Who Meddled more Putin or Trump? The Collusion Thread visits Venezuela


paulsurovell said:

Taibbi also notes an attack on Blake Hounshell, Politico Magazine's editor-in-chief for having the temerity (some might say journalistic integrity) to suggest reasons to be skeptical about Trump collusion with Russia.


Yes, he's skeptical of outright, deliberate, knowing collusion. (As am I.) He's not skeptical of Russia's behavior as outlined by Mueller. Did you skip over this part, or are you just cherry-picking again?

"No, I’m not denying the voluminous evidence that Russia, at Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin’s personal direction, sought to meddle in the 2016 election, and that Donald Trump was clearly his man."



jamie said:


nan said:

I want to put in another plug for the debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen.  I think it would help some of you understand why it is important to have skepticism without real evidence.  Also, the significance of knowing the real definition of treason. Collusion is also covered.

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/21/video-glenn-greenwald-and-james-risen-debate-the-trumprussia-investigation/

Debate?  More like the Greenwald hour.  Risen's 5% of talk time was pretty good.

Risen seemed satisfied that he got to ask and hear his answers answered.  Greenwald is the one most under attack so he had more explaining to do.  Thought they both made good points and it was an insightful conversation.



DaveSchmidt said:
paulsurovell said:

Taibbi also notes an attack on Blake Hounshell, Politico Magazine's editor-in-chief for having the temerity (some might say journalistic integrity) to suggest reasons to be skeptical about Trump collusion with Russia.
If it’s an attack (which it isn’t), Hounshell invited it. Literally: He published it in his own magazine.

Here's what they say about Hounshell:

Faced with this evidence, arguing there was no collusion is no longer the position of a skeptic, but of someone in denial. It is the refusal to acknowledge what is staring us all in the face: The president of the United States and his campaign colluded with a foreign adversary to defeat his political opponent.
I think it's fair to call this an attack, but if you have another word in mind, go for it.

PS -- Not the issue here, but worth noting the authors' absolute certainty that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.



nan said:

Risen seemed satisfied that he got to ask and hear his answers answered.  Greenwald is the one most under attack so he had more explaining to do.  Thought they both made good points and it was an insightful conversation.

Glenn laid out an obvious principle: Do not accept narratives that have no evidence, especially if they're promoted by the Intel community. Risen said he was confused by that. We hear that a lot on this thread.


Why should we listen to anything you say Paul.  You never have any evidence.  This is just arguments about arguments about opinions about strawmen - lather, rinse and repeat.

Mueller, one of the few people who has access to primary information, is, to his credit, running a pretty leakproof investigation.  I have no idea what he will find.  Collusion?  Maybe, but the Russians only needed to create the suspicion of collusion to be successful.  Money laundering or dirty money supporting the Trump-Kushner crime family?  Wouldn't surprise me at all.  That parts of the Trump dossier are correct?  Wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that the Russians have videos of Trump with courtesans while visiting Moscow.  We know that Trump likes his women.

And we also know that Putin hated Clinton and would have engaged in a disinformation campaign regardless of who she was running against.





paulsurovell said:



ridski said:

paulsurovell said:

Typical obfuscation-garbage.

The best description of this thread so far.

Is that a mea culpa?

https://youtu.be/kTcRRaXV-fg



tjohn said:

Why should we listen to anything you say Paul.  You never have any evidence.  This is just arguments about arguments about opinions about strawmen - lather, rinse and repeat.

Mueller, one of the few people who has access to primary information, is, to his credit, running a pretty leakproof investigation.  I have no idea what he will find.  Collusion?  Maybe, but the Russians only needed to create the suspicion of collusion to be successful.  Money laundering or dirty money supporting the Trump-Kushner crime family?  Wouldn't surprise me at all.  That parts of the Trump dossier are correct?  Wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that the Russians have videos of Trump with courtesans while visiting Moscow.  We know that Trump likes his women.

And we also know that Putin hated Clinton and would have engaged in a disinformation campaign regardless of who she was running against.

Actually, most of what I post are links to what others are saying.

For example, today I linked to what Rep Nadler, Nick Akerman, Stephen Cohen, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, Rob Goldman and Mollie Hemingway had said or written.

I asked for your opinion about three statements by Rep Nadler and Nick Akerman fed to gullible Americans on MSNBC, but you skipped over them, apparently unconcerned.

Here they are again:

-- Indictments are Proof.
-- Russian Trolls are Equivalent to Pearl Harbor
-- A Russian SWAT team came to America in 2014, posing as tourists, to throw the election to Donald Trump

What's your take?


Whoever compares Russian trolls to Pearl Harbor is nuts.  Meddling and hacking require effective responses, but I think the responses need to be more defensive than retaliatory.  Certain kinds of cyber attacks might merit responses in the form of sanctions or counter cyber attacks or, in some extreme cases, a military response, but nothing Russia has done approaches this this higher threshold.

Assumption of guilt by indictment is a problem endemic to our legal systems and probably a lot of others.  It's always a problem when politicians and other high-profile people are charged.

As far as a Russian team of provocateurs coming to American in 2014, I have no comment because I haven't read the claim for myself and don't know who is making the claim.


edited to add:  I see the source is MSNBC - the Fox News of the left.  I have never watched it.


Manafort and Gates indicted on new charges.


Jamie,


This thread needs to be closed.  It's a waste of storage space at your service provider.


Save some money.  Shut it down.



sbenois said:

Jamie,

This thread needs to be closed.  It's a waste of storage space at your service provider.

Save some money.  Shut it down.

Wow. Sbenois wants to shut down free speech on MOL. Yeah, he's out of the closet now.


Jamie,

The pernicious attack on free speech by Sbenois (above) does have one positive value -- it's a reminder to those of us who haven't contributed to MOL for a while.  I'll cop to that.

What's the best way to donate?



dave23 said:

Manafort and Gates indicted on new charges.

On election collusion?



paulsurovell said:



dave23 said:

Manafort and Gates indicted on new charges.

On election collusion?

No...on being greedy crooks, possibly using the office of the presidency as a bribe. Apparently, they were too stupid to realize they had to deliver on the graft they promised.


Pockets weighed down by honorable Russian money.


I was gonna post to dispute another misleading quote by Paul ("worst attack blah blah blah)" but then I said - what the eff for? He never corrects himself or gives a mea culpa.



drummerboy said:

I was gonna post to dispute another misleading quote by Paul ("worst attack blah blah blah)" but then I said - what the eff for? He never corrects himself or gives a mea culpa.

Funny.


do you ever check quotes which are too conveniently close to what you really feel?

Rhetorical question.

paulsurovell said:



drummerboy said:

I was gonna post to dispute another misleading quote by Paul ("worst attack blah blah blah)" but then I said - what the eff for? He never corrects himself or gives a mea culpa.

Funny.




paulsurovell said:

PS -- Not the issue here, but worth noting the authors' absolute certainty that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.

It was indeed the issue there, because Hounshell’s reason for running the piece (under the Backtalk label) was to offer his readers a counterargument from the all-in side.

I made a pitch to reopen this thread (dodges brickbats), but I’ll be giving it another rest now, Paul.


(In the meantime, I’ll smile at the thought of what paulsurovell might have said, regardless of its good faith, about an offer of money after a brush with sanctions.)



DaveSchmidt said:

paulsurovell said:

PS -- Not the issue here, but worth noting the authors' absolute certainty that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.

It was indeed the issue there, because Hounshell’s reason for running the piece (under the Backtalk label) was to offer his readers a counterargument from the all-in side.

What I meant by "the issue" was whether the article was "an attack."

DaveSchmidt said:

I made a pitch to reopen this thread (dodges brickbats), but I’ll be giving it another rest now, Paul.
DaveSchmidt said:

(In the meantime, I’ll smile at the thought of what paulsurovell might have said, regardless of its good faith, about an offer of money after a brush with sanctions.)

It would be nice if we could have an open discussion, like adults, on whatever you're alluding to.


Two legal developments on the two sides of the collusion story:

(1) Former Trump campaign official is imminently expected to plead guilty to tax violations

(2) David Kramer, who delivered the Steele dossier to John McCain in 2016, and who is also an official of the parent organization of the bogus Russian bot monitor Hamilton68, has invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a House Intelligence committee subpoena to answer questions about the Steele dossier, according to Fox News.


Must-read by Adrian Chen, the New Yorker writer who broke the Internet Research Agency story in the NY Times in 2015, whose interview with Chris Hayes appears above.

Excerpts:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-so-called-experts-uneasy-dive-into-the-trump-russia-frenzy


[ . . . ] I don’t really want to be an expert on the Internet Research Agency and Russian online propaganda. I agree with my colleague Masha Gessen that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. In the Times Magazine article that supposedly made me an authority, I detailed some of the Agency’s disturbing activities . . . But, if I could do it all over again, I would have highlighted just how inept and haphazard those attempts were. That the Agency is now widely seen as a savvy, efficient manipulator of American public opinion is, in no small part, the fault of experts. They may derive their authority from perceived neutrality, but in reality they—we—have interests, just like everyone else. And, when it comes to the Trump-Russia story, those interests are often best served by fueling the fear of Kremlin meddling. Information-security consultants might see a business opportunity in drawing attention to a problem to which they (for a fee) can offer a solution. Think-tank fellows may seek to burnish their credentials by appearing in news articles—articles written by journalists who, we all know, face many different kinds of pressures to promote sensational claims. (How viral is the headline “Russian Internet Propaganda Not That Big a Deal”?) Even academic researchers, to secure funding, must sometimes chase the latest trends.


paulsurovell said:

Two legal developments on the two sides of the collusion story:

(1) Former Trump campaign official is imminently expected to plead guilty to tax violations

(2) David Kramer, who delivered the Steele dossier to John McCain in 2016, and who is also an official of the parent organization of the bogus Russian bot monitor Hamilton68, has invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a House Intelligence committee subpoena to answer questions about the Steele dossier, according to Fox News.

Both stories are "developing", as we say, but one could speculate.

Re: (2) - Do we know what he's said to investigators already, or know what the questions were that he was asked?  Do we know if he was asked about Carter Page (since that's the only topic which would be related to the FISA dueling memos saga)?  Do we know where this could be going, if anywhere?

Re: (1) - Much more interesting.  Gates was involved with the same type of money laundering and hiding that Mueller was doing.  In addition, there's the new indictment involving payoffs to support his client, the (now former) Ukrainian government.  Mueller might have a lot on Manafort now.  So, he might be amenable to a deal.



nohero said:

paulsurovell said:

Two legal developments on the two sides of the collusion story:

(1) Former Trump campaign official is imminently expected to plead guilty to tax violations

(2) David Kramer, who delivered the Steele dossier to John McCain in 2016, and who is also an official of the parent organization of the bogus Russian bot monitor Hamilton68, has invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a House Intelligence committee subpoena to answer questions about the Steele dossier, according to Fox News.
Both stories are "developing", as we say, but one could speculate.

Re: (2) - Do we know what he's said to investigators already, or know what the questions were that he was asked?  Do we know if he was asked about Carter Page (since that's the only topic which would be related to the FISA dueling memos saga)?  Do we know where this could be going, if anywhere?

According to the Byron York piece below, written in late December, the committee's interest in Kramer goes beyond Carter Page and the FISA memo:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-mccain-associate-subpoenaed-in-trump-dossier-probe/article/2644460?platform=hootsuite

OPINION
Byron York: McCain associate subpoenaed in Trump dossier probe
by Byron York | Dec 27, 2017, 2:59 PM

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued a subpoena to David Kramer, a former State Department official who, in late November 2016, traveled to London to receive a briefing and a copy of the Trump dossier from its author, former British spy Christopher Steele. Kramer then returned to the U.S. to give the document to Sen. John McCain.
Kramer is a senior fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.
McCain later took a copy of the dossier to the FBI's then-director, James Comey. But the FBI already had the document; Steele himself gave the dossier to the bureau in installments, reportedly beginning in early July 2016.
McCain, recovering in Arizona from treatments for cancer, has long refused to detail his actions regarding the dossier. For his part, Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 19. The new subpoena stems from statements Kramer made in that interview.
In the session, Kramer told House investigators that he knew the identities of the Russian sources for the allegations in Steele's dossier. But when investigators pressed Kramer to reveal those names, he declined to do so.
Now, he is under subpoena. The subpoena, issued Wednesday afternoon, directs Kramer to appear again before House investigators on Jan. 11.
Knowing Steele's sources is a critical part of the congressional dossier investigation, for both sides. If one argues the document is unverified and never will be, it is critical to learn the identity of the sources to support that conclusion. If one argues the document is the whole truth, or largely true, knowing sources is equally critical.
Beyond that, there is another reason to know Steele's sources, and that is to learn not just the origin of the dossier but its place in the larger Trump-Russia affair. There is a growing belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.
Investigators who favor this theory ask a sensible question: Is it likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheming, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America – except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?
On the other hand, the theory is still just a theory, for now. And that is one reason House investigators seek Steele's sources – and why they will try to compel Kramer to talk.

Love this piece by a Rutgers professor published in  the London Review of Books.  Makes me think they are so laughing at us over there.  

Russiagate Revisited

excepts:

" . . . One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling – a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves liberals. There is something genuinely absurd about a former director of the FBI – which along with the CIA and NSA has long been one of the gravest threats to democracy in America – solemnly warning of the threat to democracy posed by Russian meddling in the election."

" . . . The consequences are potentially catastrophic. By focusing on the manufactured menace of Russiagate, the Democratic Party leadership can continue to ignore its own failures as well as the actual menace posed by Trump. And by fostering the fantasy of a vast Russian plot against America, the mainstream media can shut down reasonable foreign policy debate and promote a dangerous, unnecessary confrontation with a rival power. The final act in Washington’s theatre of the absurd has yet to be written, but the denouement looks dark."




nan said:

Love this piece by a Rutgers professor published in  the London Review of Books.  Makes me think they are so laughing at us over there.  

Russiagate Revisited

excepts:

" . . . One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling – a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves liberals. There is something genuinely absurd about a former director of the FBI – which along with the CIA and NSA has long been one of the gravest threats to democracy in America – solemnly warning of the threat to democracy posed by Russian meddling in the election."

" . . . The consequences are potentially catastrophic. By focusing on the manufactured menace of Russiagate, the Democratic Party leadership can continue to ignore its own failures as well as the actual menace posed by Trump. And by fostering the fantasy of a vast Russian plot against America, the mainstream media can shut down reasonable foreign policy debate and promote a dangerous, unnecessary confrontation with a rival power. The final act in Washington’s theatre of the absurd has yet to be written, but the denouement looks dark."

Among the liberal followers Russiagate, Mueller is God.


Yes, they sing songs to his greatness.



With regard to Mueller, in case Cramer, our devoted informer of @paulsurovell tweets missed this, this morning I tweeted the following response to Rep Swalwell's description of Mueller as "the best of America":

Mueller obstructed the 911 investigation and misled Americans on Iraq WMDs. He betrayed the fallen of 911 and bears responsibility for deaths of thousands of Americans, serious injuries to hundreds of thousands and trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq. Not the best of America.

In order to add a comment – you must Join this community – Click here to do so.

Sponsored Business

Find Business

Advertise here!