Serious question: can someone explain why some of you get on the hamster wheel with Fotheringay-Phipps, and go around and around and around and around, etc.?
I’ve never seen someone score so many own goals and then try to add them to their own score. So, there’s that?
My theory is that it’s a bunch of True Believers compensating for the weakness of their position by constant repetition and mutual reinforcement.
Lol, you keep telling yourself that, Phippy.
Okay, smarty-pants, what’s **your **excuse?
In a bit of lighter news, Don Junior and his wife Vanessa appear to be divorcing. It is all over the gossip news and as such there are a lot of d-list news sites reporting. But for fun I provide the following link from Sputnik News with a wonderfully bad photo of Don Junior looking a lot like Matthew Perry on a bad day:
https://sputniknews.com/us/201803141062540813-trump-junior-vanessa-bound-for-divorce-friends-claim/
I wonder if Vanessa has any interesting information she might want to share…
You haven’t heard of spies operating under a cover story? Diplomats being the most obvious? And even if the discussions were not directly about spying related matters, they are still getting background intelligence.
Any more pretzel logic, big buddy?
Hey, if she divorces her way out of the Trump orbit, maybe she’ll never have to wear spike heels again? Her feet will thank her!
After Flynn was appointed, he was repeatedly warned about Kislyak and the fact the Kislyak was a master spy as well as an investigator. He was also explicitly warned that Kislyak was under surveillance. It was really clear that no one WANTED to be in the awkward position of catching an incoming official up in their ongoing surveillance.
Now, there may be a legitimate reason for the incoming National Security Advisor and the Russian Ambassador to speak in their official capacities. And there are procedures and protocols for that. And Flynn ignored them. Now, we do not know exactly what was said in those calls, but we do know that they caused massive reverberations throughout the intelligence agencies. ( I suspect Kislyak made a reference to Russia’s electoral support for Trump while requesting that sanctions be dropped. And I suspect he fully knew he was under surveillance. And that he framed the call deliberately in a way that would compromise Flynn. Because he’s a spy as well as ambassador. )
Now, what should the agencies doing the surveillance should’ve done? And how was “unmasking” involved? Do you think that there was a ny real question regarding which incoming administration official was making furtive contact with a known spy?
It is certainly entertaining to see his occasional efforts to concoct longwinded euphemisms for “sheeple” and “circle jerk”. He am smrt.
Well, he’s just smarter than all the rest of us. Just ask him!
This is virtually incoherent, in the context of what the discussion here is about.
I don’t recall you much but it looks like you’ll fit right in. Welcome to the club!
Hey, c’mon, you guys: The House Intelligence Committee (well, the Republican members of that committee) have concluded that there was no “collusion” and that Russia wasn’t trying to get Donald Trump elected.
At this point, I can’t imagine why anyone who isn’t some kind of hyper-partisan True Believer, afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, would still believe that the Russian government was supporting Trump in the election. And furthermore, even if the Russian government was supporting Trump in the election, that doesn’t mean there was “collusion” between the Trump campaign and anybody from Russia. The Trump campaign might not have even known about all this sinister Russian skullduggery! Alleged. Alleged sinister Russian skullduggery.
It’s not like anyone associated with Trump–like say, his son–was told about “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” and replied “I love it”.
Just because there are dense, thick, choking clouds of smoke, doesn’t mean there’s some kind of fire!
…nm
My bet is he isn’t going to to present evidence of collusion that goes all the way to the top. Close perhaps, but not all the way to the top. And honestly, unless it directly implicates Trump, I don’t see how it’s going to really change a damn thing. He’s not Teflon Don, he’s Mud Monster Don. You can toss mud at this guy on a daily basis and it’s not going make him worse than he does now, because he’s already 100% mud. I mean, seriously, he slept with a porn star right after his current wife had a kid, got it covered up, and literally NO ONE CARES. NOBODY else could get away with that. The fact is, if you hate Trump, that hate is absolute and nothing else is going to make you hate him “more”. If you love Trump, almost nothing is going to change your mind about that, let’s just say it would take something huge. Something worse that shooting someone on 5th avenue (points added if its with an AR-15). And I think there is very little ambivalent “in-between”.
In the indictments of the 13 Russians, Mueller took great pains to explicitly point out that NO Americans knowingly colluded with them. Why say that, and how does he so confidently know that? I mean, maybe there is no direct evidence that anyone did so far, but to flat out state definitively that nobody did (proving a negative, which is almost impossible), signals to me he’s not going to go there. I mean, I think that could have been left out, pending further interviews.
And honestly, if he was going to charge obstruction of justice vis-a-vis firing Comey, and considering firing him, I think he would have done that by now.
I’m sorry, you’ve got some nice lingo but the substance of what you’re saying is too weak for a “hyper-partisan True Believer, afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
Guy wants to argue that Trump Jr responding positively to an email about the Russian government support for and desire to help the Trump campaign proves that there was serious collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, that’s a legitimate argument. I mean, personally I think it’s just a typical clueless Trump guy not appreciating the import of what he was reading or doing, but you can certainly argue otherwise without being an idiot.
But suppose - just to take a recent example - you insist that any interaction with a Russian diplomat who has a legitimate diplomatic role but who also spies for the Russian government is in and of itself evidence that you’re colluding with Russian spies, then that’s a different story. In that case, you’re indeed an idiot (especially if you can’t even relate to the counterpoint when it’s made).
It’s a big world and there are many idiots. Any time there’s an issue on which there are reasonable people on both sides of the issue there are also going to be idiots on both sides of the issue. You can tell them by the type of arguments they make, their command of the facts and the implications of those facts, their ability to follow a logical train of thought and so on. And here’s the point. The fact that an idiot might be on the same side of an issue as someone who is not an idiot doesn’t make him less of an idiot, and - more importantly - doesn’t make his idiotic arguments any more valid.
And to the extent that specific facts and reason count in discussions, then the above matters.
Wow - pure speculation and unbridled hatred. That’s an attractive package you got going there, Ashura! 
Mueller plays his cards close to his vest. I believe that he will find that the collusion (conspiracy) DOES go all the way to the top. That won’t put him away. Money laundering will. Obstruction of justice will. There is so much there that it is like shooting fish in a barrel. When the report comes out, even Republicans will vote to impeach and convict.
This is beautiful.
I’m not sure about that. IANAL or independent counsel or anything, but I suspect – and hope – that Mueller is just taking his time to build a case that’s so overwhelming and legally defensible that all doubt will be removed. I imagine building a case like that is a very complex and time consuming effort, especially when you’re in the terrible position of having to build a case against the President. “You come at the king, you best not miss,” as noted philosopher Omar Little might say. Also, I suspect that Mueller is dealing with about 500 other crimes, either ancillary to the collusion/obstruction, or just turned up coincidentally in the course of investigation. My uninformed guess is that he’s not going to trickle out charges one by one as he gets his various cases together. He’s going to unload them all at once. He may well have the obstruction case all ready to go, but he’s waiting till he ties up the other investigations to reveal them all in one glorious orgy of indictments.
I freely admit that this may all be my partisan wishful thinking, though.
Beyond that - an ‘obstruction’ case - all by its little lonesome without any other crimes to obstruct - would be the easiest for the trumpistas and the rest of the sadministration to ignore as a ‘witch hunt’.