US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3508

On February 15 2022 15:01 KwarK wrote:

Sure, I get that, but it's still important to remind people that Trump did attempt to collude and Russia did actually intervene because people always seem to imply that it was otherwise.

On February 15 2022 19:18 Gorsameth wrote:
The fact that Fox runs with it but no one else makes it really obvious that whatever headline Fox is running with is most likely bullshit and a very distorted reading of what is actually happening.

Spending 5 minutes looking only leads to confirming that. No one 'hacked' anything. While investigating Trump a company looked at some DNS data from Trump tower, which companies share freely.

Nor does the indictment actually claim anything about hacking. Its a "Motion to inquire about potential conflicts of interest" because someone worked with someone else that worked with the DNC and Hillary campaign when they talked about the initial rumour that Trump tower might be communicating with a Russian server back in 2016. Note the 'potential' in there, so they can't even prove that at this time.

Simply put, as your name says, this is complete gobbledygook and Fox is just screeching to get anything to draw attention away from Trumps continuing legal troubles by once again going for the old reliable "But Hillary...".

On February 15 2022 23:56 Doc.Rivers wrote:


The Mueller Report found no collusion so in my eyes that's the end of it.



It wasn't just the trump tower dns, it was also white house servers, which were provided and maintained by the company spinning up frivolous collusion evidence. The CEO of which had previously been offered a job in Clinton administration had she won. Thankfully the government quickly rejected these theories, but they did make it into the media, and the government definitely did not reject the Steele dossier (as they should have).

Myth: Mueller found “no collusion.”

Response: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.

While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up. Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”

Myth: Mueller found no obstruction.

Response: Mueller found at least four acts by Trump in which all elements of the obstruction statute were satisfied – attempting to fire Mueller, directing White House counsel Don McGahn to lie and create a false document about efforts to fire Mueller, attempting to limit the investigation to future elections and attempting to prevent Manafort from cooperating with the government. As Mueller stated, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Mueller declined to make a “traditional prosecution decision” about obstruction of justice. Because he was bound by the Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, he did not even attempt to reach a legal conclusion about the facts. Instead, he undertook to “preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available,” because a president can be charged after he leaves office. In fact, out of an abundance of fairness, Mueller thought that it would be improper to even accuse Trump of committing a crime so as not to “preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” meaning impeachment.

On February 15 2022 23:56 Doc.Rivers wrote:


The Mueller Report found no collusion so in my eyes that's the end of it.



It wasn't just the trump tower dns, it was also white house servers, which were provided and maintained by the company spinning up frivolous collusion evidence. The CEO of which had previously been offered a job in Clinton administration had she won. Thankfully the government quickly rejected these theories, but they did make it into the media, and the government definitely did not reject the Steele dossier (as they should have).

On February 16 2022 00:20 Gorsameth wrote:
So, you going to claim anything actually illegal happened? Because DNS information is not secret.

Nor did you comment on the fact that there is no allegation of a crime by Dunham. He never mentions about hacking or any illegitimate information. Just that Person A worked for Company B who also worked with the DNC and Hillary campaign, a fact that was known to the authorities who investigated the information they received.

Your post is literally complaining that people talked about stuff. Shock, Horror. But Hillary!!!

Edit: And yes, the usual Mueller bullshit lies. Mueller specifically did not clear Trump of collusion and didn't charge Trump because of department policy to not indict a sitting President. Barr then lied to the public about what the report said before that report became public and Mueller is on record saying that Barr twisted his words to claim that Trump was innocent.

The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.

A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”

On February 16 2022 00:33 Doc.Rivers wrote:


That Time article is incorrect and misunderstands the concept of the burden of proof. This is from the executive summary of the Mueller Report:



The bolded part is an admission that they did not find collusion. The non-bolded part is an attempt to redefine collusion after none was found. If the campaign only "expected it would benefit electorally," but did not actually "conspire or coordinate" with Russia, then Mueller is alleging a thought crime, not collusion.

Aside from that the Time article misunderstands the role of a prosecutor and the concept of burden of proof:



The burden of proof is on the maker of an accusation. If there is insufficient evidence, it's best to consider the accused innocent of the accusation. It was not Mueller's role to say "we found insufficient evidence of the accusation, but here's a bunch of things we did find that might be related." Prosecutors are not supposed to do that.

On February 16 2022 01:56 JimmiC wrote:


The point to most people is not whether or not it was criminal. It is, do you want a leader who openly campaigns to have foriegn governments cheat for him? And then meets with those people?

And when you take that in concert with him trying to overturn the fairly held election. It is pretty clear the guy is not about democracy, he is about him and his power. And yet your party puts him up on a pedistal. Bizzaro world.


If I had a financial advisor who did nothing illegal but openly told everyone that he was making decisions that would pay him the most commision not what was best for me AND then when I tried to leave he openly tried to force me to stay. I would think this was a horrible human being.

Ethics is not about whether it is ilegal or not, it is about whats right and wrong.

Setting the bar so low as you and your party has is inexusable. And because of it people who want their leaders to better than not quite criminal are looling into others ways Trump broke the law (and there appears to many) because things like simply being so unethical he cant run a charity without grifting from it, can't run a school without grifting from the students, trying to steal an election, asking for illegal foriegn interfernce in an election, using campaign funds to pay off women he cheated on his wife with, staying at his own properties (and the massive staff and securirty) to emrich himself and so on, do not hurt his popularity with his cult like following or the power hungry followers who are happy to ride his coattales to any extra they can get for themselves.

If Republican voters would just hold him accountable for the 1000s of ethical breaches he makea on the regular it would not be nearly the issue. But for some reason inspite of the facts, including even his own words and tweets anything bad about the man is a leftist conspircy. Hell when crimes against him are proven you will still belive its a leftist conspircy.

You have "faith" in a man who does not deserve and consistently repeatedly through his actions proves why you should not.

On February 16 2022 01:56 JimmiC wrote:


The point to most people is not whether or not it was criminal. It is, do you want a leader who openly campaigns to have foriegn governments cheat for him? And then meets with those people?

And when you take that in concert with him trying to overturn the fairly held election. It is pretty clear the guy is not about democracy, he is about him and his power. And yet your party puts him up on a pedistal. Bizzaro world.


If I had a financial advisor who did nothing illegal but openly told everyone that he was making decisions that would pay him the most commision not what was best for me AND then when I tried to leave he openly tried to force me to stay. I would think this was a horrible human being.

Ethics is not about whether it is ilegal or not, it is about whats right and wrong.

Setting the bar so low as you and your party has is inexusable. And because of it people who want their leaders to better than not quite criminal are looling into others ways Trump broke the law (and there appears to many) because things like simply being so unethical he cant run a charity without grifting from it, can't run a school without grifting from the students, trying to steal an election, asking for illegal foriegn interfernce in an election, using campaign funds to pay off women he cheated on his wife with, staying at his own properties (and the massive staff and securirty) to emrich himself and so on, do not hurt his popularity with his cult like following or the power hungry followers who are happy to ride his coattales to any extra they can get for themselves.

If Republican voters would just hold him accountable for the 1000s of ethical breaches he makea on the regular it would not be nearly the issue. But for some reason inspite of the facts, including even his own words and tweets anything bad about the man is a leftist conspircy. Hell when crimes against him are proven you will still belive its a leftist conspircy.

You have "faith" in a man who does not deserve and consistently repeatedly through his actions proves why you should not.

On February 16 2022 07:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:


If we're talking about a law enforcement investigation of a campaign and then a president, and an accompanying "Russiagate" media phenomenon, I don't think the question is just this general question of whether we want an ethical leader. We need something more than that to justify the whole thing. Him publicly asking Russia for help is not enough, it is in fact evidence that there is no plot of collusion. Also, interesting fact about the trump tower meeting - the Russian lawyer who asked for and came to the meeting was at the time a client of Fusion GPS, the company fabricating the Steele dossier. The things she advocated for at the meeting were the very things she was working with Fusion on.

Point being, just because we found some "Russian contacts" as a result of the investigation doesn't mean Russiagate was justified. Many of us believe, based on credible evidence, that Russiagate was a malicious plot to undermine the trump candidacy and then presidency. But we'll see - ultimate judgment should probably be withheld until the Durham report comes out.

On February 16 2022 08:15 Doc.Rivers wrote:


Well intervention and collusion are two very different things. If only the former occurred, the trump campaign should not be investigated or faulted.