US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1342

On April 18 2019 01:44 Danglars wrote:

*Color-coded lines, per Barr

On April 18 2019 06:57 Plansix wrote:
No you did not. Several times when you brought up your theory I responded saying that you never referenced who the FISA warrant was for. I articulated further that I felt this omission of information was a tactic to obfuscate who that warrant was for, because it was cater fucking page. The man who has interviews saying “are you sure you should be admitting to this on live TV” because he is real dumb. And very open about his connections to Russia.

On April 17 2019 09:56 Danglars wrote:

I can tell you do separate out insurance and care by other means. Particularly, you can cite that somebody possesses insurance, but receiving treatment is limited by his ability to pay the deductible.

If you'll look back, I didn't make some broader point about the difference. I cited Sadist's attempt to make distinction within Medicare for All/Medicare. You never made reference back to the "previous point." I'm already aware that deductibles can be too high for people to consider buying health insurance.

On April 18 2019 06:56 Wombat_NI wrote:

I just personally don’t read the evidence, tbh I don’t really care that much. If one cares about ‘facts’ so much why does this only surface here?

Either it’s procedural minutiae that seems to miss the forest for the trees, or let’s hop in the time machine to when Clinton was relevant or when Obama was President.

Why even bother if x issue of actual concern is only a pertinent factor of concern if it affects one’s ‘guy’

So no, the message shouldn’t always be discounted by the messenger, of course not. When the message always, always in some way, via a set of seemingly changeable frameworks somehow always ends up being a defence of Trump, then maybe yeah it becomes relevant who the messenger is.

I don’t even think that’s a fair reading of the general tenor of the thread. Which seems to largely be against Trump, yes, with a smattering of me who is massively against Trump but doesn’t think he ultimately matters that much in the wider scheme of things and that the Dems are on to a loser thinking they can impeach him, iirc GreenHorizons is vaguely similar there, and we’re probably amongst if not the most left leaning here. Don’t want to speak for the guy so he can correct me.

On April 18 2019 06:37 xDaunt wrote:

I have yet to see a good argument from anyone as to why the evidence that I have presented is not compelling. Of the people who rotely dismiss my posts on this, not one has demonstrated an even passable understanding of the facts or applicable law. So I'll file this under option 2 as previously provided.

On April 18 2019 07:24 Danglars wrote:

First off, you clearly think you pay enough attention to facts to determine how many of Trump’s “fake news” miss the mark. Let’s just establish that if you never looked into it, you would have no clue and might be ashamed to reach a conclusion. Why not apply the same standard to a major spying operation by Obama’s guys on Trump’s campaign? Domestic surveillance used to be a big bipartisan deal, which led to many reforms in the past.

If you don’t pay attention, you have zero credibility to call something “procedural minutiae.” You don’t know enough to tell the difference. Period.

I don’t accept in the least your defense of ignoring the message in favor of discounting the messenger. Even if you think you’re only applying the policy in limited cases. You have no cure for your own cognitive dissonance. Whatever you presumed to be the case (Trump’s lies should be decisive in support/oppose, some issue is merely procedural minutiae), your own brain will frame contrary evidence as suspicious. If it confirms your hypothesis, you’ll consider it believable. It might be old fashioned, but I think you have to consider the evidence presented and see if the conclusion follows ... because you simply cannot trust yourself to fairly judge whether someone is grasping for straws to defend at any cost. It’ll look that way because of your own inherent biases.

I’m having a little chuckle at how you ascertain the tenor of the thread, and conclude that the people you should distrust are the minority opinion because they’re the ones only interested in defending Trump no matter what. I think you’re just tacitly absorbing the trend of the crowd: if so many people are saying the same thing about the messenger, I’ll agree they’re generally right about the messenger. That’s the stupidity of crowds if you don’t allow contrary views into your mind. Your discounting and partial dismissal will underserve you in becoming generally informed on topics, and will just put you in a confortable bubble.

On April 18 2019 07:24 Nouar wrote:


It's tempting to believe you here, however when you dismiss all the deep-digging I've done on the underlying facts of the "emails" case (since you just dismiss the whole investigation itself as it doesn't support your baseless conclusions, as some do here for Trump), while still advocating for further investigation and prosecution without any predicate other than your gut feeling, it's really hard to trust you on that whole "understanding of the facts or applicable law". Because it conveniently applies only where you deem it fit.

On April 18 2019 07:22 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
So the White House had access to (more information from) the report already. No wonder Barr suddenly couldn't answer that question during his hearing. DoJ people working to aid Trumps lawyers. Seems ridiculous to me that they get access before congressional committees who have to wait until Barr does his media spin.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1118630251276505088

Between this and Barr now announcing he will be holding a press conference before the release, the spectre of him steering the conclusions is not going away soon.

On April 18 2019 07:54 Plansix wrote:

Can you imagine if Comey had leaked his findings in the emails investigation to the Clinton team days in advance so they could prepare a response? We would still be hearing conservatives complaints about it today and until the heat death of the sun.

On April 18 2019 06:40 xDaunt wrote:

I'm looking forward to Barr's and Rosenstein's press conference tomorrow morning. I fully expect them to drop all sorts of bombs that will catch people by surprise more than Barr's "spying" comments did last week. When I say that most people aren't prepared for what's likely coming, I mean it.

On April 18 2019 07:06 xDaunt wrote:
If you guys want to see how intellectually bankrupt your protests are that I haven't been submitting evidence in support of my posts, look no further than here, where I dissected a FISC memo outlining known abuse. As usual. no one substantively responded. In fact, the only response that I got was from Plansix, who did his usual schtick of "I can't rebut you on the substance of your post, so I'm simply going to attack the credibility of one of the guys who is mentioned in it." The lack of self-awareness of their own posting that most posters demonstrate is astounding.

On April 18 2019 07:54 Plansix wrote:

Can you imagine if Comey had leaked his findings in the emails investigation to the Clinton team days in advance so they could prepare a response? We would still be hearing conservatives complaints about it today and until the heat death of the sun.

On April 18 2019 08:11 Dan HH wrote:

I did see it, I didn't think it was worthwhile to ask the obvious question at the time, but I will now if you insist. How does a memo showing that virtually all FISA queries do not exclude irrelevant datasets advance Nunes' claims about Trump's people specifically being politically targeted by the FBI?

As for him being full of shit, I think it's more incompetence in his case. It's likely he genuinely didn't notice the footnote disclosing who Steele was working for, for example.

On April 18 2019 08:11 On_Slaught wrote:


Why even hold a press conference when everyone can read it for themselves? And why hold it before anyone can realistically read it all? And why did Trump know about the press conference before it was even announced by the DoJ? It's almost like Barr is again trying to frame the findings in the best light for the guy who hired him to do literally just that. If he was as unbiased and certain he will be proven right as you claim he should release the report and shut up, letting the report speak for itself.

On April 18 2019 08:11 Dan HH wrote:

I did see it, I didn't think it was worthwhile to ask the obvious question at the time, but I will now if you insist. How does a memo showing that virtually all FISA queries do not exclude irrelevant datasets advance Nunes' claims about Trump's people specifically being politically targeted by the FBI?.

On April 18 2019 08:18 IgnE wrote:
I don’t really give a shit about the Russia stuff for various reasons but I submit that xdaunt and his detractors are not as far apart on the facts as either(?) side thinks. The dispute seems mostly to be over empty signifiers (in the technical sense, see Laclau, etc.) like “un/american” and over legal, not factual, determinations.