Nice touch with the very plausible CNN URL though.

I just watched The Pelican Brief.

"Obstruction" fears after president asks the fbi to delay an investigation connected to him, and the president ultimately resigns in disgrace.

Such fiction.

april 3rd is april fools in pol mod land

House has voted to subpoena the Mullulllelleller report. Now we get to see if Trump wants to go full Nixon and claim executive privilege.

Somehow they only "authorized" a subpoena. Nadler still has to pull the trigger but he's waiting on Barr's reaction before he does it. I don't know what he expects from Barr, though. I don't see him just agreeing to the full report to the committee demand.


https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/stat...53347493773312

If it wasn't for the date, I might have clicked on the link.

Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed

Even by U.S. media standards, taking Trump’s handpicked hack AG seriously, let alone parroting his “conclusion,” is a complete ****ing joke.

I have to point out the simplest interpretation problems?

The poster stated that GG "denied" that there was Russian interference.

Nobody has produced a denial. What you've quoted is skepticism that the evidence was sufficient.

That is entirely different.

I was responding to, you know, the meanings of words.

Wow who could have ****ing suspected that the Barr summary would be favourable to Trump to the extent of being dishonest. Like when Trump handpicks a guy to whitewash this thing and even he has to admit that it doesn't exonerate Trump, maybe wait to read the ****ing thing before flooding the news wires with takes about what it does or doesn't say. It's incomprehensible to me how people took Barr at face value.

I was thinking the other day, I literally never watch cable news (not even youtoobz posted here) so I have no idea what the tone of the coverage was and maybe it was more "WE'RE GOING TO LOCK HIM UP" than I understand. I never rated Trump family indictments as likely at any point in the investigation (thought probably about 20%). These sort of conspiracy crimes are hard to prove and of course it would be morons like Stone actually in contact with Wikileaks or Russians or w/e.

No, this is the same bull**** Greenwald always tries to hide underneath. Putting on the mantle of skepticism does not absolve you of having taken a position. We're not in a court of law here, you are supposed to be informing people about what is likely, not presuming things to be untrue until proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The correct take in January 2017 was that it was likely - but not proven - that WikiLeaks were acting as a pawn of the Russians. I know because that's what I posted at the time. Greenwald, Dec 2016:

That's not just "it's not proven", that is taking a position that it is unlikely. Skepticism is thinking about alternative explanations and not rushing to judgement until proof is in. The above goes much further than that.

Outside a court of law, there is no absolute boundary between skepticism and denialism. If you talk to someone and they're like "Hey, I'm not saying 9/11 WASN'T done by Saudi hijackers, I'm just saying, we don't know" then they are a denialist. I don't think Greenwald is quite at that level, but circa January 2017 it was beyond simple skepticism to deny that the connections between Russia and WikiLeaks looked very suspicious. And Greenwald, in the above, goes beyond that, not merely failing to agree that it was suspicious, but taking the position that it was unlikely that WikiLeaks would collaborate with the Russians.

Like if Greenwald had written "I have a hard time taking seriously the view that the revelations WikiLeaks made were NOT a plot to get Donald Trump elected" you would have no difficulty recognising that as taking a position. But when he writes the inverse, you're like "oh that's just skepticism, that makes him awesome and smart". But there is no presumption of innocence here, we're trying to work out what is going on, on the balance of probabilities.

Not taking a position would be like "the evidence around WikiLeaks is interesting, but I haven't formed a judgement on what if anything any of it means".

Unfortunately the full report probably doesn't contain any one specific thing that is damaging enough to embarrass Greenwald about his victory lap as much as he deserves to be embarrassed. It'll be like 100 small pieces of evidence, not convincing in their own right, and Greenwald will handwave it all away in the name of declaring victory again.

Why are you idiots still taking GG seriously?

Yeah. I’m more jaded by far than I ever have been and it still surprised me. It brought me back to the feeling I had when the media started banging war drums after 911.

This post is an embarrassment and arguing with you is clearly a waste of time. 100% pure bad faith posting.

ChrisV we're talking about two distinct things here. One is "did GG deny Russian interference in the election?" (No one has produced a blanket denial.) Another, which you address above, is "did GG deny/doubt that Wikileaks connived with Russia?" Yes, GG is more dismissive of that particular Russia claim. You state:

I do not see how that follows. Assange is in the business of exposing information. He could easily have just been doing what he does.

In 2012 Wikileaks released 2.5 million Syrian government emails. Should we conclude that "WikiLeaks were acting as a pawn of . . . ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Israel" or whichever enemy of Assad?

So the Gambinos got ahold of and released an email cache from the Genovese gang. So what. That is the public's good fortune in getting insight into the workings of the DNC. We may not like that for a variety of reasons, but it has always been Assange's philosophy.

Leakers always have an agenda, often narrow and tawdry. That is no reason not to welcome the windfall of information.

And it is also literally true that we do not know that Russia provided the DNC emails, unless you count Roger Stone or the NSA as evidence. Even obvious things turn out to be dead wrong, that's why we wait for evidence, even about Russia. Remember in the Seventies when the CIA said Russia used bacterialogical warfare ("yellow rain") in Laos and it turned out to be bee excrement?

For the record, I find it highly plausible that Russia hacked the DNC but I don't know why anyone should put stock in my guess.

The bigger issue at hand is maintaining mental independence from the intense spin coming from all the political parties. And you sure see through the GOP.

See this is the thing, you haven't even followed the goddamn story. Like, for starters:

Mueller court filings assert that he has evidence that Stone was in communication with both the hackers known then as "Guccifer 2.0" (whom Mueller identifies as Russian agents) and with WikiLeaks. In fact, Mueller says that he knows that Stone spoke with WikiLeaks merely from Stone's communication with Guccifer 2.0, which makes it certain that there was interaction between all three entities.

On to WikiLeaks, they turned down a cache of Russian government documents:

They also turned down other material not election-related:

And:

WikiLeaks also reportedly hid material about transactions between a state-owned Russian bank and Syria, although this report is unconfirmed:

Not to mention WikiLeaks playing footsie with Podesta conspiracy theories during the campaign:



If you think this looks like an organization without an agenda, you are an idiot. It's as simple as that.

Try reading this if you want to be up to speed on the Stone indictment and its implications for Wikileaks, as well as the blindingly obvious fact that Barr's summary of the report is going to be bull****, in fact he's backed away from even calling it a summary. Emptywheel is probably the best analyst out there for all things Mueller.

Also the Wikileaks and Trump Jr emails where Assange is asking Trump for some insider info that won't be too damaging so that he can appear even handed in exposing internal documents.

lol, I did read that at the time, but I'd completely forgotten about it. The Atlantic:

Just some politically-neutral transparency advocates having fun out there.

The NYT article is an absolute embarrassment.

They take at face value Barr’s bull**** excuses and present as truth the idea that he wants the truth to come out because he’s oh so mad about the DOJ covering for Hillary. GTFO, all the GOP propaganda that’s fit to print.

You’d think after 500k people ****ing died in Iraq they’d have a little ****ing skepticism and humility. 0/2.

I'm sorry but how the **** is that interview not GG denying Russia interfered in the election? Interesting how you're now asking for a 'blanket denial'.

Also interesting how much you're moving the goal posts here, just like your man Glenn.

It unquestionably has not always been the complaint. To be clear here - you are completely wrong. Glenn's complaint was that the liberal media was accepting the intelligence community's findings on Russian interference at face value instead of being skeptical and Very Smart like him.

That was his original complaint and it had nothing to do with collusion. The new complaint that you're proudly parroting is that there were no indictments of Americans *for collusion* therefore the mainstream media is fraudulent. Very Smart and Good take, dude.

LMFAO the press has beeen spinning “TRUMP EXONERATED” headlines for a week without even talking to anyone who’s actually seen the report. Trump could not have asked for more favorable coverage.

2016 flashback, as if they learned nothing at all. It's intentional.