First we had “Clinton and Co. paid for the dossier.” Now we have…
…”Clinton and Co. supplied information for the dossier.”
Both of those allegations describe an extremely disturbing and dangerous set of circumstances, if true. The newer allegation can be found in this memorandum sent from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Chairman Charles Grassley, and Lindsay Graham) to Deputy AG Rosenstein (DOJ) and FBI Director Wray, about a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 100 by Christopher Steele:
…when information in those classified documents [supplied to the Committee by the FBI] is evaluated in light of sworn statements by Mr. Steele in British litigation, it appears that either Mr. Steele lied to the FBI or the British court, or that the classified documents reviewed by the Committee contain materially false statements…
Mr. Steele also admitted in the British litigation to briefing journalists from the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN in September of 2016. Simply put, the more people who contemporaneously knew that Mr. Steele was compiling his dossier, the more likely it was vulnerable to manipulation. In fact, in the British litigation, which involves a post-election dossier memorandum, Mr. Steele admitted that he received and included in it unsolicited-and unverified-allegations.
That filing implies that he similarly received unsolicited intelligence on these prior to the election as well, stating that Mr. Steele “continued to receive unsolicited intelligence on the matters covered by the pre-election memoranda after the US Presidential election.”…
One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by Buzzfeed is dated October 19, 2016. The report alleges that…the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who “is in touch with, a contact of, a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [redacted].” It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises considerable concerns about his credibility.
His credibility? How about their culpability? Steele was just a useful instrument, a conduit through which information passed and who afforded plausible deniability to the Clinton campaign—which never expected any of this to come to light, anyway.
To recap: it appears that there is good evidence that the “Trump colluded with Russia” story was devised and disseminated by the Clinton campaign, which seeded the story in various ways—working through Steele, Fusion, the media, and the FISA court, not just to fund the report but to influence and supply information for its content. The actions of the Clinton operatives may have constituted collusion with Russia, as well.
Anyone who professes to care about the rule of law and the integrity of our elections, court system, and government institutions, should care and care deeply about this.
Pretty amazing when you think about it.
1. Dream up a ‘crime’
2. Feed dreamt up ‘crime’ to willing accomplices in the Justice Dept
3. Start investigation into dreamt up ‘crime’
4. Since dreamt up ‘crime’ never happened instead nail the targets for all kinds of minor process crimes.
5. And of course all the while have a willing and supportive media push the story of the dreamt up ‘crime’ out to the public.
Did the Democrats “dream up” Trump Jr. writing an email saying “If it’s what you say I love it?”
I’m being a bit glib, but the idea that there couldn’t possibly have been anything going on between Trump and the Russians doesn’t hold up to scrutiny just based on what’s public knowledge let alone based on what the intel community might have known.
And I wonder how many of these recent posts neo will have to withdraw after the Democratic memo – or better yet, the FISA application itself – comes to light.
Did Manju get the night off ?
What is stopping the democrats from leaking their memo if its content is credible? The democrat memo could very well be blank papers, Democrats assumed that this democrat counter memo will never see the light because republicans control the house, so they cooked up a narrative that somehow the democrats have also complied a memo in which every concern risen in the republican memo would be refuted for the msm to spread to minimise the impact of the republican memo. If I am trump I would call their bluff and give the order to have the democrat memo released as well. If the memo is any good it would have been released already, if the memo is legit the dems will leak it any way, might as well see what the dems got while posturing as fair and nonpartisan
Absolutely staggering.
Or not…since:
1. Democrats are not capable of scandals (by definition).
2. The Obama administration was renowned for its unprecedented “transparency”.
3. The Democrats should win because the GOP (and its supporters) are deplorable troglodyte fascists (or worse)….and the Democrats are the party of ethics and morality, justice and progress—IOW, this is a Manichean conflict between darkness (GOP) and light (Democrats).
4. So that even if (let’s say), even if the Democrats did what they did (or some of it), it was every bit of it justified so as to defeat the forces of darkness.
Similarly, all of the Obama administration’s progressive and yes, radical, policies—their lies, deceptions, thuggery, weaponizing of government agencies, trampling on the Constitution, suborning the FBI, suborning the DOJ, making alliances with foreign despots like Iran—are justifiable.
Since the forces of good, of light, of morality, must do everything in their power to suppress and overcome the forces of darkness.
QED.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No one was supposed to find out. The MSM, hammering the point home, insured that the election was in the bag for her—even without the so-called “insurance policy” that was cooked up.
Maybe we should all take a minute and thank the powers the be? Or Bernie Sanders….
Or the power of the Internet.
(And maybe Hillary can cash in by writing a sequel called, “What Should Have Happened”….)
Trum’s Alt Right allies were pushing the “Low Energy Jeb” did it line.
Very astute analysis from the parasites and consumers, since I doubt the leaders and heads of the Alt Right were that stupid.
3. The Democrats should win because the GOP (and its supporters) are deplorable troglodyte fascists (or worse)….and the Democrats are the party of ethics and morality, justice and progress–IOW, this is a Manichean conflict between darkness (GOP) and light (Democrats).
It’s the same argument used here in the primary season pitting HRC vs Trum. HRC was so bad, thus we needed to election X: X being the god king hero savior king that all Americans would need. Hussein was the Left’s messiah, time for the Right to get one of theirs.
Congratulations on becoming the enemy you fight, USA, since you didn’t manage to actually, you know, “kill” anyone important in this war yet.
Here’s a newsflash. All you humans, including the entirety of the USA, are pawns in this Red vs Blue “conflict”.
No one was supposed to find out.
The Deep State already knew, thus if a faction wanted to leak it, they could easily do so.
In fact, the Powers That Should Not Be, probably did in fact leak it.
One Deep State Faction, people sometimes call them the MIC or SSP, is fighting the Cabal, which are made out of the spirit cookers, mostly Demoncrats, occult worshippers in Hollywood like 80% of the actors, and pedos.
The scheme of the Clintons has worked. So far. It will take much effort to roll this back and expose the truth.
I think it’s amazing that Steele first was paid by Bill Kristol and the Washington Free Beacon, and then was paid by the Clinton campaign after the Republican convention, and then after the election sought to be paid for the same product by the FBI!
And of course he was a former agent of the British government trying to influence our election process.
They basically acted like a virus program in the system..
Someone figured that if they could put a dossier together, they could have it self validate (dossier validated by a yahoo article written by the person who wrote the dossier), and would get a secret court warrant to secretly monitor and so give report.
in this way, they could hijack the political system and steer it to do what nixon could only dream of… add a trojan virus of an operation that would exploit the mechanics of the system to get the system to do its leg work and then read the results
this takes studing the rules to the point of wanting to exploit them, and you can be sure it also takes doing the same when fighting to allow or not….
[take the movement to create base salaries for all. All that is is sneaking in a soviet style ration system as at some point the hogs will find a fence around them and their servants in control of their food… or else (as holodomor worked out GREAT… didnt it? think on the side of those acting… it was great… wasnt it?]
the above is akin to taking control of a server and then using it to do things that the server can but the operator cant… by external operation they took control of the court, and its actions and proceeded, like a chess game, to pit forces against each other to create the situation and mostly made possible and mostly desired because it was a unchallengable secret court that is technically constitutionally a violation of said document…
the behavior is how things work from the left
and how i been trying to teach that, and how eveyrone doesnt want to understand that the point they discuss is the nothing that doesnt matter. but the outcoem in the physical world is the point. – the power of dialectical materialism –
it just does not register in people who just dont get thinking of all others in their society as their victims and pawns… you dont give a honking fig as to what a horse THINKS. why would you? all you care about is the horse ACTS the way you want REGARDLESS of thought.
so, it doesnt matter if women THINK that they are libeated and finding out debasement, infertility and desease (as they are the oppositon to the people external to the state that push this in collective fasion internationally), and all that… because MATERIALLY they have self exterminated their progeny, with the smarter doing it more, and paying for the less smart and les able and the less experienced to knock off kids that HATE these benefactors.
As willi munzenberg said. NEVER NEVER let them think these ideas are NOT their own… because why would you question your own actions?
we have forgotten the machanics of this game instead with great vanity, think our thoughts matter. do they? only to yourself, they certainly do not matter to anyone on the left unless they translate to a MATERIAL outcome for them
who cares what happens to black folk as long as what your saying keeps them doing waht you need materially?
who cares what happens to all those women, their families and such any more than the people shoved into ovens, as long as the outcome is the same materially
OR BETTER…
Hitler. who didnt listen to ernst rudin in terms of how to facilitate things, as rudin was working with Sanger.
he used force, force of will, and force could only do 12 million (and a bill comes due… in russia more were able as force was more, but they avoid the bill coming due by never letting he force lose), by setting it up as liberating and freedom for (women, black, gays, etc) people who were so full of the rhetoric of freedom and not the substance of freedom (as discovered by betty fridan, whose husband was a wall street wealthy man who she had nany for the kids… so thats how her wealthy life was a happy gulag and she would never let any woman suffer the way she did with children, maids and so on!!!)
in this way, you can sell them on acting on their own, and they would murder 75 million children in utero… proven to have been conceived or else the procedure is not necessary.
now, so much of what is coming up in the next ten years is going to have to rely on a USA made weak by a secret war on their ladies, who took up arms agains their men, and removed their future protectors and traditions and all that gave substance to freedom. (we shall fund ourselves bounded in a nut shell and think ourselves kings and queens of infinite space)
after all, in case you didnt notice, the vanguard of this operation to manipulate the state and put a communist state in was not only the effeminate obama, but the UBER FEMINIST HILLARY
ironic that if theri movement didnt self exterminate the children needed to vote her in would exist, instead they relied on importing people they treat as stupid, while playing the public they think is stupid AND DESERVES it the way a sociopath says the victim deserves to be killed for being stupid!!!!
in essence, her and her uber left (ever read valery jarrets bio? wowser) friends…have been using their position of powers to do things that the feminist movement has openly called for since 1968 and has openly said its goal was.. (along with the other classes)
to over throw the us government and make a communist state, because as they said, only a communist state would offer the freedoms women deserve!!! and only a communist state can make equal, erase differences, and so on… as only THAT has enough force to even force breed people into something that they ar enot now… and each little despot, thinks the leader despot will do what THEY want…
you only have to read their own words they say outside of the common public rubes they use like toilet paper
(just look at the black caucus saying Trump has done nothing for blacks… despite the lowest unemployment since we started recording it)
you wont wake up to the game until you experience it
or believe it… and that wont happen until you lose and dont understand why, then the things that were said about how to use people, how material matters and its thinking doesnt and all that… and you will see that for all its pretending to not accept human nature, and to do things against it, its fight and exploits are using human nature against its victims, mostly their vanity, greed, jealousy and pretty much the seven deadly sins – and women love those sins enough that they would do their families in and their nation to be liberated to be gluttons (no fat shaming, no restriction on sex and abortion to facilitate that), jealous (no one can earn more, be better, we have to be equalized), sloth (if you dont want to work you can have a monthy base salary – women can get welfare), etc..
so funny the old men they make fun of (were right)
and the liberating things that we locked up
was released by pandora again
too funny… way too funny
excuse me, i have some popcorn to make..
just remember that hillary army is the vanguaard of women spoken about in the two versions of the revolutionary chatechism as the vapid idiots you use to pry society out o the hands of the people and put it in the hands of the few who will pretend to act for the people, after all.
John le Carré couldn’t have written it better.
What puzzles me are the people, supposedly credible people, who say that revelations about the provenance of the dossier do not negate Mueller’s great adventure. Or maybe they will back off after the expanded revelations of the past few days.
The conventional wisdom is that politically Trump cannot fire Mueller; and presumably neither can he fire the weasel-like Rosenstein. One might ask, could the Trump haters hate any more intensely if he did?
As a minimum, IMO, he should announce that given what we now know about the origins of this circus, there is no way that he is going to talk to Mueller. Let him scurry around, and convict a few hapless souls for process crimes, then pardon them; but, don’t let Mueller any where near himself.
The surest sign of conspiracy paranoia is when those positing that a conspiracy exists, in reaction to cautious consideration asking for evidence of said conspiracy… are then attacked as ‘insufficiently intelligent’ to accept the simple assertion of conspiracy, as evidence of its existence.
Oldflyer,
It’s predictable that Trump refusing to meet with Mueller will be asserted to be ‘evidence’ of him having something to hide. Ideally, the goal is impeachment. Failing that, instilling profound doubt in the LIVs sufficient to ensure Trump’s defeat in 2020 is the secondary aim. Should that fail, an assassination attempt is likely. The Left is playing for keeps.
seems to me FBI can charge you for something as ridiculous as demonstrated in the follow scenario
MONDAY
FBI agent: what did you have for breakfast this morning?
suspect: omelette and OJ
TUESDAY
FBI agent: what did you have for breakfast on Monday?
Suspect: Gee I forgot, Hush browns and coffee maybe.
Wednesday
FBI agent: we are going to charge you for lying to the FBI
Chris – exactly what crime does e-mailing the British publicist of an Azerbaijani pop star “if it’s what you say I love it” constitute? What crime does meeting with a Russian woman lawyer who is trying to lobby for Russian adoptions and against the Magnitsky Act constitute? Which part is bad: Russian lawyer? Russian woman? Woman lawyer? And how exactly did the RWL, banned from entering the US, get in to see Don Jr. & Co. in the first place?
Does the word “entrapment” mean anything to you, Chris?
J. E. Dyer connects lots of dots, and docs.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/02/05/grassley-graham-memo-steele-apparently-used-info-clinton-associate-dossier/
Conclusion:
“Grassley and Graham would legitimately suspect “credibility-washing” of Clinton-backed oppo research in this. (For a useful, related discussion of deploying a “vicarious credibility” card with Steele’s status as an FBI informant, see point C from Andrew McCarthy in a post from 4 February.)
It certainly has the whiff of credibility-washing from here. The implication is that the purpose of funneling pieces of “information” through Steele (perhaps with the added “credibility” aura of circulating it through the State Department) was to position allegations from oppo research to actually affect the FBI’s activities, with a seeming imprint of legitimacy.
I appreciate and endorse the senators’ desire to have as much as possible declassified, so that the public can see what they have seen, and judge for ourselves what really happened.
Given how much of this saga amounts only to what Steele, Fusion, Shearer, Hillary, the DNC, and specific people within the DOJ and FBI were doing, there are few if any national security secrets at issue here. There is mainly the desire to shield the truth – truth about people who were acting in political roles, not in national security roles – from the American people.”
steve walsh Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 12:38 pm
John le Carré couldn’t have written it better.
* *
Great minds etc … was saying just last night that I felt like we were in a realty tv show scripted by le Carré.
Except this plot is so convoluted, he probably couldn’t have sold the pilot.
arfldgrs Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 11:11 am
They basically acted like a virus program in the system..
Someone figured that if they could put a dossier together, they could have it self validate (dossier validated by a yahoo article written by the person who wrote the dossier), and would get a secret court warrant to secretly monitor and so give report.
in this way, they could hijack the political system and steer it to do what nixon could only dream of… add a trojan virus of an operation that would exploit the mechanics of the system to get the system to do its leg work and then read the results
this takes studing the rules to the point of wanting to exploit them, and you can be sure it also takes doing the same when fighting to allow or not….
arfldgrs Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 11:35 am
the above is akin to taking control of a server and then using it to do things that the server can but the operator cant… by external operation they took control of the court, and its actions and proceeded, like a chess game, to pit forces against each other to create the situation and mostly made possible and mostly desired because it was a unchallengable secret court that is technically constitutionally a violation of said document…
the behavior is how things work from the left
* * *
A very apt analogy set.
Ed Bonderenka Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 9:10 am
I think it’s amazing that Steele first was paid by Bill Kristol and the Washington Free Beacon, and then was paid by the Clinton campaign after the Republican convention, and then after the election sought to be paid for the same product by the FBI!
<b>And of course he was a former agent of the British government trying to influence our election process.
* * *
I don’t think anyone has raised that point yet, as he wasn’t acting in his capacity as an autonomous Brit, but as a hired gun for US citizens.
I picked this up at Sarah Hoyt’s blog yesterday IIRC, but it seems appropriate here.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2018/02/so-much-for-fbis-oath-of-office.html
“When I was sworn in as a chaplain in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (part of the Department of Justice, or DOJ), I took the same oath of office as that sworn by every agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (better known as the FBI, and also part of the DOJ):
I [name] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
There’s nothing particularly hard to understand about it. It means what it says. One wonders, therefore, why some (perhaps many) agents and administrators in the FBI appear to have trouble understanding it – let alone applying it. That’s a very fair question, in the light of the Bureau’s highly questionable tactics (not to mention apparent “judge-shopping” by the Justice Department) to obtain a FISA court order for surveillance of the Trump campaign. …”
… = and other examples
Ed Bonderenka and AesopFan:
The idea that Steele was originally hired by the right is incorrect.
You are confusing two things. Fusion was hired by the right (the anti-Trump right, that is) during the primaries to do opp research on Trump. Steele was NOT involved at that point. See this (I’ve read the same thing in many other sources, as welL).
GB, as I said the Trump Haters will hate regardless of what he does. My understanding is that Mueller has no legal standing to subpoena a President. So, the point is that Trump should not voluntarily give Mueller any opportunity to gin up one of those pitiful process crimes.
Dave, point well made. I have posted here and there that I would not give the FBI the time of day for fear our watches might differ. I wonder if that heresy puts me on the radar?
This is reminding me of the technique Ben Rhodes boasted about using to sell the Iran deal. Seeding an echo chamber to orchestrate fake support and spoonfeeding gullible journalists.
I have occasionally commented as “Chris” in the past. Since I don’t want to be confused with this new “Chris” from now on I guess I’ll be “Chris B”.
Chris Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 12:49 am
Did the Democrats “dream up” Trump Jr. writing an email saying “If it’s what you say I love it?”
* * *
What Richard said, plus: if Trump Sr. already had all these high-level channels to Russia (Page, Manafort, Papdoupolous, whoever), why would Jr. even be interested in a cold-call like this?
If he’s looking for that kind of info on Hillary, maybe it’s because they didn’t already have any.
Chris is channeling his inner Manju.
om Says:
February 6th, 2018 at 9:35 pm
Chris is channeling his inner Manju.
* * *
Manju makes more detailed arguments.
Not better, mind you, but they are challenging to read and rebut (which Neo does so well).
Chris, not so much.
(Manju on vacation?)
Richard, as a reminder, here’s the emails in question:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-email-text.html
Trump said “I love it” in response to someone who “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
I’ll leave it up to Mueller to determine what crimes, if any, that response and subsequent actions by the Trump campaign constitute. But it’s ridiculous to pretend that the objectionable part of that exchange is the fact that Goldstone was a publicist, etc.
If you’ll recall, my post was a response to Griffin, who suggested this was all “made up”. Trump Jr. himself posted his own emails, providing clear and unambiguous evidence that the Trump campaign was at least open to receiving foreign intelligence. That’s easily worthy of investigation.
At least, it is for those of us who don’t regularly hang out on message boards where people talk about “the vanguard of this operation to manipulate the state and put a communist state in was not only the effeminate obama, but the UBER FEMINIST HILLARY”
Have a good evening.
Chris:
No crimes.
Neo, I’ll go with Mueller’s take on this over a random trial attorney’s, thanks.
Good lord, that piece doesn’t even address the idea that the “contributions” being offered weren’t assistance from a private individual, but intel from a foreign power. It may still not be a crime – I am not a lawyer – but it’s ridiculous act like any analysis that doesn’t touch on the foreign government aspect of this is anything but laughably incomplete.
Lastly, it’s amazing that you’re so utterly sanguine about Trump Jr’s actions – you seem sure he didn’t commit any crimes, and that he’s been utterly forthcoming about everything else – but so utterly suspicious of the “effeminate” Obama, the “UBER FEMINIST” Clinton… and now lately Comey, Muller, and frankly anyone who’s not on Team Trump.
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Chris — Now I understand! Don, Jr. committed the Thought Crime of being willing to listen to someone whom an Azerbaijani pop-star’s publicist said had useful information to the Trump campaign sourced in the Russian government.
Well, call the Thought Police!
P.S. Fortunately, I’m immune to being accused of that particular Thought Crime — I’ve dealt with enough publicists to know they never have anything worth listening to!
Chris:
Well, if you’re not interested in a statement of what the law is, and you’re waiting for the Great Authority Mueller to rule, why don’t you just wait for that and not think for yourself at all?
Or perhaps this discussion will help. Or you might like to read Jonathan Turley on it (no Trump fan, he), as well as Alan Dershowitz (likewise).
Of course it’s not impossible that Trump Jr. committed some crime or other. But so far we don’t have a shred of evidence that he did. Perhaps some evidence of a crime will emerge some day. Till then, all the information we have indicates clearly that no crime was committed in his case.
As for the last paragraph of your most recent comment goes—this is a blog with a comments section, in case you hadn’t noticed. Commenters comment here with a variety of views. There are many many commenters here with messages that are not in agreement with my point of view—commenters on both left and right. I stand by what I say, not what others say. In terms of the censorship of the comments of others, I censor or eliminate the ones I deem most offensive, and those that are insulting or impolite to me or to other commenters. Trolls in particular are unwelcome, and over the years I’ve been blogging I’ve developed a very fine ear for them.
Test post to see whether Neo’s implicit threat means my posts are blocked…
Neo-
Lots of obfuscation in your response. Your first link was not to a “statement of what the law is”, it’s an opinion arguing that Trump Jr. did nothing wrong, based on a misleadingly selective review of the relevant statutes. You should be able to recognize and admit that, especially since the latter links you provided DO touch on conspiracy angles that your earlier link didn’t.
You link to Charlie Savage and Jon Turley for starters. Both say pretty clearly that Trump Jr.’s emails indicate possible coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign (i.e. from Savage, “The events made public in the past few days are not enough to charge conspiracy, said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor. Still, he said, the revelations are important because if further evidence of coordination emerges, the contents of the emails and the fact of the meeting would help establish an intent to work with Russia on influencing the election.”) There’s a world of difference between the links you’ve provided saying “Hey, yeah, this could be part of a criminal conspiracy, but it hasn’t been proven yet”, and your conclusion that “all the information we have indicates clearly that no crime was committed in his case.”
So investigation to find potential evidence is clearly needed, which is exactly where Mueller comes in. He has vastly more experience in this area than the vast majority of lawyers, let alone lay people. And yes, I trust his judgment in this area, just the same as I’d trust my doctor’s judgment over someone telling me about the power of healing crystals. That’s not an abdication of thinking for myself. Muller has the mandate and legal authority to find out whether the Trump campaign committed specific crimes – which even you admit is possible. And no, we don’t have additional evidence on that front because Mueller is running a professional criminal investigation, where relevant info generally doesn’t get revealed until the end of the process. Saying otherwise is like arguing that your family can’t possibly be flying out to see you for Christmas because “well, they’re not here yet, are they?”
And yes, you’re absolutely right that this is a comment section where people express a variety of views, and you’re not necessarily in agreement with any of them. What we can legitimately point out is what you spend your time focused on, which is arguing with me over the fairly mundane notion that there is potential evidence that Trump Jr. committed a crime. (Again, your own links back this up!) And you prefer to do that than argue with arfldgrs about their assertion that there’s a communist/feminist conspiracy to overthrow the government. I think that says a lot about what your priorities and blindspots are, and has clear implications for how seriously people should take your analysis. (For instance, here’s a thread by the same Charlie Savage you link to above, pointing out how the recent Graham/Grassley memo undercuts many of the Nunes’ memo’s talking points that you’ve been so upset about recently. But I suspect we won’t see you reconsider or walk back those posts…)
https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/961076050594844672
Or maybe I’m just a troll… although I don’t think I’ve directly insulted anyone here, and I’ve made fairly coherent arguments. But it’s probably easier to condemn me as a troll than reconsider the conservative ideology you’ve dedicated the past decade+ of your life to, yes?
Chris:
In several comments here I have provided you with a series of links that discussed the issue. The first one was merely the first one I found when I did a search, not the subject of some sort of definitive post. Then I gave you some more in a second comment, after a slightly longer search.
I ordinarily try to spend a certain amount of time answering and responding to comments (more than most bloggers, by the way). But not a lot of time, and sometimes I don’t have the time at all.
Among other things, trolls like to demand that a person (another commenter or the blogger) spend incredible amounts of time answering every single question the troll might raise. That’s ordinarily part of a troll’s goals (that is, the sort of troll who is on the surface polite rather than obscene)—to get people to keep spending a lot of time when they’ve already given some links on a topic, or referred that person to their previous writings.
As I wrote before, it’s not that Trump Jr. absolutely could not possibly have committed a crime. He could have. But there is no evidence of it, and the law does not indicate it. Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz are extremely familiar with the law, and I agree with them on this. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other people who disagree with them. It is never hard to find lawyers on both sides of a legal and/or political issue!
Your techniques and tone are clearly those of a troll.
And as a political changer, I’ve considered and reconsidered my ideology every single step of the way, every day. Your snide comment on that is another obvious mark of the troll.
If anything, over the years my opinion of the left has fallen lower and lower. It falls lower every single day. That is a cause of grief for me, not rejoicing.
Chris is channeling his inner Manju and that inner dude from Canada (ISP or from northern VA) it seems? But what do “we” know?
“Your techniques and tone are clearly those of a troll.
And as a political changer, I’ve considered and reconsidered my ideology every single step of the way, every day. Your snide comment on that is another obvious mark of the troll.
If anything, over the years my opinion of the left has fallen lower and lower. It falls lower every single day. That is a cause of grief for me, not rejoicing.”
Great response, Neo, and apt characterization of the “research troll” pattern.
I also have been disheartened to see that my good friends who are Democrats are seemingly unaware of how far into the mud their Leftist comrades have dragged them.
@ Neo. Chris is here ostensibly to *educate* us rubes. even resorting to accusations that *we* have referred to his heroes as the “effeminate Obama, & uber feminist Hillary * Can t say I recall those ad hominems being used here with any regularity
but no doubt an attempt to virtue signal his superiority. Trolls gotta troll, Doncha know.
Chris — your reasoning is absolutely adorable! Let’s see if I can follow it: So, I’m standing on the corner and my wife is waving at me from across the street. I might be thinking of jaywalking against the light. And if I might be thinking of jaywalking, I might have jaywalked in the past. Or I might jaywalk in the future. Call out a Special Prosecutor (Traffic Division)!
Neo-
Reviewing your latest comment, you start by admitting that your first response to me on this thread was literally just grabbing the first link you came across, without much consideration of its actual content. When I pointed out that lack of content, you accused me of blindly following Mueller and not thinking for myself.
I then pointed out that your next set of links – which apparently you spent a bit more time actually reading through – back up at least some of what I’m saying, via quotes. You ignored the points I made and continued to insist that they actually show that there’s no evidence that Trump Jr. did anything wrong… although you don’t offer any evidence from your articles to do so.
You admit that different lawyers will argue different sides of a case, and argued earlier that I should think for myself, but apparently trying to do so by digging in and analyzing the details of what those different lawyers are saying is the act of a troll who makes unreasonable demands of your time.
In fact, we see this kind of catch-22 thinking from you a lot, Neo. You complain that the Nunes memo demonstrates a terrible flaw in our judicial system that all freedom loving Americans should care about (and how terrible that the Left clearly doesn’t!) But you certainly don’t seek out or discuss any counterarguments about why the rest of the country thinks this issue is overblown, and when confronted with evidence – in the form of another GOP-authored memo that undercuts the Nunes memo – what we get from you is silence.
In an age where Trump and his gang are regularly shown to be lying – usually by themselves at a later date! – I see precious little evidence on your blog that you ever revisit your earlier statements, much less perform any kind of introspection on what that changing evidence means to your world view. Liberals are axiomatically – and increasingly – wrong.
And you defend all this with lawyerly statements that largely steamroll any nuance or complexity in what the other side is saying, laced with the bare minimum of moderation in case you have to reverse yourself later. For instance, you’ll claim it’s _possible_ that Trump Jr. may have committed a crime, but you won’t deign to mention any circumstances that might lead one to think that actually occurred, and it’s apparently completely unfair to demand an investigation into what might have happened. Only a troll who doesn’t think for himself like Chris would want such a thing, right?
Neo, “Your techniques and tone are clearly those of a troll.”
Let me make this simple: if you don’t want to spend time rebutting what I’m saying, then don’t! I’m not asking you to – if I’m clearly a troll, then it should be evident to everyone how ludicrous my comments are, correct?
But I will add – you say you consider and reconsider your ideology every single day, but if what you post on the blog is evidence of that consideration, you’re deluding yourself. Rather than reconsidering your change, you’re doubling down over and over, moving farther away from any kind of moderation.
Chris:
You wrote this about my recent comment:
Not in the least. What I actually wrote was this:
As Karl Popper said, “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.” And he might have added, “Especially when addressing someone determined to misunderstand you in order to criticize you.” That’s one of the reasons that legal documents tend to be so wordy, in an effort to dot every i and cross every t and anticipate every misunderstanding that nevertheless occurs.
In other words—using far more words to explain the same thing—I did what a person ordinarily does when a person does a search on a topic and is not about to do the sort of heavy-duty research that would be involved in writing a post, but rather just a quick response to a comment.
That is: I did a Google search, and then looked through the responses Google offered and I found some that might be appropriate. I’m sure you are familiar with how Google works; very rarely is the link one chooses the very first link on Google’s list of offerings. So, as is common and usual, I skimmed the list for the first page or two of Google offerings, clicked on several and skimmed them quickly, but they were not appropriate because they really didn’t deal with the question. I found one that did (the one I ended up offering), and I read that one quite carefully. I agreed with what it was saying; it made the very basic points I was offering in response. It was certainly not the best article in the world on the subject, merely the first acceptable one on the topic that I found in a quick search.
This entire process maybe took 15 minutes. To have gone further—to have done definitive research as I would have if I’d been writing a post on the subject—would have been absurd. But of course I read the link—I selected it, and it was the first one I found when I did the search that seemed on topic, not the first one on the list.
Then I later did a bit more of a similar nature—looked further down the list, found a couple more from people who were not “random trial attorneys” (your criticism of that first link) but were highly-respected lawyers and professors of law. They were not the next two links on the Google list either, by the way.
By the way, I often spend some time commenting back and forth to trolls. I find the entire troll phenomenon quite fascinating, in a way. I can’t imagine wasting my time doing what trolls do, but of course I’m sure trolls don’t consider it a waste of time, because they either voluntarily choose to do it or are paid to do it (I believe the former outnumber the latter, but the latter exist).
Of course I don’t have to engage with you. And I certainly don’t plan to keep engaging with you. But I think although trolls are all different, they have certain characteristics and methods that I find to be of some interest at times.
And of course there are often people here who disagree with the basic trend of the blog and its commenters, or with something more specific. But they are not trolls, and they are welcome here and often stay for a long time, arguing back and forth. The differences are quite obvious between such people and trolls.
By the way, political changers don’t change for unexamined or frivolous reasons. They have usually done a great deal of thinking that leads them to an almost inevitable change, at some personal human cost. They also usually are quite familiar with both left AND right, because they have lived in and been exposed rather heavily to both kinds of thinking. Usually they have quite strong bases for what they believe and know why they believe it. But because they tend to be more open-minded than most people, politically (proven by the fact that they were open to political change in the first place), they tend to remain more open-minded later, and because they usually still are very socially connected to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum, they are very very familiar with the arguments and reasoning of the opposite side.
When I write something like this comment in answer to you, if I decide to spend the time doing that it’s not really because I think what I’m saying here will reach you and change your mind. I don’t think it will. I write for other readers who might come across it.
Neo:
You continue to be wise, patient, and gracious.
Neo-
Some interesting points here! Going through the list:
– Karl Popper is great! I suggest you reread “The Open Society and its Enemies,” and ask yourself into which of those two categories Popper would have placed Trump and his supporters. (Hint: Popper would likely have not been a fan of the alt-right…)
– You spend a lot of time defending your research process! Obviously I have to take your word on this, although I think a prima facie reading of “The first one [link I offered] was merely the first one I found when I did a search, not the subject of some sort of definitive post” would not translate to 15 minutes worth of effort… especially for a two-word post containing a single link of dubious quality.
– “I’m sure you are familiar with how Google works; very rarely is the link one chooses the very first link on Google’s list of offering.” What an odd thing to say! Google’s first offered link is frequently the most useful and selected link – that’s how the system is built, after all, to offer the most often-clicked links for a given search up top. (That’s not the only factor Google uses, but it’s up there in importance. There’s also vast amounts of computer science research on CTRs, or click-through rates – fascinating stuff!)
– You seem to have done something of an about face, moving from calling me a troll to saying that engaging trolls – and, by extension, me – is a fascinating exercise for you. I’m… glad, I suppose?
– More importantly, I’m glad we’re in agreement that we’re verbally jousting for others’ enlightenment, rather than hoping to change each others’ mind. Although that in turn raises the question of why you’re defending the points you are. I’ve pointed out numerous flaws and limitations in your political arguments, including specific links that undercut points you’ve made quite passionately and forcefully (e.g. the Nunes memo) and your response has been… crickets. But I suppose that in and of itself says something – my primary purpose here is to point out the numerous misleading and flat-out false statements that get put forth (see also your recent post on the Strzok/Page texts) whereas your primary mode of attack seems to be focused on my supposed lack of decorum.
If that is the case, I fully concede your superiority in maintaining surface-level manners, even as you spread spurious attacks on those Trump opposes.
– You spend a fair amount of time talking up the superiority of “changers”, saying they’re quite familiar with the left and the right. I’d place more confidence in this opinion if the posts you’ve written regarding your political transition didn’t betray a rather naive understanding of liberalism to begin with – you seem to have never heard of concepts like “Moral Hazard” before your conversion to conservatism, much less aware of the liberal counter-arguments to it. And you certainly don’t write front page posts as if you have the slightest inkling of why, for example, someone might find Trump Jr.’s “I love it” response to receiving intel from a foreign power repugnant.
Of course, there’s an alternative explanation – that you are familiar with how liberals think, and say the things you do, such as bemoaning the terrible injustices visited on a man who “wanted his own guys running Trump’s Justice Department” because you are trolling the “liberals who surround you”, as you say in your front-page bio. You say you can’t imagine wasting your time doing what trolls do… but you’ve been doing this for how many years? (Compared to the few hours I’ve spent commenting here…) And do you feel your work has been moving you closer to the political center of the country, or farther away?
Perhaps we can answer that last question in the aftermath of the 2018 and 2020 elections!
What about the fact that Veselnitskaya worked for Fusion GPS, Chris? Or the fact that the *Clinton* campaign was getting oppo research from Russia?
“you’ve been doing this for how many years? (Compared to the few hours I’ve spent commenting here…)”
What a nasty, disgusting little creep you are Chris. Individuals like you are one reason I’m glad I’m a changer like neo. I voted for Dems most of my life until individuals like you took over the party.
FOAF, you and AesopFan have both made comments to the effect of “Look at how guys like Chris have damaged the Democratic party!”
And yes, I make snide remarks at Neo Neocon, which she returns in kind. (Incidentally, isn’t it time she gets a new moniker? Aside from the fact that she’s no longer “neo” to the movement, the interventionist neoconservatism she talked up in the mid-oughts seems strongly out of fashion in the GOP these days…)
And apparently that’s what makes the Democratic party less attractive than Donald f-ing Trump, darling of Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannapolis, previous employer of Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon and Rob Porter.
Good thing you’re avoiding individuals like me and hanging out with that better class of people in the GOP!
“darling of Richard Spencer”
Has Spencer ever even met Trump? Obama repeatedly had a murderous antsemitic hatemonger, Al Sharpton, to the White House for private meetings. I guess hating Jews is your idea of “class”. Not to mention the guy who shot Steve Scalise.
Chris:
You certainly are a long winded piece of work. But enough about you, burned any good books lately?
Chris:
So, you mean to suggest that, when you bring up a subject I’ve already written about at length when the news came out (Donald Trump Jr. and “I love it,” for example), if I don’t write another post about it right now exactly to your specifications, and express some sort of empathy for those who find that utterance of Trump Jr.’s abominable, I am somehow at fault? When the Donald Jr. story broke, I wrote a couple of posts about it; the most comprehensive one was this.
As I already indicated, sometimes I decide to engage in a “conversation” with a troll because I find that sometimes trolls raise issues that I’d like to expound upon. So I’ll respond to a few things you raised (even though that’s feeding the troll) and say that I do feel that it’s possible that my political change may have moved me closer to the political center of this country right now (although it’s a center that keeps shifting). But I couldn’t care less and it is of zero importance to me where I stand in terms of the majority of people. My political position is not about how many people agree with me or how centrist I am. I follow where my learning, observations, and thinking take me.
It’s also somewhat laughable that you think that this blog may be a case of me “trolling the ‘liberals who surround'” me. The vast majority (perhaps even all) of the liberals who surround me, many of whom know that I write this blog, never read it except when I send them links to the non-political pieces in it, the more personal or arts-oriented posts that I think they might enjoy.
As far as my previous understanding of liberalism goes—if you actually read my posts on my experience over the decades with politics, you might have noted that I’ve said I was not especially politically interested when I was younger, maybe about average. In my teens and 20s through 40s particularly, I was a liberal more by default in those years than through any especially comprehensive political philosophy. Back then I spent more of my time in pursuits other than politics, particularly literature and dance, as well as psychology. At the time (pre-internet) I got my news through only liberal sources such as the NY Times and the Boston Globe. Then, after I became far more interested in politics and in the underpinnings of politics as well, I read and listened to and engaged more with the thinking on both sides, conservative and liberal as well. So not only did I learn more about politics and history in general, and learned a great deal more about conservatism, I learned a great deal more about liberals and leftists, too.
You say that my “primary mode of attack seems to be focused on” your “supposed lack of decorum.” I never said that; au contraire, actually. This is how I addressed that question:
That was in response to you. So as a troll, you are: “the sort of troll who is on the surface polite.” You have exhibited no lack of decorum whatsoever. However, I also called your remarks “snide,” and that’s what they are: “derogatory or mocking in an indirect way” (although over time you’ve gotten more direct about it). And of course, if you’re going to come to a blog and immediately be snide and troll-like, you’re going to be met with snideness from others, at best.
AesopFan:
Yes, it’s a common ploy of trolls (and hostile interviewers) to misunderstand and misconstrue the meaning of statements, forcing the other person to explain and re-explain and clarify again and again and again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
_____________________________________
Well, that was an interesting dialogue.
Trolls stopped arguing with me awhile ago. There’s always the professional zombies from Soros, they never give up though, but that’s on other sites.
I think because out of the 2-5 people here that might respond, I am the most difficult to comprehend and the most difficult to respond to with any predictive analysis model of their AI scripts. So in threads where others have responded like normal people, the investigative Leftists would respond to them and just ignore me.
Which is a wise strategy, because the moment they start it with me, their entire psychic sea will be unchained and derailed from the complete area of whatever it was they really wanted to talk about.