I’m on my phone now so have no interest in multiquoting, but let me say this.
You know you’ve been destroyed in a thread when you use terms like “credible” and “reputable” to defend the propriety of publishing unverified information from a single source on the basis that some people think of him highly; and then you attack the idea of “credibility” and “reputable” as subjective notions that can mean anything.
When you’re arguing with yourself, you’ve lost.
…what a load of malarky.
This is great debates. You’ve compared this case to a conspiracy theory, a television documentary and an old movie. You haven’t put up an argument. You’ve just taken pot shots at me.
You’ve ignored the substance of this case. You’ve ignored the substance of my argument.
And now you are claiming I have been destroyed? Because I used the word credible and reputable?
Of course credibility and reputation are fucking subjective. What I find credible and what you find credible are probably two different things.
I haven’t been arguing with myself: and I haven’t lost.
If you want to keep on these substance free attacks on me you know what forum to take it too. But if you finally want to tackle what I present in the OP please feel free.
I think it’s indefensible that he did not call his company Remington Steele, P.I.
About the questions as to why the party that ponied up the money for the oppo research on Trump did not release the findings. I’ve read in a couple places that the original people who approached Mr Steele were Republicans of the “Never Trump” variety.
If that is the case, it presents a reasonable scenario: the funders were looking to head off Trump, to prevent his nomination. After his nomination, they were faced with the distasteful prospect of sabotaging their own party’s nominee, they bailed. To my recollection, several weeks before Trump’s nomination was a done deal, it was clear that the chasm yawned beneath them, as Jar-Jar Binks prepared his nominating speech.
If that nugget about the Founding Funders is true, then the reason for their reluctance becomes clear: they originally intended to “smear” Trump to prevent his nomination, not his election.
I think the existence of the dossier is news in and of itself. Whether it is, or can be, verified true or false, its existence is interesting and the fact that it was briefed to the top is newsworthy.
I think the decision to release it is a judgement call. The cat was out of the bag on its existence, people wanted to know what it was.
It’s release now it’s actually favorable to Trump as it allows him to deny and put it in the past. If it weren’t released, all the public would know is that the intelligence community briefed him about some information that was possibly compromising to him and we’d all be sitting around speculating about what it was.
His supporters can bitch about the release all they want but they would not enjoy defending him against a secret report.
And I hope this isn’t too off topic, but how simple would it have been for Trump to have said; “This has been circulating for a while, I even read parts of it last summer and we all got a kick out of it. But it looks like the authors have been adding to it since then and I’m glad it was released now so people can see it and there won’t be all these ridiculous rumors circulating.”
Instead, his first reaction was to lie about it and attack the intel chiefs. Think about that for a minute. Whatever becomes of this dossier, Trump doesn’t behave like a person speaking with confidence of his innocence.
Perhaps I am missing something, but this seems to be Buzzfeed’s original article. The second sentence is, “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.”
Buzzfeed weren’t the first news outlet to discuss the reports, and pointed out that there is no evidence that anything in them is true in the second sentence of their piece.
I quite clearly recall that every major news outlet was reporting on Obama’s supposed Kenyan origins. That story was never verified, and in fact it was falsified about five minutes in. They continued to report on it.
So why are Buzzfeed suddenly journalistic pariahs, while the Tampa Bay Times (to single out one example) are not?
I take no position on this. I’m just curious as to why so many people seem to be demanding prior verification who haven’t demanded it in the past.
No, they were not shut down by Obama. (Hint: Trump isn’t the president.) But they weren’t even shut down by Trump. What happened is the story died because it didn’t have legs.
The rest of the media ditched them because the story stank. Why should they prop up sloppy journalism?
“Fake News” is in the spotlight all the sudden. Now everyone is concerned.
Society has been reading nothing but listicles and memes for over a decade. Most major newspapers have already failed. But I guess it turns out everyone was Walter freaking Cronkite the whole time. :smack:
…Thanks for the correction. Were you unsure of who I was refering too?
I was of course referring to President-Elect Trump. Former reality show host. Current reality show participant. The next most powerful person in the world. The next leader of the free world. Agent Orange. Bratman. The Human Corncob. Darth Hater. Hair Furher. K-Mart Caesar. The Angry Cheeto. Genghis Can’t. The Xenophobic Sweet Potato. Prima Donald.
I was trying to keep it civil. But since you seemed unclear on who I was talking about, I wanted to make sure things were crystal clear. Does that clear things up for you?
But they were shut down by Trump.
You just keep saying these things. Can you at the very least attempt to make a case for your statement?
Has the story died? I don’t think it has. You keep wanting to talk about it after all. Did it have legs? I think it does. But even if it didn’t: that isn’t relevant.
From today, in an article called “Is the Christopher Steele dossier fake news?”:
[QUOTE=CNN]
Despite all of the tweets and protests from the Trump team, this issue is not going away. To ensure independence, Congress needs to be involved at highly classified levels to ensure the intelligence community can do its job properly and free of interference from the White House.
[/QUOTE]
The story isn’t dead. You may have given up on it. But at the very least CNN will keep covering it.
The story doesn’t stink.
All that have worked with Steele have vouched for him.
His job was to “dig up dirt” on President-Elect Trump.
He used his sources in Russia (Steele was a former MI6 agent) to compile a dossier about what Trump got up to allegedly in Russia.
Steele gave this information directly to the FBI because of the possible repercussions if it were true. John McCain also gave a copy to the FBI.
This is a story. The existence of the dossier is a story. The FBI handling of the dossier is a story.
There is nothing “stink” about this story.
[QUOTE=CNN]
That leaves us with two significant takeaways from the analysis: 1) there are substantial reasons to give the report credibility (highly credible author, reports of other links and communications between the Trump campaign and Russia, much of the structure and substance of the reports, the fact that the US intelligence community seems to think it deserves further investigation) and reasons to question its veracity (access to Kremlin seems too good, lack of caveat or caution in assessments, factual errors and other details). 2) There is more than enough material (sources named, locations, organizations, time frames) to keep the FBI and the intelligence community busy with an investigation for several months.
[/QUOTE]
One of the roles of the Fourth Estate is to “keep the bastards honest.” Their job is not to act as gatekeepers to information. Buzzfeed made an editorial decision to publish this document. The American people deserve context. From today:
[QUOTE=CNN]
Trump used the interview to restate his doubts about NATO. “I said a long time ago that NATO had problems,” he said in the interview.
"Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago.
“Number two the countries weren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying,” adding that this was unfair to the United States.
[/QUOTE]
The people have a right to know that a dossier put together by a highly credible author made claims that Trump and his team were receiving regular intelligence from Russia, that they had allegedly been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for the last five years, and that Russian intelligence had allegedly “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him.”
If Donald Trump does the things that he has said he is going to do then the world is going to be a very different place. I don’t live in your country. I didn’t vote for this person. But I am going to have to live with the consequences of the votes of the American people. **I have the right to know that this document exists. **The United States Media are not custodians of this information. They are not censors. This information was not secret.
So why should the media stand up for what you call “sloppy journalism?”
They should stand up for Buzzfeed because the stakes are so fucking high. Because there is so much to loose. They don’t need to agree with Buzzfeed’s decision to publish. But they should be pro-actively defending their editorial right to do so.
[QUOTE=Alexey Kovalev]
But your colleagues are there to help you, right? After all, you’re all in this together?
Wrong.
Don’t expect any camaraderie.
These people are not your partners or brothers in arms. They are your rivals in a fiercely competitive, crashing market and right now the only currency in this market is whatever that man on the stage says. Whoever is lucky to ask a question and be the first to transmit the answer to the outside world wins. Don’t expect any solidarity or support from them. If your question is stonewalled/mocked down/ignored, don’t expect a rival publication to pick up the banner and follow up on your behalf. It’s in this man’s best interests to pit you against each other, fighting over artificial scarcities like room space, mic time or, of course, his attention.
[/QUOTE]
In my OP (have you read it yet?) I quoted Sean Illing, who said “The report is counterproductive because it feeds directly into Trump’s narrative about a corrupt and unreliable media.” But I think that Sean is wrong. By attacking Buzzfeed the media are doing exactly what Trump wants. We have seen how this has played out in other countries. Do not get complacent and think that “it can’t happen here.” Because it already has.
The media should not be concerned with Trumps narrative. They should only be concerned about doing their job.
To continue Ravenman’s comparisons to movies: this is like the ending of Rogue One. (Open spoilers ahead for Rogue One and A New Hope.) Jyn sacrificed everything to bring the Rebels the plans to the Death Star. But rather than using the information to protect themselves the leaders of the Alliance decided they needed independent verification. But that verification would be near impossible to get. The base on Scarif got blown up. Vader knows they are going after the plans so would ensure that any other copy were either locked up tight or destroyed.
Christopher Steele has burned all of his bridges to bring this story to the American people. He did not have to do that. His job ended when the people that hired him paid him his money. He and his family are in hiding. His sources are probably also either in hiding, in custody, or dead. You have got all the verification you are going to get. The guy is a fucking hero.
But if the American people are going to regard what he as done as “peddling unsubstantiated rumors” then you guys deserve everything you are going to get.
Damn, you get so angry when people don’t agree with you.
You keep talking about Steele’s reputation. Well, Colin Powell has a great reputation too.
People can be earnest and make mistakes. I have no clue if Steele’s sources are feeding him bullshit that he bought into, Curveball-style, or not. (I think a lot of the press here wishes that they hadn’t reported all those stories about Iraqi WMD threats under the notion that "the press shouldn’t be a gatekeeper of information, let’s just barf up everything someone alleges and the people will judge themselves.)
Even the former British ambassador to Moscow said: "I know him as a very competent, professional operator who left the secret service and is now operating his own private company. I do not think he would make things up. I don’t think he would, necessarily, always draw correct judgment, but that’s not the same thing.”
I think the publishing of the dossier has diverted the proper investigation of Trump’s Russia ties away from the questions of the degree of Kremlin manipulation of him or his close advisors, to simply being a tittliating story about peeing prostitutes.
**John Mace ** is in my opinion partially right: I don’t think the dossier has failed. It is kind of a circus sideshow.
And for the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone thinks “Trump shut down Buzzfeed” is a factual statement. It makes literally no sense.
I’m also not sure why the OP (as well as others) got mad at that journalist for asking why local police weren’t involved in the tragedy he recounted. That’s a totally legitimate question to ask. I have no clue why such a statement is controversial and why it took the OP some time to get over misplaced anger at the reporter. Perhaps the OP is very hot to trot over journalists publishing half-baked allegations today, and some day in the future he will recognize that position as also being in error.
…damn. I’ve been on these boards since 2002. For the last 14 years I’ve interacted with this board the very same way as I am in this thread. If I were as angry as you imply I am I would have been banned long ago. But this is just how I post. I haven’t changed a bit. If you want to imply otherwise you can either report me or you can take it to the appropriate forum.
This is Great Debates. I’ve started a thread with a premise and I am vigorously defending that premise. That is why this forum exists. I’m not sure what it is you expect me to do. I disagree with you. You have barely launched a defense of your position. Do you want me to shut up? Because that isn’t happening.
Tom Hanks has a great reputation. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a great reputation.
Steele’s job is to gather the intel. Colin Powell’s job was to interpret it. My reaction to Colin Powell’s report at the time is memorialised in my reactions on various message boards I was a member of at the time. It was “holy shit they’ve got nothing.”
That would explain the pretty big error you make further down.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
**Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, **the US Government and British government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said “we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs”, and Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.
…
**Despite CIA technicians and weapon experts finding major flaws and inconsistencies **with the designs and systems he asserted the military was developing, this information made it to the American government and although there were wide doubts and questions about the claimed informant’s reliability and background, assertions attributed to Curveball claiming that Iraq was creating biological agents in mobile weapons laboratories to elude inspectors appeared in more than 112 United States government reports between January 2000 and September 2001.
[/QUOTE]
Can you lay out a case for me that it was the “spies” that failed in the case of Curveball, and not the people that interpreted the information?
The media did just "barf up what the US government alleged. They did just that. They helped the US government gather a case for war. The media ran with unverified information.
Here is an unverified news story.
[QUOTE=ABC]
President-elect Donald Trump is no longer expected to visit the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in observance of Martin Luther King Day, senior level transition sources tell ABC News.
Senior sources initially said Trump would visit the museum, but ABC has learned that the visit was removed from his calendar due to scheduling issues and was not fully planned out.
[/QUOTE]
Here is a semi-verified news story.
[QUOTE=Buzzfeed]
But Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas told BuzzFeed News Saturday that while someone from Trump’s had been in touch with the museum at one point, “I just know that there isn’t a visit.”
“I think the transition team, there was a question about a visit, but it wasn’t set,” she said.
St. Thomas then referred questions to John Hiller, a senior advisor from Trump’s campaign.
[/QUOTE]
Which news outlet has run (and is still running) unverified news again? Which is the one that I’m supposed to trust?
But Steele hasn’t offered “his judgement”. He has used his skills and networks to create a dossier of raw information that he passed onto the relevant authorities. I can tell you’ve been trying to dig up some dirt on Steele: and if this the worst you can find then I think you can agree with me that Steele (but not necessarily his sources) is credible.
I am certain that your attention was grabbed by the titillating story of peeing prostitutes. Do you agree with Kelly McBride, the Vice President of Poynter, who said “The average citizen has absolutely no capacity to make up his own mind on this?” Do you believe that that is a good enough reason to not run the story?
If you think the dossier has “failed” or “not failed” then you are missing the point. Steele thought this information was important and he made a lot of sacrifices to get this information into the hands of the relevant authorities: who then reportedly did nothing about it.
That in itself is a story.
Your problem was that you are assuming I am being “factual” and not “hyperbolic.” Its a southern hemisphere turn of phrase.
So you didn’t bother to read my cite?
You’ve got things completely wrong. Local police were involved in the mine disaster. As per protocol NZ police are the default control agency in the time of any national disaster. What this led to (and the Royal Commission Investigation a few years later bore this out) was that information was relayed from the mines to decision makers in Wellington, and then back again. This is not how they do it in Australia, and is not international best practice. The full context of the exchange can be found on this blog:
[QUOTE=crikey]
A Seven News journalist asked Pike River Coal Mine CEO Peter Whittall whether he could imagine New York firefighters waiting outside the World Trade Center if there were lives in the balance. Whittall refused to be drawn on the hypothetical. But it teed up Higgins to ask what, in New Zealand at least, became an immortal example of Aussie arrogance:
“Superintendent Knowles, that leads to another question, there have been comments today by a variety of sources by Laurie Drew, by other members of the families, by Andrew Vickers, a mining unionist in Australia and by an Australian mining expert. If this was happening in Australia, the people that would be in charge would be the mining manager, and with the assistance of the union and technical support and was put – the people that actually know what’s going on.
“And the question was asked by all of these people, why are they not making the decisions? Why are they not calling the shots? Why is it the local country cop chief doing it? To use their words.”
[/QUOTE]
But we never got that full context. The only line that got reported was “Why is the local country cop doing it?” The other reporters in the room let out a collective gasp. The “others” that “got mad” included the then Police Minister Judith Collins, and the Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee who labeled the reporter as boorish. It was a legitimate question to ask. But the people in charge “shut him down.”
We “got mad” in a collective bout of patriotic fervour. Think “Freedom Fries.” “This Australian has come over here, thinking we are a bunch of hicks, and called the guy in charge a country cop. How dare he!” Aussies and Kiwi’s have a love hate relationship. Nearly all of the time it is good natured. But you get the occasional under-arm delivery.
You are correct on one thing. It was a legitimate question to ask. It doesn’t matter if the government effectively booted him out of the country. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the media “lied by omission” in their characterization of the incident.
And buzzfeed were right to publish the dossier. President-Elect Trump and his administration may disagree. The rest of the media might disagree. But the decision to publish was a legitimate one: and one that I support.
Perhaps if you spent more time reading up about this case and less time making ad-hominem attacks on me you would stop making some very basic errors of fact. You know where the pit is.
First, I don’t care to learn much about this kind disaster thing, because the only relevant lesson so far as I can see is that you and many others once got mad at a reporter for asking a legitimate question. But that fact really has nothing to do with Buzzfeed breaking standards of journalism and people reacting to it. To put it in different context, if you got mad at a cop for arresting a criminal who happened to be popular, and then later realized the cop was acting appropriately, doesn’t mean that people are wrong to be critical of a cop wrongly arrests an innocent person.
The reason Curveball is a good thing to remember is that nobody in the public knew about any of the criticism of this source at the time that his phony intel was being promoted. The fact that he was a liar started to leak out in drips and drabs after his unsubstantiated allegations were already in the public’s mind.
Is the same thing happening today? I truly can’t tell for sure. Nobody other than Steele seems to be able to verify any of his sources: I think you trust Steele because his story impungns Trump. Nobody in the media or apparently the intelligence community can say whether these sources are trustworthy or not.
That’s why you’re at greater risk of being suckered than they are.
…The United States of Fucking America invaded a country because of “patriotic fervour”. Rationality and objectivity went out the window. We got mad at a reporter. You guys started a war that is still having repercussions today and has affected millions of people.
I know what the topic of this thread is. I did start this thread after all. I keep directing you to the OP. But you keep ignoring it. So are you finally ready to address some of the questions I posed in my OP?
Apparently not.
We didn’t need to know about Curveball to know the case that Colin Powell presented to the United Nations was a load of absolute tosh. This is the earliest post I could find from 2005:
The media fucking failed back then. It is failing now.
I cited an ABC that ran with a statement from the Trump Administration that the ABC did not seek independent verification for. Does your “standards of verification” only apply to Buzzfeed?
And I think that you are fucking wrong. I’ve made my case. The case is laid out is in the OP. I’ve made it clear that I don’t care if it was Buzzfeed or Breitbart, if it was Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
Can you please stop making assumptions about what I think? I’ve told you what I think.
Did you learn nothing from what happened in Iraq?
You just can’t help but attack me. Please either stop it or take it to the pit.
Again, I’m surprised how personal you’re taking this debate. All the swearing, all the frustration that I’m not addressing the OP, all the threats to take things to the Pit. Relax. We’re just having a conversation!
I’ve actually responded to each of your points in the OP, except for the “the FBI is in the tank for Trump” one, just in my own way. I’m not about to multiquote your long posts and then post many sentences in response to what I quoted.
What truly doesn’t make sense from either Steele’s actions or your preference is the treatment of his sensitive sources. Why would a former intelligence agent widely circulate such a poorly written summation of his findings? If the sources were that much at risk, for god’s sake, why leave paper with so many journalists, many of whom seem to be of dubious quality?
I also have reservations about how a guy who either could not, or did not, travel to Russia to meet with his sources and subsources could communicate with them, especially if they claim such high-level direct access to Putin and his private conversations.
Even if ABC news didn’t try to verify the sources, from my recollection, others like the Washington Post and CNN claim to have made some effort, but no results. Even corroborating stuff like, was that Trump aide actually in Europe or Prague during the time it was claimed?
Could be that all these doubts and questions have good answers. But calling someone a “hero” based on unsubstantiated allegations? Well, then, I won the Congressional Medal of Honor for my online debating skills that have protected the US from several terrorist attacks over the past few years. Ask anyone who knows me and they will say I have a good professional reputation.
…would you just stop with the act? No seriously: can you just stop it? Your passive-aggressive schtick is getting fucking tiresome. And I’m not going to apologise for the “fucking”.
No you haven’t.
Points you haven’t addressed from the OP:
-If instead of Steele, an investigative journalist had used the same sources to get the same information should Buzzfeed have published? (remembering that in the dossier Steele points out several times when his sources are verified by other sources)
-Do you agree with Kelly McBride that the “The average citizen has absolutely no capacity to make up his own mind on this?”
-Do you agree with Sean Illing that “Feeding into Trumps narrative” was a good reason not to publish?
-This information was not secret: it had been in circulation for months and could not either be “verified” or “debunked.” Is it the medias job to be gatekeepers of this document, even though they had been dropping hints to its existence?
Some other questions that I’ve raised through this thread:
-If Steele had instead held a press conference and presented these documents: did the media have an obligation not to report it? Not to host a copy on their servers?
-the media have always run unverified stories. I’ve just cited one. Running unverified stories is SOP. Why is what Buzzfeed did so different?
You mean this bit?
[QUOTE=The Independent]
However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
…
Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.
The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.
As the election approached, FBI director James Comey made public his bombshell letter saying that Ms Clinton would face another email investigation. Two days before that Mr Giuliani, then a part of the Trump team, talked about “a surprise or two you’re going to hear about in the next few days. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn things around”.
…
After the letter was published Mr Giuliani claimed he had heard from current and former agents that “there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI” over the original decision not to charge Ms Clinton and that Mr Comey had been forced by some of his agents to announce the reinvestigation. Democrats demanded an investigation into how Mr Giuliani acquired this knowledge without getting an answer.
[/QUOTE]
Would you care to comment on it now?
Well maybe you should. That way you could keep track of what you have and haven’t responded too. So that you don’t make claims that “I’ve actually responded to each of your points in the OP” when you actually haven’t.
Your first post in its entirety in this thread was “I think there ought to be independent verification of serious allegations before reputable media publishes something.” Most of your subsequent posts right up until about now were simply variations of that response.
Steele passed the document onto the people who paid him. He then continued to work on them: then passed copies to the FBI and people from British Intelligence. He gave an interview with Mother Jones. An emissary from John McCain got a version of the dossier and McCain passed it onto the FBI as well.
There is no evidence that Steele “widely circulated” the dossier, that he “left paper” with so many journalists. We know that Mother Jones got a copy of the dossier. We don’t know how this document got to be widely circulated.
Having reservations is good. I have reservations as well.
There have been errors identified in the report. Buzzfeed pointed out those errors where they could. This is raw intelligence. No-one has ever said otherwise.
Nope. Not based on unsubstantiated allegations. Based on what I said earlier in the thread.
You haven’t spent the last year conducting an investigation into the person who in a couple of days time will be the most powerful person on the planet. You haven’t gone into hiding. And with all due respect: your online debating skills (in this thread at least) could use a bit more work before you qualify for a fucking medal.
I’m not going to multiquote my responses. I just don’t have the time or interest to write responses that are many hundreds of words long to dissect every point you make.
But I have responded to the assertion that reporters would be allowed to run with unverified stories (my whole reason for mentioning All the President’s Men and Watergate); I’m not going to endorse anyone’s quotes but I don’t think people in the public, inside government, in the press, or anywhere else, have any firm basis to accept or reject Steele’s assertions other than by political bias; I do think that the dossier has misdirected the debate; I’ve said that the media should independently verify explosive allegations before printing them (that was my first post); and so on an so on.
I hope you could respond to those points as I’ve raised them.
Everyone, calm the fuck down. Double secret civility probation rules are now in effect. Disagree with each other, debate each other, but no long attack each other at the personal level.
I hope that’s clear.
…Buzzfeed is being sued.
Announced over twitter, of course.
This was after Feinstein released the full transcript of the Fusion GPS hearings earlier.
The heart of the lawsuit appears to be that Fusion “recklessly placed it beyond their control and allowed it to fall into the hands of media”: that they didn’t “attempt to determine the veracity of these reports with Plaintiff himself.”
I’m no legal expert: but my first thoughts are…doesn’t this open up Trump to an extreme amount of scrutiny?
So what if it does? How do you think that will affect Trump in any way?
…I don’t know. That’s why I asked.