skinster wrote:Memo to jimjam: They're all assholes.
I concur.
jimjam wrote:Also I would venture that Donald is, by far, the biggest asshole of a president that I have witnessed in my lifetime (as, perhaps, supported by his last place finish in a recent ranking of US presidents).
What are your criteria? Obama's actions against his political detractors like Catherine Engelbrecht struck me as particularly dark, as well as his utterly flippant attitude toward the attack in Benghazi (what caused me to dislike him as a person). Bush pushed for an elective war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq. Clinton had the peculiar situation where people close to him kept dying (my personal favorite was the death of Ron Brown in an airplane accident whose official cause was "a series of problems." I remember laughing for almost a whole day about what a terrible job they did of covering that one up). Lyndon Johnson was known to whip out his cock. Trump looks pretty classy by comparison.
Trump is a socially awkward but amusing guy, but so far he hasn't done anything quite like his predecessors in terms of maliciously targeting someone in some sort of clandestine manner and completely fucking them over or killing them.
jimjam wrote:My dislike of Donald is mostly for one reason, he is an asshole. I would also dislike him he were a bus driver.
Like I said, I'm not going to argue with you on a point like that. However, that is a personality issue. I would probably not like Trump as a bus driver either. Whereas, I probably wouldn't have as much dislike for Obama or Clinton as bus drivers. However, I'm more interested in their official actions and policy preferences, since that is what directly affects me.
jimjam wrote:Believe me I don't like Hillary.
Well, I didn't either. However, my dislike of Hillary isn't in any way limited to her personally. I despise the people who put her up to running. I despise Madam Secretary and all the shameless propaganda that purports to be entertainment. I despise the people who ruined Mad Max and Star Wars--turning the setting for epic stories into a cheap soapbox for feminism. I despise that a once vaunted 80's band, U2, decided to withdraw the release of an album, because it wasn't interesting or heartfelt music. In the wake of Trump's victory, the withdrawn U2 album made no sense without a Hillary Clinton victory so they didn't release it. U2's album--like so much of so-called popular US media product--was rather nothing more than state-sponsored propaganda. It's like Pravda and Izvestia in the US these days.
On a side note, I have a friend my age who just loves the Beatles. I decided some time ago that the Beatles were state propaganda (along with the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, etc.). It was Britain's attempt at a political resurgence with soft power, as they had not yet given up the idea that they were no longer a super power until the 1970s. Then, it became the "special relationship" with the US between Reagan and Thatcher and their successors. Following Obama's election, that "specialness" waned. Britain is trying a limited return with hardpower--two aircraft carriers, Brexit, but still under the US aegis as a result of their dependence on the F-35.
I'm opposed to the establishment, largely because I oppose turning the United States into Mexico; I despise the US government's assertion that the 14th Amendment guarantees homosexual marriages; I think the media is nothing more than fetid propaganda; and the lackeys that support the establishment are nothing but empty suits.
So I like Trump. However, it's not because I like Trump personally. It's because he pisses off the people that piss me off.
colliric wrote:Why does the Fake News hate both Genuine Left and Genuine Right so bad?
It's because we are challenging them and actively working to undermine them.
Hindsite wrote:"Robert Mueller has screwed up a lot in the past and is now trying to take out Kushner. They are also squeezing Rick Gates to get Paul Manafort. None of this has to do with collusion with Russia. The only collusion we know of is with the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the DNC and Fusion GPS. It's a joke."
- Mark Levin
With all the pre-Trump investigation into Manafort, the cessation of investigations into Manafort when he was Trump's campaign manager, and the resumption of investigations into Manafort after Trump fired him, I have to go with SonofNewo's conclusion. Manafort was a mole for the FBI, and he's under a criminal non-disclosure agreement (i.e., if he announces that he worked for the FBI, he will go to prison for sure, or worse).
colliric wrote:I'm personally starting to believe Mueller is actually doing his job properly.
I'm skeptical, because Hillary Clinton clearly violated the law with her email server, destruction of emails, lying to Congress and defying a Congressional subpoena. It could be that they were feeding the Russians bullshit info over an insecure server and had to use a fake-insecure-email-server ruse as a pretext. That's not beyond the deep state to do something like that. However, they have destroyed their own credibility in the eyes of the electorate, which is for all intents and purposes worse than their disinformation campaign via fake-insecure-email-server if that's what it was. Also, the story doesn't work when it is clear that Steele was anti-Trump and authored the dossier, as that is foreign interference in our election established in fact, paid for by the Clinton campaign, the FBI and part of official court records. If that isn't getting prosecuted, Mueller has to be a complete retard, or the establishment isn't telling us the truth. I'm going with the latter, and frankly don't want to be governed by people like that anymore.
colliric wrote:I'm beginning to become more and more certain he will choose not to interview Trump.
Well, I think their coup attempt is over at this point, but they are still trying to maintain a reason for the independent counsel to exist. We don't need that to investigate whether Russia tried to interfere. The only reason to maintain it was the pretext that Trump was working for the Russians, and that clearly isn't the case.
colliric wrote:It's becoming obvious to me he is investigating attempted Russian interference and not Russian collusion.
Perhaps he's thrown the last few indictments to that end. However, you don't need an independent counsel for any of the charges he's come up with so far. The DoJ could do that on its own.
Hindsite wrote:If it is to find something to indict as many people as possible and make as much money from the government as he drags it out as long as possible, then you may be correct.
Well, that seems to be what's going on right now. Hillary Clinton donors are recouping their donations in the most cynical way imaginable. There is simply no point in an independent counsel with no direct oversight in the absence of an allegation that the president and his chain of command are directly involved in something criminal. What it amounts to is giving anti-Trump forces prosecutorial power that isn't reviewable by Trump himself. That should be stopped.
colliric wrote:The Fact he hasn't even requested an interview with Trump is because he's doing his job properly.
Nunes, Grassley and Graham are making that story line very difficult to believe. What Steele did is criminal AND material. Yet, Mueller is prosecuting people for penny ante things. Like this son-in-law-attorney-of-a-Russian-oligarch-who-lied-to-the-FBI thing. Is that material compared to what Christopher Steele did? The more they try to put some lipstick on a pig, the more it blows up in their face.
I still think the best analogy for the last two years was from Victor Davis Hanson--"the neutron bomb election." The establishment are essentially the walking dead. The agent orange contaminated soon-to-be-dead-but-don't-know-it-yet zombies of yesteryear. From my perspective, Nancy Pelosi and Ruth Bader Ginsberg represent the living dead.
Zagadka wrote:... there is no big direct evidence, but they keep managing to pile up lots of small ones going back years.
And we all know how much Republicans care about deleted e-mail.
Yeah. Even that just seems like it's for show--almost if as if he's being paid by the FBI to appear to be falling on his sword. The guy is a Dutch citizen. Why does the US think it gets to prosecute citizens of other countries for acts not done on US soil? Why should we expect people other than US citizens to have some sort of legal or moral obligation to be honest with the US FBI? It's kind of a bizarro standard.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden