rolling trump-russian collusion

https://chomsky.info/priorities02/

(which mostly seems like an edited version of this, from 1973: https://chomsky.info/19730920/ )

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Monday, January 22, 2018 6:51 PM (one hour ago)

that's right -- i remember reading a version of this years ago. it's nowhere near as loopy as the current "russia skeptic" stuff, chomsky actually makes a decent point and writes well. though he was writing well before watergate ended and it could be argued that the situation got way worse after this piece appeared -- the eventual case against nixon went well beyond the break-in itself and the eventual impeachment articles drawn up against him did include the constitutional violations chomsky discussses. at one point they included the illegal bombing of cambodia. the fact that chomsky just reprinted an edited version of this early commentary in 1981, without acknowledging any of this, is symptomatic of an ongoing weakness in his work: he never seems to change his mind, or adapt his critique to changing conditions. he never even seems to acknowledge that situations can change. this is probably why i've liked his early work (this included) better than anything he's written over the last few decades -- at the very least, it's much fresher.

he bitches about her and she doesn't ever mention him

it's almost as though she has 50 times the name recognition and her own tv show

(or at the very least, 10 times the name recognition, if Twitter is an acceptable metric)

Maddow has always seemed like a partisan hack to me

he's really otm about maddow

notm. he bitches about her and she doesn't ever mention him. meanwhile there are people in this very thread denying the import of the russian government interfering in american elections. interception indeed ; )

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, January 22, 2018 12:50 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have sadly seen the maddow show recently on a few occasions so i would tend to disagree

GG doesn't think maddow has become a "partisan hack" because she falls short of some imaginary standard of journalistic objectivity, he thinks that because she doesn't buy his stupid line that the russia stuff was made up by the democrats (working closely w/ that bastion of mainstream progressive sentiment, the fbi) as an excuse for losing the election. he's become an inexcusably lazy and obnoxious writer and he should've retired at least two years ago.

not stanning for rachel, jim in vancouver, but curious what you tend to disagree with her about vis-a-vis illegal russian government interference in the american presidential election in favor of the current (illegitimate) POTUS

No doubt Maddow has a partisan bias (though I think it's overstated) but calling her a hack is absurd. She's has by and large refrained from taking the tweet bait or getting bogged down in the more sordid stuff. It seems she does more far more original reporting than her peers across the big news networks.

not stanning for rachel, jim in vancouver, but curious what you tend to disagree with her about vis-a-vis illegal russian government interference in the american presidential election in favor of the current (illegitimate) POTUS

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, January 22, 2018 1:35 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the heavily fanfare'd bit about trump's tax return was just awful. the general breathless reporting of any development in the trump-russia investigation as if this new thing is finally going to be the piece that puts everything in place (this has been going on for a year now?). the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible.

the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible.

weirdly enough I've never seen any MSM outlet, including Maddow's show, taking the dossier this way

i saw some segment on maddow about the bits of the dossier that have been found to be true which seemed to be suggesting that the dossier was roundly trustworthy though it was a while back now so maybe I'm remembering incorrectly

Greenwald hasn't said "the russia stuff [which?] was made up by the democrats"; he's said he wants to see what investigation reveals. You just don't believe him.

xp that's different though - I always saw that as a counterpoint to the other mainstream coverage of this which basically paints the whole thing as unconfirmed and potentially 100% bogus

No one necessarily believes the pee tape is real, as a fact, but several other aspects of the dossier have been verified, and were taken seriously enough at the start to get this whole thing rolling. To deny the dossier outright is akin to denying the findings of the entire intelligence community.

the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible

this is curiously overblown for someone complaining of rachel maddow's "breathless reporting". christopher steele has speculated that about 70% of the dossier he compiled is "completely credible" and i've never heard rachel maddow (on the occasions i've watched clips of her show) exaggerate that. but ymmv

Greenwald hasn't said "the russia stuff [which?] was made up by the democrats"; he's said he wants to see what investigation reveals. You just don't believe him.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 22, 2018 10:19 PM (eight minutes ago)

i follow GG on twitter and know his work p well, and this pretense that he "just wants to see the evidence" is bullshit. he's completely dismissive of any evidence that anyone puts forward, and he ridicules anyone who takes it seriously. it'd be better if he just admitted he wasn't interested in the subject and stopped writing about it.

the problem is that some stuff is made up, lots of reputable news sources have been caught not thoroughly vetting sources, etc. some stuff is made up by Democrats, some of it by Republicans, some of it is real, this is the nature of national intelligence work. it is like looking for propaganda in a propaganda haystack.

also people will tend to generalize, obv there is a spectrum between Yes/No, and different people have different thresholds for what constitutes a victory. party evangelicals celebrate victories and battles daily. i voted no but the minute evidence is found that removes Donald Trump from office and proves that he ordered them to do this i will concede it was true all along. until then i have accepted a reality where every country is spying on every other country, where independent actors all over the world can have conflicting or aligning goals while still acting alone, etc. Wikileaks probably would have done what they always do without Donald Trump telling them to go ahead, whether "puppets" of Russia or not they have leaked sensitive US intel in the past and have their own agenda.

it seems weird to me to be so upset about working with foreign influences, after more than a decade of working with Saudi interests and various groups in countries funding the terrorism we are supposedly at war with. if you bring up that Clinton did a lot of business with these interests, you were ignored, it was just us doing international business. funding militant extremist groups has been a matter of national policy for decades. people have accepted this reality. people know this type of back dealing goes on. contrast half a century of investment in foreign arms markets and mercenary groups to leaking e-mails and buying too much Facebook ad space. we have Mueller on the case, and the Dems go on about how awesome and brilliant the dude is, how many leads and interviews he is pilling up, i have faith that they will get to the bottom of it. if he doesn't find Trump directly guilty it won't really matter and the cultists will continue on.

J.D., i'm not talking about "evidence" in the press.

Adam B otm. oh, the Purity of American Democracy.

The “deep state is trying to take out Trump” spin that the right wing is really into basically originated with Glenn.

under W we went to war in iraq (how many people (american and non-american) died?) over less evidence than we have pinning putin and trump. i'm not remotely advocating that we go to war with russia over cozy/fancy bear but i remain mystified by lack of concern over the most epic ratfucking in american history, by our historic geo-political adversary, no less

No one necessarily believes the pee tape is real, as a fact, but several other aspects of the dossier have been verified, and were taken seriously enough at the start to get this whole thing rolling. To deny the dossier outright is akin to denying the findings of the entire intelligence community.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, January 22, 2018 5:26 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp because it directly benefitted one of our two political parties, the one most concerned with holding power above the security and well-being of the nation. to acknowledge it would be to appear illegitimate. there's literally no consequence to just denying everything.

It's concerning! We don't know the scope of what happened yet. Was it bigger in effect than 'ordinary' GOP disenfranchisement? I don't know. xxp

disenfranchisement tactics, that is.

The amount of verifiable items in the dossier has risen to the level that a "pee tape" or something like it is more credible than not.

That it's also a stupid punchline has nothing to with the question of its factual basis

as much as I want to hope the pee tape is some sort of dues ex machina that could free us from all this let's not forget the President of the United States had an extramarital affair with a porn star who spanked him with a Forbes magazine and it was barely a story

Like, Trump's idiot lawyer set up a one-day LLC to pay a porn star hush money to keep an affair quiet. Anything is possible.

xpost Ha. Everything is possible with this piece of shit. There is literally nothing about him that would surprise me save proof that he has done none of the things people have said he's done. He is the human embodiment of the seven deadly sins.

Yeah who knows what the revelation would mean politically, but it's hardly some kind of outlandish notion.

Nobody believes the president wasn't surveilled. What exactly do people think he gets up to at night on these junkets, other than stuffing his fat face and screwing young women he pays for, either directly or with the promise of a TV appearance or a slot in his fucking beauty pageant? I mean, are we all talking about the same person??

"Oh no, pee tape! That's just beyond the pale!"

as if the KGB (and former KGB agents) wouldn't have taped floor to ceiling the hotel bathroom of such an archetypal vain and massively indebted (to them!) ugly american pig capitalist; if he's not on some sexxx tape i'd bet a good five rubles that at the very least there are image-demolishing pix of our elderly manchild POTUS with his '"hair" down' he's way too immature to begin to know how to effectively deal with

Anyway reading that Glenn Simpson testimony and getting a window into his relationship with Steele and Steele's track record, his reputation for scrutiny and thoroughness, etc. gives me no reason to doubt anything they compiled (which obv. is not the same thing as saying it's all true.)

“Was it the sole cause of Trump winning?” doesn’t seem like a relevant question. I think most people get that when something’s that close there’s a lot you could realistically point to as tipping the scales. Much of the denialism seems like this really indirect way of expressing concern that the investigation will somehow be a threat to progressive causes which I can understand to a point but people like Glenn haven’t been great for the discourse on that though.

why would the investigation be a threat to progressive causes?

If the Dems can impeach Trump on this then the party will see the 2016 election as the result of the GOP having “cheated” and no lessons will be learned along the lines of “hey maybe they should have run on fight for 15/stronger appeals to the base” etc.

r u serious

It's not about progressive causes, Greenwald doesn't give a shit about that. He is defensive because he himself spent the final part of the election pushing bullshit stories on Russian leaks.

And in case people have forgotten, there were a lot of people back then going 'what are you doing? those emails were obviously hacked by Russians' but Greenwald refused to consider it. It was absolutely obvious, and he's banking on his denials at least creating confusion.

It’s more of a line of thought you see pushed very frequently by let’s say people associated with “The Young Turks” or those who see themselves as on the left but who still stand by Greenwald. Greenwald’s own motives probably different.

are we really trying to do this to ourselves again

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

Nommed that one for the trackpoll, hope it makes it in.

lol

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Monday, January 22, 2018 4:24 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no we got here because john podesta clicked on a fishing link and anthony weiner's sex crimes gave comey an excuse to write a letter telling people not to vote for hilary like 6 days before the election

and also hilary was a bad candidate, ok logging off now bye!

I’m not sure how big that line of thinking is, my sense is the overwhelming majority of Bernie supporters would be thrilled to see the Trump admin go down. Bernie himself has always taken the investigation seriously.

xxpost

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

I think that is all irrelevant at this point. Trump could have beat Clinton by a legit 20%, but the stuff he or his campaign is being accused of doing remains illegal.