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5th December 2017, 08:17 AM | #3121 |
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My guess is that they are all counting on pardons for the guilty and a mass firing of anyone not kissing Trump's ring in the Justice Dept/FBI/CIA/Defense. The GOP has clearly lost all pretense of supporting in the rule of law, and is absolutely giddy at the idea of a right-wing takeover of government, so who, exactly, will stop Trump when he does go after Mueller? GOP donors!!!???
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5th December 2017, 08:27 AM | #3122 |
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5th December 2017, 01:02 PM | #3123 |
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5th December 2017, 02:19 PM | #3124 |
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5th December 2017, 02:53 PM | #3125 |
Seeking Honesty and Sanity
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A man's best friend is his dogma. |
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5th December 2017, 03:16 PM | #3126 |
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5th December 2017, 03:39 PM | #3127 |
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5th December 2017, 03:45 PM | #3128 |
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Hard to square with the email exchange, the list of attendees and Trump's announcement of something about Clinton to be revealed soon that happened just after the meeting.
It conveniently matches Jr's excuses and Daddy's reply written for Jr made before Jr's emails revealed he was lying. |
5th December 2017, 03:50 PM | #3129 |
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5th December 2017, 05:03 PM | #3130 |
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Which one(s)? And When?
It has been reported that the Washington Free Beacon funded Fusion GPS up until the spring in 2016. Then, in April, 2016, Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Clinton Campaign and DNC, retained them to continue. It wasn't until June, 2016 that Christopher Steele was contracted for the Russian dirt. What am I missing? |
5th December 2017, 05:10 PM | #3131 |
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It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward - Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so - William of Conches, c1150 |
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5th December 2017, 05:32 PM | #3132 |
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5th December 2017, 05:42 PM | #3133 |
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It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward - Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so - William of Conches, c1150 |
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5th December 2017, 05:47 PM | #3134 |
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5th December 2017, 05:48 PM | #3135 |
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It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward - Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so - William of Conches, c1150 |
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5th December 2017, 05:49 PM | #3136 |
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5th December 2017, 05:51 PM | #3137 |
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It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward - Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so - William of Conches, c1150 |
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5th December 2017, 05:52 PM | #3138 |
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5th December 2017, 06:08 PM | #3139 |
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5th December 2017, 07:30 PM | #3140 |
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Yes but... Perhaps Mueller is even more clever than he seems, and he seems very clever.
Reuters: Trump lawyer denies Deutsche Bank got subpoena on Trump accounts According to Maddow reporting tonight, the subpoena was for accounts connected to Trump rather than Trump's accounts directly. What I think, if you ask for accounts connected to but not directly Trump's accounts, guess what? You don't need to notify Trump or his attorneys and they cannot then seek injunctions. |
5th December 2017, 07:34 PM | #3141 |
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Faux News is reporting "breaking news" that Mueller's investigation has anti-Trump bias.........
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1. He'd never do that. 2. Okay but he's not currently doing it. 3. Okay but he's not currently technically doing it. 4. Okay but everyone does it. 5. He's doing it, we can't stop him, no point in complaining about it. 6. We all knew he was going to do it which... makes it okay somehow. 7. It's perfectly fine that's he's doing it. |
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5th December 2017, 08:12 PM | #3142 |
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5th December 2017, 08:39 PM | #3143 |
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A man's best friend is his dogma. |
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5th December 2017, 08:43 PM | #3144 |
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I even quoted the state supreme Court ruling
“The law in Illinois is clear that neither the court nor counsel should attempt to define the reasonable doubt standard for the jury.” And people pointed out to you repeatedly how you misstated my argument. I don't even think you are capable of stating the points of that thread back to someone. |
5th December 2017, 09:22 PM | #3145 |
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5th December 2017, 09:36 PM | #3146 |
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5th December 2017, 09:47 PM | #3147 |
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I amend my statement to several states take measures to discourage judges and lawyers from elucidating reasonable doubt. Please excuse my wrong and hyperbolic statement. Or don't.
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5th December 2017, 09:56 PM | #3148 |
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6th December 2017, 04:53 AM | #3149 |
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6th December 2017, 05:26 AM | #3150 |
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6th December 2017, 05:41 AM | #3151 |
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A man's best friend is his dogma. |
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6th December 2017, 01:01 PM | #3152 |
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The problem (for me anyway) is that much of the circumstantial evidence being floated this past year isn't even really circumstantial evidence - it's speculative inference. And much of the circumstantial evidence that does exist supports more than one inference, and not all of those inferences lead to a foregone conclusion of guilt. There's a lot of leading narrative out there.
Yes, many of the elements brought forth have seemed suspicious based on their framing and presentation. Many of the elements could also have been presented in a different framing and seemed innocuous. And many of the elements brought forth haven't been brought forth in an objective fashion. I agree that Trump Jr. meeting with Vesnilwhatshername with the intent of receiving damaging information about Clinton was unethical. It may or may not have been illegal - I'm not a lawyer, and legal opinion seems to show less consensus that I would like in order to form a conclusion. But it has been presented with purposeful framing: Russian lawyer with some degree of association with Russian government offered dirt = soliciting something of value from a foreign government = evidence of active collusion/conspiracy. What raises more skepticism in me is the double standard in play here. Democrats literally paid a foreign intelligence operative to dig up dirt about Trump = somehow not soliciting something of value from a foreign government = no problems, perfectly acceptable. There's always a fairly high likelihood that there is information in here that I don't know. I don't drool over the latest news tidbit, and I actually have a busy life outside of the current political drama . I simply haven't been able to fathom the distinction being used to differentiate these situations from one another that isn't more easily explainable as simple partisanship. |
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6th December 2017, 01:12 PM | #3153 | ||||||||||||||
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Look at the timing of the events around the meeting
We have Don Jr's assertion that nothing happened in the meeting but we already know he lied several times about the meeting. We have Trump claiming that there will be dirt on Clinton within a few hours of the meeting confirmation and the day after, posting a link to the website where the leaks were put. That is pretty unlikely set of coincidences |
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OECD healthcare spending Public/Compulsory Expenditure on healthcare https://data.oecd.org/chart/60Tt Every year since 1990 the US Public healthcare spending has been greater than the UK as a proportion of GDP. More US Tax goes to healthcare than the UK |
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6th December 2017, 01:15 PM | #3154 |
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6th December 2017, 01:16 PM | #3155 |
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6th December 2017, 01:20 PM | #3156 |
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We know that the meeting was arranged
We know that the Trump team intended to arrange to illegally get dirt on Clinton at that meeting We know that the Trump team lied about the meeting We know that they now say that the meeting wasn't productive but that shortly after the meeting had been agreed, Trump posted links to the site where dirt on Clinton was to be put. I think it is reasonable to say that on the balance of probabilities, the meeting did indeed cover the subjects as described in the emails arranging it, and that is why the Trump team lied about it. |
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OECD healthcare spending Public/Compulsory Expenditure on healthcare https://data.oecd.org/chart/60Tt Every year since 1990 the US Public healthcare spending has been greater than the UK as a proportion of GDP. More US Tax goes to healthcare than the UK |
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6th December 2017, 01:21 PM | #3157 |
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6th December 2017, 01:29 PM | #3158 |
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Which is that Trump Jr suddenly started telling the truth about the meeting and that it genuinely was all about adopting orphans, and it was just a coincidence that Trump Sr had posted a link to DCleaks just after the meeting had been arranged, and this was exactly the sort of thing that the email exchanges about the meeting were describing?
Or do you have a different alternative? I know that you have ... highly "exacting"... standards for proof, but this is not proof but simply an assessment of the most likely explanation. |
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OECD healthcare spending Public/Compulsory Expenditure on healthcare https://data.oecd.org/chart/60Tt Every year since 1990 the US Public healthcare spending has been greater than the UK as a proportion of GDP. More US Tax goes to healthcare than the UK |
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6th December 2017, 01:35 PM | #3159 |
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6th December 2017, 01:44 PM | #3160 |
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Why do you think it's unlikely? We already knew that the DNC had been hacked, prior to that meeting being initiated in June. It had already been reported that Russia was the suspected hacker of the DNC servers, and that emails had been stolen.
The coincidence in question is only that a meeting was initiated between the time of the hack and the time of the release. It would be a more meaningful coincidence, to me anyway, if it weren't already widely known and reported that the emails had been hacked. The emails were going to come out at some point regardless. If they'd come out any time after that meeting was set up, it would be seen as a remarkable coincidence, even if it were months after the meeting. Honestly, I keep circling back to the premise that all of this is just as explainable as attempts by a foreign country to weaken the US without any purposeful involvement from Trump or his campaign. It's just as successful, just as disruptive, and just as volatile whether Trump was actually involved or not. If he was involved, then it actually becomes somewhat less effective - we have a bad actor undermining our process, and that can be addressed as a one-off situation. If Trump were not involved, then we have never-ending speculation, and an unwillingness by a large amount of people to believe anything that indicates his lack of involvement, increased partisanship and political division, and an inability to focus on anything else for a solid year and counting. Far more effective in terms of disruption if Trump isn't involved, and everything hinges on speculation and suspicion. That circus will never end, and will carry through into pretty much all future elections. ETA: TL-DR - This whole mess is also explainable by a hostile foreign entity (not even necessarily Russia) exploiting superficial associations and coincidences in order to weaken the US position and distract us from... whatever. |
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The distance between the linguistic dehumanization of a people and their actual suppression and extermination is not great; it is but a small step. - Haig Bosmajian |
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