I am not playing your game of denying or avoiding what you want to address while demanding others address your points.

I raised prior that

- The Mueller Investigation and Report established it.

- The Senate Investigation and Report established it.

- The DNI Investigation and Report established it.

- Additional to the above the The CIA, NSA, DNI, FBI & Special Counsel's team members have all testified under oath acknowledging it under penalty of perjury.


Those investigations have submitted their findings and say 'it did happen'. They make clear Ruissiagate was a thing and it ran deep.

The Senate Investigation alone FOUND:

"...The report describes hundreds of actions by Trump, his campaign, and his associates in the run-up to the 2016 election that involve some degree of participation by Trump or his associates in Russian activity....
cite

There is simply no instance, NONE, where we KNOW FOR FACT, as we do, that Russia and its operatives were trying to influence an election and one campaign has "HUNDREDS" of contacts with said Russian's that an investigation is not merited. The nature of those contacts MUST be understood.

On the RIggie side we have the opposite of that. Each and every investigation, ALL OF THEM, say they find nothing. Trump's own lawyers in court said 'we are not alleging any fraud occurred'.

So yes it is trolling to try and equate these as anything in the same universe.

You will never address the facts I present here and just go back to making the statement as if none of this exists or was pointed out to you prior and that is why your posts should be considered trolling.

Yeah. I'm not claiming any superhuman powers of perception. It was pretty damn obvious.

So, on the Russian interference front I've always basically just stipulated that it was true...

-Taibbi

That's ~half of the Russia story right there. What's the press supposed to do with that? Anyone with 3 functioning brain cells could see how zany the 16 election environment was compared to anything prior. There was more than enough reason to dig into trump/any potential coordination.

That's disingenuous on the level of saying if I pulled a solitary fiber from your wool sweater that I stole from you. Yeah, technically Russia interfered in our election. I even admit that that is true on some technical level. But they didn't interfere in the specific ways popularly alleged and it had an impact that was beyond negligible. Their interference is just standard statecraft to combat our invasive interference which, not terribly long ago, saw us take decisive actions toward who was going to lead post Soviet Russia and how their economy was going to be organized going forward. More recently we've been directly involved with deciding leadership in countries bordering Russia in an extremely hostile NATO encroachment. Actions like these classify their actions as defensive, weak as they are.

Not to mention, the false allegation whereby Russia stole e-mails and gave them to wikileaks, was itself mischaracterized as disinformation. The authenticity of the emails was never disputed. If they were guilty of anything it was giving us better information with which to make our decisions, which is to say they were increasing democracy. And they have a right to do so given that they live in a world in which our leaders make decisions which effect their lives greatly. A lot of this back and forth is really about the vile audacity of Russians to do a great deed. They didn't do it, but even if they did it would be fine. Our media are hand puppets of power so it would be great for a foreign power to step in and do some muckraking journalism for us.

The Taibbi quote in context:

In the Vox article (reading Vox is like volunteering for the Clockwork Orange therapy) he goes on to poke holes in the pivotal claims of Russian interference.

wet work you are officially a dishonest troll.

It's not an article it's an interview/conversation. If it's such a rag--then why is he there? Just because he thinks it's only about the collusion--doesn't make it so. The interference itself is very much a part of the Russia story.

Why do you think trump's had informants/intelligence agents w/ a russia focus all around him for ~20+yrs?

And fwiw RollingStone hasn't been a counterculture mag for ages now.

Vox is big with the sheeple, who are a huge portion of the people. Most journalists want a larger audience. You took his quote way out of context, dishonestly so.

I don't care what kind of nonsense about Trump and Russia is swirling around in your head until you can point to some evidence.

Ok so not one name? Not one name of one person who has been convicted on a core Russiagate charge? You said these convictions existed. Now, do you have the integrity to admit you were wrong? that you have not one name? 3 years. 40 million. Subpoena powers. Global spying system reaching into governments and citizens the world over. Yet, not one name?

What kind of investigation results in no convictions on the crimes investigated but instead only in convictions of those carrying out the investigation itself?

You are such an obedient tool that you literally cannot distinguish between assertions from authority and evidence for assertions from authority. To you they are one and the same. If an institution puts out an empty assertion and someone points out that it's only an assertion and not supported by evidence, pointing back to the assertion does not counter the argument. You have to point to the support. But I don't even want to explain things to you because I am afraid, since you reflexively oppose everything I say because I said it and I am anti the authority you worship, you will make yourself dumber in order to counter me.

I have names but I am not playing one way games with you where you ask but don't answer questions.

Do you agree that the mass of material I quoted in my prior post constitutes proof that the Investigations were warranted, justified and resulting in lots of 'Findings' of collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia?

You have at least 3 very credible groups, including the Senate GOP lead Committee, who released FINDINGS that say not only did the Trump Campaign collude but they had HUNDREDS of contacts with Russians in that time frame.

The quote doesn't really remove context--just his big picture opinion attached at the end. As a yes/no question to whether russian interference happened he'd answer Yes. Period. It's not disingenuous to note that using his own words.

Deuces, I have a probability question for you.

If every single person you talk to disagrees with you, which is more likely?

a). They are dumb all sheeple/trolls/liars.
b). You are wrong.

Take your time, it's a poser.

This isn't technically true. There was no specific evidence of collusion but there was plenty of evidence that the campaign were happy to accept help from people with ties to Russian interests.

Essentially the possibilities given the evidence are:

a) the Trump campaign (or individuals within it) were naively accepting help from Russian interests and didn't realise/care that by doing so they were furthering those interests
or
b) the Trump campaign (or individuals within it) actively conspired with Russian interests

The former is dumb and could potentially have counter-intelligence implications but is technically not illegal. The latter is illegal but would require direct evidence of intent to aid Russian interests to actually get a conviction for, which is what is lacking.

Personally I think the former is probably more likely for the majority of interactions but the evidence doesn't exclude the possibility of the latter - the one person for whom I would consider the latter to be the more likely possibility is Manafort.

On a), there is a big difference between naively didn't realize and didn't care. I would break that into two categories.

"Naively didn't realize" seems highly improbable for someone like Manafort, mainly because I don't see how he could be naive about anything related to Russia.

I never thought b) was at all likely.

Yeah I could have phrased that better. I guess being negligent (didn't even consider who it was that was helping them) vs being ignorant (knew who was helping but didn't realise they were trying to further Russian interests) might be a better way of putting it. They're different but as I understand it essentially equivalent from a legality perspective, whereas b) would definitely be illegal.

That's not a proper probability question because you haven't included all the events in the sample space. I think people can be highly intelligent and still be easily deceived by the media. Anyone who questions every little thing asserted by authorities would go insane trying to verify every little thing. Knowing the spots where authorities are more likely to lie to you might properly be reserved for people like me who happen to have a talent for or interest in institutional analysis. There are a plenty of such people debunking Russiagate currently. Their analysis has so much more predictive value than the mainstream media on this topic.

Your condition, "if every single person you talk to" is definitely false. A lot of conservatives, perhaps for partisan reasons, believe what I believe even though, like you, they don't know the details but only take it on authority- just different authority. There have been convictions supporting my view, Clinton's lawyer was just charged, and the manner in which he was charged indicates that there are going to be many more indictments supporting my view. You allege all these crimes took place, that position was well funded and given sweeping powers of investigation, and you have no scalps.

You could very likely share my view at some point in the future, if you get the green light from the people to whom you give permission over your thoughts. If that happens, I know you will say you always agreed with me and everything I said was obvious.

He was referencing a prior position and you represented it as his current position. What you think he would answer to some other type of question is not germane.

What you are saying here is not technically either. Not attacking you with this but this narrative (can't PROVE collusion) requires us to swallow shovels full of ****.

The reason we can both say that is because 'Collusion' is not defined for this exercise and those on the Trump side will not accept any reasonable definition for the word.

Anyone reasonable person takes this "Senate committee concludes Russia used Manafort, WikiLeaks to boost Trump in 2016 as reasonably defined as meeting the threshold of Collusion.

Manafort was the Chair of the Trump campaign. He was willingly and deliberately taking key data to people known to him to be 'connected Russian operatives', and they were willing taking it with an intent to impact the election.


For those who argue we cannot know for sure Manafort did not think Russia only meant to do good with the data because we cannot prove his thoughts, I am just not interested in those talking head tv games. The type that are used constantly to say even we cannot say for sure Trump was mocking a disabled reporter, simply because he never specifically said those words when he did this.



I refuse to get mired in that dishonest game.

Manafort knew exactly what he was providing and to whom. It is collusion at the highest levels of the Trump campaign.

hahaha Cuepee come on now, I answer all questions which are possibly serious. You said you had some names. It's now painfully obvious you don't have even one. And you never will. The Russigate skeptics have the names of the guilty, convicted in court where truth still has some power, and now we can wait and see how long that list grows.

I do not agree. It's remarkable to me that you keep smacking your head on the Mueller report which is like the biggest indictment of Russiagate there is. There was no collusion according to the Mueller report.

I feel like you need some help. The collusion charge is dead- seriously no BS. It's been dead. Mueller murdered it and there is no reviving something after that kind of complete and utter destruction. If you want to create the appearance of validity to Russiagate you should focus on the interference angle and forget collusion which, even outside of Mueller, has 10 proofs of nonexistence. With the interference you can drag the discussion into the weeds much easier. Just remember - the truth is your enemy - you must therefore obfuscate constantly, point to events that never happened, get bogged down in technical details, and most of all conflate conflate conflate. Bait your opponent. Say something wrong but difficult to disprove on some minor, inconsequential point so that your opponent dissipates his energy on pointless distractions. Keep it an open ended issue to avoid resolution since resolution can only be bad for your position given the underlying facts.

No you do not answer my questions and you have not here.

I am not asking you whether you think the findings proved collusion for obvious reasons I just stated above.

I asked you specifically about the foundations of the Investigation. That ie BEFORE any findings so we do not need to worry about collusion or how it was defined.

Specifically you keep suggesting the foundations of the RussiaGate investigation were not there. I have proven time and again, including the Mueller investigation that they were.

Let me explode your mind for a minute with a hypothetical.

Even in the event an investigation exonerated the person of all charges it can still be well founded as to why they investigated? The foundation or need for an investigation is not tied IN ANY WAY to findings of guilt.

You need to really reflect on that last point to answer my prior question.

Because George P's words ('Russia has info and is using it to try and influence the election') coming to US intelligence REQUIRE investigation even if they investigate and it turns out George was drunk, made it up, and had zero truth to it.

Even if all that was true (it was not) the Investigation of those comments by US intelligence would be necessary and it would be negligent for them not to do it.

What US intelligence CANNOT do is say 'ya British intelligence we hear ya. But are going to guess it is BS and not look into it.'.

They would all be fired if they did that and rightly so.

Those are his own words my man. And the context wasn't referring to an old position. He even gives you a hint with the--I've always said part

Just like you said--you knew the truth immediately before any info--just pure soul reads.

Having paragons of journalistic integrity like the anna kournikova has 2 vaginas guy reinforce parts of it for you was just a bonus I assume.

Also, please tell me you're not another one of the accountants.

You can't prove something which isn't falsifiable. Some claims can be checked. Others can't. For example, when some report says that an individual was "likely" a Kremlin spy, we can hear that person out and review documents they offer and check the validity of the claims. But when it comes to why the investigation happened, that's all in someone's head and we can't really interrogate that. My position is that the founding of the investigation is largely irrelevant compared to the method of the investigation. Did the investigation follow an evidence trail and accumulate evidence establishing some event of interest? It obviously didn't in this case. All it generated were malicious rumors accusing a sitting president- no convictions on the underlying crimes being investigated.

You keep harping about it being properly predicated and I have no idea why you think that is so important or why you think there is any proof possible of it. Decisions to investigate something or not are always ultimately at someone's discretion, no matter what guidelines are set up. I feel like you are never going to get that.

I don't agree with your conclusion. Long and expensive investigations should lead to prosecutions on the core charges because otherwise the justification for continuing the investigation should have expired. There are exceptions to this, but generally speaking a thorough investigation which with no convictions is much less likely to be properly founded. As investigation proceed longer and longer without the proper evidence to justify going further it becomes more likely that what is actually happening is a fishing expedition. What's the chance of all the exculpatory evidence being missed or only being found at the end?

Where do you get this idea? You think there is some kind of super objective body out there making sure everyone acts in good faith- that doesn't exist. That's why prosecutors wield massive influence over everything, because they can choose which matters to move forward and which to leave alone. There is no and can be no autonomous institutional response based on objective evaluation of any given piece of intelligence. The intelligence agencies are flooded with so much data and information they admit they can't even process it. They can mold all sorts of narratives out of that data, which is precisely why our right to privacy is so important. The tried to mold a narrative to remove Trump. Or maybe their goal was always just to bloody him with it with removal to come via the next election. They had to have known that by the time the narrative got into a court of law, where evidence matters, they would hit a wall.

So Cuepee is also a RussiaGater.

Rofl

What's up Deuces, haven't seen you in a while. You will see Cuepee doesn't have the brightest bulb in his head.

You have no names of any actors in the campaign that colluded with Russia. None.

Messaging wikileaks for advanced notice on email dumps hardly constitutes as collusion with Russia.

The closest thing to Russia Gate was the grifter Manafort giving internal polling data to someone that ended up being a Russian agent.