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On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission...
I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article.
I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing.
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On February 26 2018 10:07 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. He's pointed out before that "opening an investigation" is a easy procedural motion, an investigation being "open" doesn't mean that anything is actually happening.
Yes, because obviously investigations are just opened on everyone just because.
I mean you could go on, but that would require interacting with the other thousands of words. I mean you and others were very quick to take the Schiff memo as incontrovertible proof that Nunes was wrong so the claim about presumption is laughable. It's all speculation to some extent. Pretty much everyone (at least on the right) at this point wants the whole thing released.
I don't think Nunes is "wrong". I think he's a buffoon grandstanding for PR. I had pretty much assumed that he was "technically" right in a factual but meaningless way, and was surprised to see that the Democrat memo outright contracted several of his statements.
I don't see why anyone wants the whole thing released. Unless, of course, they don't actually want anything done about it, they just want to see it for themselves and gossip about it in the dark corners of the internet (or sell that valuable 24/7 media coverage about it). The people that can actually deal with a rights violation via FISA don't need it released, they have access to it.
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On February 26 2018 10:17 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission... I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article. I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing.
You mean the part where they talk about how it didn't specifically list the DNC/Clinton campaign as the funders? Or the part where they say
Schiff comically highlights this DOJ assertion as if it were his home run, when it is in fact damning: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” This is the vague reference that Democrats and Trump critics laughably say was adequate disclosure of the dossier’s political motivation. But why would the FBI “speculate” that a political motive was “likely” involved when, in reality, the FBI well knew that a very specific political motive was precisely involved?
because this has nothing to do with the fact that the Nunes memo claimed the judges were not informed that the dossier was potentially political. This is transparent goalpost shifting from the right-nearly as bad as the hilarious GOP congresspeople saying "well it was JUST in a FOOTNOTE."
And, more importantly, that second quote has no legal basis behind it whatsoever, where saying things are "possibly" or "likely" is kind of how things operate?
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I stand by my prior stance: the nunes memo was proven to be complete trash independent of and largely prior to the schiff memo; and as such the schiff memo (and any issue therewith) is moot; which means that a rebuttal to the schiff memo is also moot.
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On February 26 2018 10:31 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 10:17 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission... I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article. I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing. You mean the part where they talk about how it didn't specifically list the DNC/Clinton campaign as the funders? Or the part where they say Show nested quote +Schiff comically highlights this DOJ assertion as if it were his home run, when it is in fact damning: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” This is the vague reference that Democrats and Trump critics laughably say was adequate disclosure of the dossier’s political motivation. But why would the FBI “speculate” that a political motive was “likely” involved when, in reality, the FBI well knew that a very specific political motive was precisely involved? because this has nothing to do with the fact that the Nunes memo claimed the judges were not informed that the dossier was potentially political. This is transparent goalpost shifting from the right-nearly as bad as the hilarious GOP congresspeople saying "well it was JUST in a FOOTNOTE." And, more importantly, that second quote has no legal basis behind it whatsoever, where saying things are "possibly" or "likely" is kind of how things operate?
Ah yes, goalpost shifting from people who didn't say what you said they said. So eager to parse words, except in the instance of "political motivation" vs "Clinton campaign." You should go take that up with someone who actually said that instead of pretending everyone did.
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On February 26 2018 10:46 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 10:31 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 10:17 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission... I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article. I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing. You mean the part where they talk about how it didn't specifically list the DNC/Clinton campaign as the funders? Or the part where they say Schiff comically highlights this DOJ assertion as if it were his home run, when it is in fact damning: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” This is the vague reference that Democrats and Trump critics laughably say was adequate disclosure of the dossier’s political motivation. But why would the FBI “speculate” that a political motive was “likely” involved when, in reality, the FBI well knew that a very specific political motive was precisely involved? because this has nothing to do with the fact that the Nunes memo claimed the judges were not informed that the dossier was potentially political. This is transparent goalpost shifting from the right-nearly as bad as the hilarious GOP congresspeople saying "well it was JUST in a FOOTNOTE." And, more importantly, that second quote has no legal basis behind it whatsoever, where saying things are "possibly" or "likely" is kind of how things operate? Ah yes, goalpost shifting from people who didn't say what you said they said. So eager to parse words, except in the instance of "political motivation" vs "Clinton campaign." You should go take that up with someone who actually said that instead of pretending everyone did.
a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.
This is where the goalposts were in the Nunes memo. Unless judges are too stupid to understand what it means when research was commissioned to discredit a campaign.
Now they're here:
a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC or Clinton campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials
So I'll take it up with Nunes, I guess. And maybe the National Review for publishing pieces on his memo. Gosh golly gee, that piece by the same guy at the same place doesn't dig much into the Nunes memo as his one on the "Demo" does it? Weird how that works.
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On February 26 2018 10:55 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 10:46 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:31 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 10:17 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission... I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article. I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing. You mean the part where they talk about how it didn't specifically list the DNC/Clinton campaign as the funders? Or the part where they say Schiff comically highlights this DOJ assertion as if it were his home run, when it is in fact damning: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” This is the vague reference that Democrats and Trump critics laughably say was adequate disclosure of the dossier’s political motivation. But why would the FBI “speculate” that a political motive was “likely” involved when, in reality, the FBI well knew that a very specific political motive was precisely involved? because this has nothing to do with the fact that the Nunes memo claimed the judges were not informed that the dossier was potentially political. This is transparent goalpost shifting from the right-nearly as bad as the hilarious GOP congresspeople saying "well it was JUST in a FOOTNOTE." And, more importantly, that second quote has no legal basis behind it whatsoever, where saying things are "possibly" or "likely" is kind of how things operate? Ah yes, goalpost shifting from people who didn't say what you said they said. So eager to parse words, except in the instance of "political motivation" vs "Clinton campaign." You should go take that up with someone who actually said that instead of pretending everyone did. Show nested quote +a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials. This is where the goalposts were in the Nunes memo. Unless judges are too stupid to understand what it means when research was commissioned to discredit a campaign. Now they're here: Show nested quote +a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC or Clinton campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials So I'll take it up with Nunes, I guess. And maybe the National Review for publishing pieces on his memo. Gosh golly gee, that piece by the same guy at the same place doesn't dig much into the Nunes memo as his one on the "Demo" does it? Weird how that works.
The first is obfuscation and was technically correct.
Second, I'm not sure what your criticism of that McCarty piece is ((which I believe I posted at the time). Oh course NR has their resident former assistant us attorney for sdny writing about this. He hasn't shifted any goalposts.
Third, of course this latest piece is longer, the Democrat memo is over twice as long. We also have even more info now than we did then.
I agree lots of gop politicians over hyped it, but not I, nor people I've quoted, have done so.
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On February 26 2018 11:22 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 10:55 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 10:46 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:31 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 10:17 Introvert wrote:On February 26 2018 10:10 TheTenthDoc wrote:On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. It's also confusing because even the Nunes memo claims that the investigation began with big Papa. I'll wait until there's a detailed breakdown somewhere like lawfare. I think they just have this gutcheck at the moment. It's amusing how heavily the National Review skirts the fact that one of the principal claim of the Nunes memo-that the judges were misled about Steele's work being funded by someone opposing Trump politically-is left utterly in ashes at this point and instead babbles about Steele ad infinitum. And, of course, that they continue to avoid mentioning the fact that the dossier was confirmed correct about one of Page's meetings by his own admission... I'm not sure you read even the part I quoted, much less the other half of the article. I'm still agnostic on this matter but the idea that we must A) accept whatever the Democrats say as unbiased fact and B) that we shouldn't speculate (unless your speculation agrees with A)) is highly amusing. You mean the part where they talk about how it didn't specifically list the DNC/Clinton campaign as the funders? Or the part where they say Schiff comically highlights this DOJ assertion as if it were his home run, when it is in fact damning: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” This is the vague reference that Democrats and Trump critics laughably say was adequate disclosure of the dossier’s political motivation. But why would the FBI “speculate” that a political motive was “likely” involved when, in reality, the FBI well knew that a very specific political motive was precisely involved? because this has nothing to do with the fact that the Nunes memo claimed the judges were not informed that the dossier was potentially political. This is transparent goalpost shifting from the right-nearly as bad as the hilarious GOP congresspeople saying "well it was JUST in a FOOTNOTE." And, more importantly, that second quote has no legal basis behind it whatsoever, where saying things are "possibly" or "likely" is kind of how things operate? Ah yes, goalpost shifting from people who didn't say what you said they said. So eager to parse words, except in the instance of "political motivation" vs "Clinton campaign." You should go take that up with someone who actually said that instead of pretending everyone did. a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials. This is where the goalposts were in the Nunes memo. Unless judges are too stupid to understand what it means when research was commissioned to discredit a campaign. Now they're here: a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC or Clinton campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials So I'll take it up with Nunes, I guess. And maybe the National Review for publishing pieces on his memo. Gosh golly gee, that piece by the same guy at the same place doesn't dig much into the Nunes memo as his one on the "Demo" does it? Weird how that works. The first is obfuscation and was technically correct. Second, I'm not sure what your criticism of that McCarty piece is ((which I believe I posted at the time). Oh course NR has their resident former assistant us attorney for sdny writing about this. He hasn't shifted any goalposts. Third, of course this latest piece is longer, the Democrat memo is over twice as long. We also have even more info now than we did then. I agree lots of gop politicians over hyped it, but not I, nor people I've quoted, have done so.
I guess I just think McCarthy is guilty of 1) overhyping the Nunes memo and 2) letting parts of the Schiff memo slide by unmentioned, particularly parts that directly contradict parts of the Nunes memo, in his quest for vindication. And he does the same for the Grassley-Graham memo, which goes out of its way to quietly dump chunks (I'd say half) of the Nunes memo and go all-in on discrediting Steele/saying he lied to the FBI, which 1) doesn't have anything to do with the initial FISA warrant in question because the FBI doesn't have psychic powers and 2) kind of explains why his take on the Dem memo focuses entirely on that. Yet he never brings this up when discussing the Grassley-Graham memo.
I guess maybe he didn't shift goalposts so much as never set up any goalposts for the Nunes memo in the first place, then build some new ones once the Dem memo came out.
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There's only one goalpost that mattered with any of this, and that was showing an illegal FISA warrant. That's the only remote reason for these memos to even exist.
And Nunes original memo fell pretty short of that in the first place, so everything else after is just squabbling over finer details.
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On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this.
Do you think no one else reading knows who McCarthy is or has paid attention to his constant goal-tending for Trump throughout this entire thing? The guy whose level-headed, non-partisan analysis led to Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment? Him?
More specifically, just THIS WEEK he included this in one of his columns:
"Others, like myself, who see “collusion with Russia” as primarily a political narrative that the Obama administration, Democrats, and the anti-Trump media settled on to rationalize Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss and to hamstring Trump’s administration, will be underwhelmed."
But sure, let's use him as our source of unbiased, fact-based analysis. Come on.
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On February 26 2018 12:11 CatharsisUT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this.
Do you think no one else reading knows who McCarthy is or has paid attention to his constant goal-tending for Trump throughout this entire thing? The guy whose level-headed, non-partisan analysis led to Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment? Him? Have a little more respect for the rest of the thread than that. More specifically, just THIS WEEK he included this in one of his columns: "Others, like myself, who see “collusion with Russia” as primarily a political narrative that the Obama administration, Democrats, and the anti-Trump media settled on to rationalize Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss and to hamstring Trump’s administration, will be underwhelmed." But sure, let's use him as our source of unbiased, fact-based analysis. Come on.
The quote you cited isn't really that wrong. I mean Russia isn't the first instance of foreign intervention, how quickly did everyone forget about Netanyahu and the manipulation of elections on both sides?
We've hacked Russian politicians and exposed their communications, and so on. The reason people are latched onto this as a big deal is quite obviously the political part, rather than the infringement on our democracy that they try to pretend (often to themselves as well).
That's why I asked dozens of times when this first started rolling for people to clearly explain what it was about this particular instance that made it worth the constant coverage and propaganda. Answers were unimpressive. Basically boiled down to "it's different when the US does it to opposition governments" or "just because we're far worse actors doesn't mean I can't/shouldn't focus my attention on this Russia thing to the exclusion of the propaganda I'm absorbing, repeating, and citing."
EDIT: That said, McCarthy is an idiot hack and broken clocks are right twice a day.
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On February 26 2018 12:11 CatharsisUT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this.
Do you think no one else reading knows who McCarthy is or has paid attention to his constant goal-tending for Trump throughout this entire thing? The guy whose level-headed, non-partisan analysis led to Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment? Him? More specifically, just THIS WEEK he included this in one of his columns: "Others, like myself, who see “collusion with Russia” as primarily a political narrative that the Obama administration, Democrats, and the anti-Trump media settled on to rationalize Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss and to hamstring Trump’s administration, will be underwhelmed." But sure, let's use him as our source of unbiased, fact-based analysis. Come on.
You left out the first part where he talks about Trumpists being disappointed. Yes he's a conservative, he's at NR. There's a shock. But with regards to this issue he's speaking from his own background. This pull quoting obsession is revealing though.
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Well, I'm impressed that I have displayed an "obsession" in one post - it seemed relevant to demonstrate that the idea that McCarthy is not a partisan in discussing this topic is not accurate. I don't even have an opinion on the content, haven't read this one yet, but I objected to the presentation of him in this situation as some detached, non-partisan observer. He's not.
GH, I agree that the hypocrisy of the US complaining about election interference is pretty rank. I do think there's something to the idea that its perceived importance is higher than it would be otherwise because the beneficiary appears to be somewhere between grateful to receive it and active in obtaining it. Whatever the reality is, Trump's hesitation to work to prevent it in the future magnifies the issue.
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On February 26 2018 14:46 CatharsisUT wrote:
Well, I'm impressed that I have displayed an "obsession" in one post - it seemed relevant to demonstrate that the idea that McCarthy is not a partisan in discussing this topic is not accurate. I don't even have an opinion on the content, haven't read this one yet, but I objected to the presentation of him in this situation as some detached, non-partisan observer. He's not.
GH, I agree that the hypocrisy of the US complaining about election interference is pretty rank. I do think there's something to the idea that its perceived importance is higher than it would be otherwise because the beneficiary appears to be somewhere between grateful to receive it and active in obtaining it. Whatever the reality is, Trump's hesitation to work to prevent it in the future magnifies the issue.
Sorry, that obsession comment was general and directed at the thread.
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On February 26 2018 14:46 CatharsisUT wrote:
Well, I'm impressed that I have displayed an "obsession" in one post - it seemed relevant to demonstrate that the idea that McCarthy is not a partisan in discussing this topic is not accurate. I don't even have an opinion on the content, haven't read this one yet, but I objected to the presentation of him in this situation as some detached, non-partisan observer. He's not.
GH, I agree that the hypocrisy of the US complaining about election interference is pretty rank. I do think there's something to the idea that its perceived importance is higher than it would be otherwise because the beneficiary appears to be somewhere between grateful to receive it and active in obtaining it. Whatever the reality is, Trump's hesitation to work to prevent it in the future magnifies the issue.
What exactly is "the issue" to you?
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Russian interference in US elections.
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On February 26 2018 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 14:46 CatharsisUT wrote:
Well, I'm impressed that I have displayed an "obsession" in one post - it seemed relevant to demonstrate that the idea that McCarthy is not a partisan in discussing this topic is not accurate. I don't even have an opinion on the content, haven't read this one yet, but I objected to the presentation of him in this situation as some detached, non-partisan observer. He's not.
GH, I agree that the hypocrisy of the US complaining about election interference is pretty rank. I do think there's something to the idea that its perceived importance is higher than it would be otherwise because the beneficiary appears to be somewhere between grateful to receive it and active in obtaining it. Whatever the reality is, Trump's hesitation to work to prevent it in the future magnifies the issue. What exactly is "the issue" to you?
Seems like we're in the same spot as the last time this topic came up. Just because you do it yourself, and other people also do it, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to stop that bad behavior, especially if you catch someone red-handed.
Trump could be saying that it's pretty bad what happened and he will happily sign any legislation Congress sends his way to try to stop foreign powers meddling in local elections (even if that probably wouldn't do much until you take the excess of money in politics altogether). Instead he's yelling "fake news" at the top of his lungs and slandering the investigation finding evidence of it.
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On February 26 2018 10:07 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 09:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:On February 26 2018 09:28 Introvert wrote:
As usual I like to wait a few days on this matter until people who know these topics chime in. This is only about half of the whole thing. And before anyone gets too annoyed, McCarthy has been very careful about what he says and what he doesn't say, he's hardly been a partisan throughout this. You know someone only sees what they want when they can say stuff like this with a straight face: You know this is true because, notwithstanding the claim that “only narrow use” was made “of information from Steele’s sources,” the Democrats end up acknowledging that “only narrow use” actually means significant use — as in, the dossier was the sine qua non of the warrant application. Yes, narrow actually means significant. Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.” Memo says investigation started 7 weeks before Dossier was received. Apparently seeing 7 weeks into the future is more plausible than having other reasons to investigate. I could keep going, but the whole article is, again, a lot of speculation from someone who cannot, and will never see, the actual FISA application. And because it's a black box, this lets people like McCarthy presume that the application was bad and the court was stupid, and no one will ever contest it to a degree that proves him wrong. He's pointed out before that "opening an investigation" is a easy procedural motion, an investigation being "open" doesn't mean that anything is actually happening. I mean you could go on, but that would require interacting with the other thousands of words. I mean you and others were very quick to take the Schiff memo as incontrovertible proof that Nunes was wrong so the claim about presumption is laughable. It's all speculation to some extent. Pretty much everyone (at least on the right) at this point wants the whole thing released. We know Nunes was wrong because Nunes himself was forced to publicly admit he was wrong on Fox and Friends.
sigh.
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I was reading this interview with Masha Gessen, who seems to agree that the level of Russian interference is overblown. Maybe it's been mentioned here before?
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, I sat down with the prize-winning Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, a longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her recent book, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, it won the National Book Award in 2017. Gessen recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker magazine headlined “The Fundamental Uncertainty of Mueller’s Russia Indictments.” I began there, asking her about these indictments.
MASHA GESSEN: So, you know, for somebody who actually has read the indictment in its entirety, and, actually, the Russian reporting that is almost entirely repeated in the indictment, it’s really hard to square that with the way that it’s been portrayed as, you know, a sophisticated, bold effort. I think H.R. McMaster is correct in saying, yes, there’s “incontrovertible” evidence of Russian meddling, but to call it bold, to call it sophisticated and to imply that we now know that it actually had an influence on the outcome of the election is absurd. It was not bold. It was not sophisticated. And it—we don’t know, and probably never will know, whether it had any impact.
[snip]
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about what Charles Blow said in The New York Times. In a “piece”:”Attacking the Woke Black Vote,” headlined “Attacking the 'Woke' Black Vote,” Charles Blow writes, “One thing that’s clear to me following the special counsel’s indictment of 13 Russians and three companies for interfering with our election is that the black vote was specifically under attack, from sources foreign and domestic. And this attack appeared to be particularly focused on young black activist-minded voters passionate about social justice: The 'Woke' Vote. The tragic irony is that these young people, many of whom already felt like the American political system was failing them, were encouraged to lay down one of the most powerful political tools they have, thereby ensuring an amplification of their own oppressions.” And he’s saying they were encouraged basically not to vote. I mean, you have, for example, Blacktivist, which turns out to be, you know, a Russian troll, etc.
MASHA GESSEN: You know, I think this is tragic, because I think that instead of engaging with what actually happened in the 2016 election, among American citizens and American activists who were making real, tough decisions about whether to vote and how to vote, we’re now focusing on the Russians, right?
I mean, I remember listening to an interview with Michelle Alexander, the wonderful African-American activist, a few weeks before the election, and how painful it seemed for her to talk about the election and how she said that she was going to have a really difficult time voting for Hillary Clinton, and she wasn’t going to say unequivocally that she was going to vote for Hillary. And I was listening to that interview, and I thought, “Oh, my god, she is going to lose. She is so clearly going to lose, right?” And she was not going to lose because Russians were telling young African Americans to stay home. She was going to lose, in part, because there were very good reasons for young African Americans and old African Americans to stay home, because there was a very visceral memory of her position on prison reform and welfare reform and the incredibly racist rhetoric around her in the 1990s. And she hadn’t addressed it in any kind of convincing way. And to trivialize that tragic rift by saying that the Russians did it is just a huge disservice to our political conversation.
[snip]
MASHA GESSEN: So, I mean, the answer is we don’t know. We don’t know how significant it was. From the information that is publicly available right now, if you look at what they were doing, if you look at how effective what they were doing was—and what I mean is, you know, how effective in sort of social network metrics terms, right?—most of their posts and ads got fewer than average views, because they weren’t very good. They had a couple of runaway successes, but, basically, most of their money was wasted, by social network standards, right? We’re talking, according to the indictment, about a budget of a little over a million dollars a month, right? So, let’s say they did this for a year. They spent—let’s say, you know, they spent $15 million—in a campaign in which one side spent a billion dollars, right? What do we have to imagine to say, with the kind of certainty with which we’ve been saying it, that Russians swayed the election? I mean, granted, the election was won by 77,000 votes in three counties, and so anything, you know, the weather, could have swayed the election. But to point the blame at Russia specifically, I think, is misleading. And again, it just detracts from the conversation we should be having, which is about how Americans elected Trump.
Either way, this will convince nobody of anything.
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On February 26 2018 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 26 2018 14:46 CatharsisUT wrote:
Well, I'm impressed that I have displayed an "obsession" in one post - it seemed relevant to demonstrate that the idea that McCarthy is not a partisan in discussing this topic is not accurate. I don't even have an opinion on the content, haven't read this one yet, but I objected to the presentation of him in this situation as some detached, non-partisan observer. He's not.
GH, I agree that the hypocrisy of the US complaining about election interference is pretty rank. I do think there's something to the idea that its perceived importance is higher than it would be otherwise because the beneficiary appears to be somewhere between grateful to receive it and active in obtaining it. Whatever the reality is, Trump's hesitation to work to prevent it in the future magnifies the issue. What exactly is "the issue" to you?
The issue is that our president isn't working to defend our country against hostile nations. If Russia hacked things, but Clinton won anyways and set out to improve cyber security and sanctioned Russia, then I wouldn't be so worried about Russian hacking. The government would be taking care of the problem or at least trying.
If Donald Trump would enforce the sanctions that congress passed, I'd feel a little better. If he'd quit calling it fake news and actually tried to improve cyber security in response, then I'd feel a little better. Instead, it certainly seems like he has encouraged it and possibly been complicit in it. It helps him win and that's the only thing he cares about and many Republicans have gone along with it. Party over country. That concerns me and it's completely unacceptable.
That we influence the elections in other countries is immaterial to this issue. Those countries should boost their security and/or sanction the US (probably wouldn't work out for them, advantage of being the US). We live in a country that can do something about foreign powers meddling in our elections. We should do something about it.
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EPT
