction). It's pure politics, nothing more.

Quote:
See, when you're just telling the plain truth, it doesn't take another three paragraphs of nonsense to spin it.


The "plain truth" is more complex than that though. I get that the whole "OMG! They wont release our memo!!!" bit plays well, until you realize that their memo was designed to not be released. It was designed to be impossible to release, so that they could complain about it not being released and pretend to be victims of some grand conspiracy to silence them or whatever.

I'll put that right on the same shelf with the claims that the government is covering up Bigfoot sightings, or the details of the Philadelphia experiment, or UFOs at area 51. It's the same nonsense. Claim something, then insist that the absence of corroboration is proof of coverup. Sorry. I don't buy that story.
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#962 Feb 13 2018 at 8:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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I get that "Herp derp Trump says he can't release it so that must be the reason derppity derp" plays well to tools who just repeat whatever they're told to say but this is an administration that had zero issues with releasing a memo that the intelligence community was begging them not to release. Of course that was the GOP talking point memo designed explicitly for partisan points against Democrats and to circle the wagons around Trump. So, uh, sure sport. Must have been all that scary classified information.
Quote:
I'll put that right on the same shelf with the claims that the government is covering up Bigfoot sightings, or the details of the Philadelphia experiment, or UFOs at area 51. It's the same nonsense

...says the guy who waved the Birther flag for years ("just asking questions!"), was convinced that there was a big 9/11 mosque conspiracy and who once argued that the bin Laden strategy room photo was a set-up Smiley: laugh

Hell, right now you're desperately clinging to a GOP fairy tale about how six Republicans from the Deep State magicked up a phony investigation to delegitimatize the president just because the infinitely more obvious answer is politically unpalatable.

Edited, Feb 13th 2018 8:50pm by Jophiel
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#963 Feb 13 2018 at 8:46 PM Rating: Decent
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angrymnk wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Except the House GOP voted to block the official Democratic response to the memo


The entire Trump/Russia collaboration investigation ultimately rests on this one piece of political opposition research laundered through a few sources to the FBI, even then requiring those at the top of the FBI (and possibly folks at DoJ) to look the other way and just kinda not mention the fallacious source when going forward with said investigation. The whole point is that the people behind this knew that it was all BS from the start, but went forward anyway.

Which is somewhat problematic.


I will admit your statement confused me so I maybe you could clarify it for me. By using word "ultimately" you are saying it is just that "opposition research" it was based on, or does it allow some wiggle room to say "of course, there is <blank>" later on.


As in "when we follow the train of action back to its source, it ultimately ends up with a starting point of the fake dossier. I'm not sure why you've chosen to be confused by this pretty standard use of terminology. The starting point of the investigation was the dossier. The dossier was fake. The folks who used the dossier to launch the investigation knew it was fake. They went forward with it anyway. The appearance of political side taking at the FBI and DoJ is pretty bad on this.

Quote:
Not to mention, I am not sure what you think "fallacious" means. Words have set definitions for a reason. Putting them together in haphazard fashion could be seen as somewhat problematic.


Fallacious, meaning "based on a mistaken belief". Synonyms: erroneous, false, untrue, wrong, incorrect, flawed, inaccurate, mistaken, misinformed, misguided.

Again. What about this is confusing you? The dossier was fake. It was designed to create a false impression of Trump, and his connections to and relations with the Russians. It was created by an opposition research group working for the DNC and/or Clinton campaign (both seem to have had their hands in this pie). It was released secretly to the FBI, and then also leaked to members of the media. It was the primary "source" of the claims about Trump and the Russians. Everything else followed from that.

Quote:
Cryst, G. Rs are already distancing themselves and you are still on last Friday's talking point. Didn't you get the memo ( ah-ha) ?


Who? What? Distancing themselves from the media strawman about what the memo might mean? Sure. If you assume that the purpose of the memo is to enable Trump to fire Mueller, and you go running off to Gowdy and ask him "OMGz! Does this mean that Trump is going to try to fire Mueller", and he says "nope. That's not what this is about", that's not in any way "distancing" themselves from the memo itself. The facts in the memo speak for themselves. What we do in response is a separate issue.

No one's arguing for Mueller to be fired, or the investigation to stop (well, not many people anyway). What we want is for the public to understand the background of the whole thing so they can put the investigation in context. Because that's what this whole thing is about, right? There is no actual criminal investigation going on, contrary to labeling. I've asked repeatedly if anyone on this forum knows what statutes are being investigated, or that they suspect were violated by the Trump campaign, or transition team, or even if they know anyone who knows, or think there's someone out there that knows. I've never gotten a response. I've never heard of anyone even pretending that they know the answer to this (so it's not about this forum btw).

There is no actual crime being investigated. The entire thing is about swaying public perception. Nothing more. So yeah, in that context, letting the public know that the whole thing derived from a Nixonian style dirty trick taking to the extreme, has value. And yeah, go ahead with the Mueller investigation, I'm sure it'll have no more results than the investigation into the alleged Plame outting. It's nonsense. But, on the other hand, maybe this will spark a second investigation of the actual Russian collusion that went on during the 2016 election. That between the DNC and Clinton campaign, and the Russians to create a false dossier to attack Trumps campaign. Then we can look into the abuse of power by the Obama administration by using the DoJ and the FBI to assist in using this false information to bring the intelligence services of the US government to bear against the opposing party's nominee for President.

Let's recall that Nixon's campaign merely hired a couple of spooks to do an off the books break in to try to get some intel about the plans of the Democrats in the 1972 election. That was the abuse of power that was alleged, and which was covered up, and which lead to Nixon resigning. If the allegations here are true, the Obama administration went well beyond that. They actually mobilized the FBI and the NSA to spy on the opposing party candidate in order to help their party candidate win. Does anyone actually doubt, given the sheer volume of classified wiretap info that was spread around during this time period and the unmasking of Trump targets during the same time period, that this wasn't done specifically to just happen to allow information to leak to DNC and Clinton campaign members?

We know that this wiretap data was spread around to members of the intelligence community who seemed perfectly willing to leak anything they found that could hurt someone on the GOP side. It's exactly what happened to Flynn, right? You honestly think this was the only case? It's the only one that got to the media and had a public effect. We can't know how much information about the Trump campaign's plans found its way to the Clinton camp or to the DNC which originated in the wiretaps.

Heck. Does anyone remember when Trump announced that his campaign was being tapped and everyone laughed and assumed he was being paranoid because, of course, it was totally absurd to think that the government would actually be spying on one or more members of the other party's campaign, right? It would be an unthinkable abuse of power to do that, right? Somehow, since then, we've moved from "that's a nutty conspiracy theory" to "it happened, but it was totally ok... somehow". Um... How's that? In what universe is this remotely acceptable? This kind of use of power by the ruling party against the candidates of the opposition is the kind of thing that goes on in banana republics around the world, not in the US.

But under the Obama administration, this was done. And even if you don't care about anything else, you should care about that. I would hope that we should all agree that this is the sort of thing which should not happen in our country, no matter what. But it did. The Mueller investigation doesn't matter really. Schiff's memo, whatever it contains, doesn't matter. Allegations about Trump don't matter. What should matter to us is this. Because this is not speculation, or rumor, or allegation. It's fact.

And that should concern us.
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#964 Feb 13 2018 at 8:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Heck. Does anyone remember when Trump announced that his campaign was being tapped...

No, but that's some nice revisionist ass-covering you're doing there. Trump explicitly claimed that Obama had Trump wiretapped. Not "people in Trump's campaign were being watched by the intelligence community because of suspicious behavior" but that President Obama ordered a wiretap on Trump.
Trump wrote:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
[...]
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!


From that, Trump's administration began trying to spin it in a half dozen ways to make Trump look less insane and paranoid ("He, uh, didn't really mean wiretap? And, uh, he didn't, you know, really mean Trump? And, you know, um, maybe we meant the British were doing it? Eh? Eh?") and from that we get you pretty much just making up a new version of it so you can say "Toldja so!" about something everyone else knew for over a year -- people in Trump's campaign were under watch because they had suspicious connections and behavior.

Edited, Feb 13th 2018 8:59pm by Jophiel
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#965 Feb 13 2018 at 9:17 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Of course that was the GOP talking point memo designed explicitly for partisan points against Democrats and to circle the wagons around Trump.


It's not about Trump. That's what you keep missing about this. You're so Trump obsessed that you can't seem to imagine any other reason for this.

It's about abuses of power during the Obama administration. Period. It's about showing the public that under the Obama administration, we have yet another example of organizations which are supposed to be non-partisan and non-political being used for very specific partisan political purposes. In this case, using the flimsiest of possible evidence to gin up a false case against a member of the Trump campaign, so they could get a FISA warrant to tap that member (and only coincidentally happen to hear everything he said to anyone else in the campaign as well, which I'm sure they were super diligent to make sure stayed secret and such, since they were so good at doing that... NOT).

You remind me of some guest on a radio show I was listening to who made a point of saying that he hated the idea of politically motivated investigations, and who then not 2 minutes later argued that the GOP and others on the Right should drop any investigations into Clinton because she'd already lost the election. As if the only reason to have an investigation was to influence opinion during an election, so there was no longer a reason to do this.

He totally missed the point, and you do too. We should not be looking into potential violations of our laws only when there's a political reason to do so. An election at stake, a vote going on, etc. We should look into those things because they are violations of the law and should be investigated. Period. So yeah, looking into possible illegal actions by Clinton when she was SoS is something we should do. Doesn't matter that she's no longer running for President. To do otherwise would be hypocritical and would prove that it really was *only* about the politics. And yes, looking into possible illegal abuses of power by the FBI and DoJ is also something we should do. And not just because there may be some political benefit, or an election going on, or whatever, but because our legal system should actually investigate criminal activity. Period.

It's not about exonerating Trump. It may have that effect to some degree in the context of public opinion (as I mentioned earlier), but it's really about getting to the bottom of some incredibly troubling actions taken by these organizations. If there are people working at the FBI who think their job is to help a "side" politically, they need to be removed. If there were people working at the FBI who abused their positions we should investigate that.

This is not about Trump. This is about investigating possible extreme abuses of power in the executive branch of our government. It's amazing that you don't get this. I could care less about the Russian collusion investigation. It's a giant smoke screen already. What really matters is the rather large set of incredibly questionable actions that were taken by members of the FBI, the DoJ, possibly folks at NSA as well, and possibly up into the Obama White House during the 2016 election cycle. It really does look like they weaponized these organizations in order to help their party win the election. Again, from an actual legal perspective this is vastly worse than Watergate. We have what looks like multiple government agencies working together to go after the opposition party's candidate.

The sheer number of actions involved could not have happened by accident or oversight. Multiple people had to know that the information they were acting on was bogus. They had to know that this was politically targeted. They had to know that what they were doing was illegal. It's just hard to imagine that the exact same organization which used the argument that it would be unseemly to actively investigate a candidate for president when it came to Clinton and her emails (and other things), would just chuck that whole "don't get involved in an election" concept out the window and launch into the most intense investigation possible (FISA warrants are a whole level past nicely asking someone to come in and answer some questions) when it's the other party involved.

How does the same FBI decide that even though they know that there's emails and documents on Clinton's computer, containing nearly every communication she had while working as SoS, and certainly contains sensitive
information with national security ramifications, and likely also some classified information, that they'll not bother with getting a warrant and taking the darn thing directly (again, out of fear of it looking like they're injecting themselves into an election process), then turn around and request FISA warrants of the other campaign using information they had to know was bogus? So speculation on one "side" gets FISA warrants, but known fact on the other, with a known target (Clinton's email server), gets... nothing? A polite request for copies of the data, after she's gone through it and deleted anything she doesn't want them to see?

Are you kidding me? There's no way these two actions represent non-partisan decision making. At all. This was very clearly about protecting Clinton and attacking Trump. It's hard to come to any other conclusion here. And the more we see of these internal communications (and yes, information like that from the Nunes memo), the more obvious this set of partisan actions become. That's the point of this Joph. Again. It's not about Trump. It's about highly partisan actors working in our government agencies. That has to be rooted out, regardless of what other political stuff is going on at the same time. We the people need to have some level of trust that those we've handed the power to investigate us, and spy on us, are doing so with true national security motivations in mind, and not abusing that power for political purposes.

It's not about Trump. It really isn't. That's the smoke screen folks on the left are using to try to dismiss or distract from this. It's about abuses of power. That's what we care about.
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#966 Feb 14 2018 at 7:14 AM Rating: Decent
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Never a dull moment. Trump's lawyer said he paid off **** star out of his own pocket ( and was not reimbursed ). He is either the nicest lawyer ever, he is lying or Trump stiffed him. I am unsure, which makea more sense.

******* awesome
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#967 Feb 14 2018 at 8:58 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Of course that was the GOP talking point memo designed explicitly for partisan points against Democrats and to circle the wagons around Trump.

It's not about Trump.

You're adorable.
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#968 Feb 14 2018 at 9:14 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
It's not about Trump.
gbaji wrote:
It's not about Trump.
gbaji wrote:
It's not about Trump.
Calm down, Wiseau.
angrymnk wrote:
He is either the nicest lawyer ever, he is lying or 45 stiffed him.
Maybe he paid because 45 "stiffed" him.

Edited, Feb 14th 2018 10:20am by lolgaxe
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#969 Feb 14 2018 at 10:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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Don't forget that Gbaji's birther obsession wasn't about Obama! He just suddenly became really, really concerned about the chance of some, unnamed, totally hypothetical non-citizen becoming president and it just happened that this deep well of concern manifested itself around 2007-2008 and made him just start asking questions.

I can't believe you would dismiss his "Not about Trump" claims now after a track record like that.
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#971 Feb 14 2018 at 10:34 AM Rating: Good
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Now you simmer down with that repetition, Phil Conners.
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#972 Feb 14 2018 at 12:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
Don't forget that Gbaji's birther obsession wasn't about Obama! He just suddenly became really, really concerned about the chance of some, unnamed, totally hypothetical non-citizen becoming president and it just happened that this deep well of concern manifested itself around 2007-2008 and made him just start asking questions.

I can't believe you would dismiss his "Not about Trump" claims now after a track record like that.
I don't know, given the right's continual obsession with immigration and voters rights laws and other things of that nature I'm willing to believe the Obama thing wasn't just an isolated problem.

Edited, Feb 14th 2018 10:13am by someproteinguy
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#973 Feb 14 2018 at 5:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Heck. Does anyone remember when Trump announced that his campaign was being tapped...

No, but that's some nice revisionist ass-covering you're doing there. Trump explicitly claimed that Obama had Trump wiretapped.


Trump wrote:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
[...]
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!


Notice how what I said is more similar to what Trump actually said than what you said? You freaking provided the quote Joph! And you still got it wrong.

And guess what? He was right.

Edited, Feb 14th 2018 6:45pm by gbaji
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#974 Feb 14 2018 at 6:27 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Heck. Does anyone remember when Trump announced that his campaign was being tapped...

No, but that's some nice revisionist ass-covering you're doing there. Trump explicitly claimed that Obama had Trump wiretapped.


Trump wrote:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
[...]
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!


Notice how what I said is more similar to what Trump actually said than what you did? You freaking provided the quote Joph! And you still got it wrong.

And guess what? He was right.


And you know what the funny thing is? I want Trump to succeed in damaging FISA ( if only a little bit - everyone knows at this point it is not going anywhere; ****, just the other day I heard prosecutor defending Guantanamo as a great way to gather intelligence so we are back to that level of idiocy ).

So I might not criticize him that harshly over that, but you have to admit that he was just not wrong. That is not the same as being right.
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#975 Feb 14 2018 at 9:44 PM Rating: Decent
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angrymnk wrote:
And you know what the funny thing is? I want Trump to succeed in damaging FISA ( if only a little bit - everyone knows at this point it is not going anywhere; ****, just the other day I heard prosecutor defending Guantanamo as a great way to gather intelligence so we are back to that level of idiocy ).


I don't think that this is directly about FISA itself. The process is flawed, but it's probably the best one we could use, given the nature of the issue at hand. The problem is that if false information is fed to the judges in the FISA court, they're going to approve taps that they should not. That's really no different than a police investigation providing false evidence to a judge to get a warrant. That happens too. And the failing isn't the judge, but the investigators not being diligent in their fact finding (or sometimes outright faking evidence to get a warrant, which is straight up abuse of power).

When these things happen, the correct course of action is to investigate those who generated the false evidence, find out who was involved, and then apply appropriate punishment for those actions. And this is *exactly* what folks on the Right want to see happen. Again, this is not specifically about Trump. This sort of thing could have been used against anyone. I would hope that we would all like to see this sort of abuse rooted out and eliminated. The last thing we should be doing is sitting around saying "Well, I don't like the guy they used this on, so I guess it's ok". No, it's not. Because if this sort of thing is allowed to stand unpunished, it'll happen again. And in all likelihood it wont be someone you dislike who will be the next target.

Again. it's not about Trump. We should all expect that the same rules of law and protection against abuse of power, apply to all of us, not just the people we like.

Quote:
So I might not criticize him that harshly over that, but you have to admit that he was just not wrong. That is not the same as being right.


I'm not sure what the point of splitting that hair is. In this case, there was a clear abuse of government power used to try to help the party in power win an election against the opposing party. And, when the opposing party won anyway, appears to have continued to be used to discredit that other party after the fact. The shocking thing is that they were so brazen about it. One can only assume they were so certain of victory, that they didn't consider what would happen if they lost, and didn't realize that what they'd been doing would come out if that happened.

And this is where the smokescreen comes in. I happen to believe that much of what we're seeing right now is about those who were involved in this, doing anything, saying anything, and spewing as much Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt as possible in the hopes that so much misinformation and confusion will occur that they'll slip by unnoticed. I guess. So the tapped conversations get distributed widely to as many friendly hands as possible. They leak stuff, when and where they can, to sow more confusion about what's going on. They launch investigations into nothing. They speculate, and allege, and point fingers. Again though, this is all smokescreen. The real collusion story is about the misuse of government power during the campaign to try to help Clinton win the election.

The fact that it failed isn't the point, and they know it. Right now, it's pure CYA. But their story is starting to unravel, day by day, bit by bit. Again, I don't buy the idea that you should only investigate possible criminal actions if the party who engaged in this succeeded. It's still a crime, and should be investigated, and those involved prosecuted for their roles. Because if we don't, then it'll happen again. I'd like to think we'd all be behind preventing that.
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King Nobby wrote:
More words please
#976 Feb 14 2018 at 11:59 PM Rating: Excellent
Liberal Conspiracy
*******
TILT
gbaji wrote:
Notice how what I said is more similar to what Trump actually said than what you said? You freaking provided the quote Joph! And you still got it wrong.

Literacy isn't your strong suit.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
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