[Sivad]

Obviously there are vested interests that aren't elected and don't change with presidential elections.

And obviously those vested interests self-organize into informal networks which sometimes break the law, violate the constitution, subvert democracy, and betray the public trust to further those interests. There's nothing implausible or far-fetched about this. Denying that there is anything like a deep state in the US is just braindead babbittry, it's the opposite extreme of crank conspiracism.

[Hindsite]

I'm not on the far right at all. If I take the political compass quiz, I end up right down the middle axis with one tick to the libertarian side of things. I don't agree with the Democratic party. The DNCs inclination to try to define everyone that disagrees with them as extremist doesn't mean that is so. Trump is more an old school Democrat, which is why he won so many working class voters.

I consider myself a centrist too. I have been voting more Republican for awhile. I only voted for one Democrat in the election before the 2016 presidential election. The 2016 election is the first election that I voted a straight Republican ticket. But the way I feel now, I may never vote Democrat again. But who knows?

[Red_Army]

@Hindsite when did you get divorced?

@Sivad of course. Our political reality is a reflection of the interests of the empowered wealthy class. People who are mad that their grandson doesn't want to come to thanksgiving (@Hindsite ) think they have a dog in the fight because their anger has been successfully neutralized.

[Rugoz]

They tried the "grab 'em by the pussy" tapes, and the public didn't care. That left the deep state dumbfounded. They've since tried "Stormy Daniels" and the public just doesn't care.

Somebody digging up dirt on Trump is now somehow evidence of a deep state? What nonsense. That's part of the political process in the US, always have been. Trump and the GOP do that better than anyone else.

Everything happening in US politics can be explained perfectly by forces openly visible to anyone*. It's trivial as fuck.

*Even the deep state conspiracy nonsense.

[late]

Trump is more an old school Democrat

However, as Tim Pool points out, right wing violence is extreme but also very rare. Whereas, Antifa violence is common and usually not as serious as killing someone.

Trump is missing a few things old school Dems had. He lacks competence, ethics, a belief in the Rule of Law, and dedication to the idea of building a "more perfect Union".

But other than being 90% wrong, you have a point with that last 10 percent.

Right wing violence is very common.

"For over a century and a half, since “burning Kansas” of the 1850s and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1860s, right-wing terrorism has been an unwelcome feature of the American landscape. Yet today, many people are barely aware that it exists and most people don’t recognize its frequency or scope..."
https://www.adl.org/education/resources ... ted-states

[Hindsite]

@Hindsite when did you get divorced?

I have never been divorced. I have been married to my wife for 52 years.
Praise the Lord.

Trump is missing a few things old school Dems had. He lacks competence, ethics, a belief in the Rule of Law, and dedication to the idea of building a "more perfect Union".

You seem very comfortable repeating those lies from the left.

[late]

You seem very comfortable repeating those lies from the left.

He said he was going to release his tax returns. Never did.

Repeat a couple thousand times...

[Hindsite]

He said he was going to release his tax returns. Never did.

Repeat a couple thousand times...

He said he would release his tax returns when he was no longer under audit. The IRS audits him every year. Let's see what happens.

[Godstud]

Trump lies ALL THE TIME. Trump saying he'll release his tax returns is just another one of a long list of his lies, that fools simply must believe in, or they'll seem even stupider than they actually are, because they'll believe it themselves.

[Hindsite]

Trump lies ALL THE TIME. Trump saying he'll release his tax returns is just another one of a long list of his lies, that fools simply must believe in, or they'll seem even stupider than they actually are, because they'll believe it themselves.

I am not interested in seeing anyone's tax return but my own. So it suits me just fine, if he never releases them. I don't care.

[blackjack21]

Somebody digging up dirt on Trump is now somehow evidence of a deep state? What nonsense.

"Deep state" is not a reference to a single individual; although, most people don't require that to be explained to them.

Everything happening in US politics can be explained perfectly by forces openly visible to anyone*.

Even anti-Trump people get it: We're In A Permanent Coup (Emphasis mine. The article has its own emphasis and links to supporting articles)

The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.

The first big shot was fired in early January, 2017, via a CNN.com headline, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.”

Taibbi is not a Trump fan, but he clearly notes that Trump does not trust nor have the trust of US intelligence agencies.

The leak of the January, 2017 “meeting” between the four chiefs and Trump – which without question damaged both the presidency and America’s standing abroad – was an unprecedented act of insubordination.

It was also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just last week how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion.

The agencies’ new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The “intel chiefs” meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked. A sample:

February 14, 2017: “four current and former officials” tell the New York Times the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence.

March 1, 2017: “Justice Department officials” tell the Washington Post Attorney General Jeff Sessions “spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador” and did not disclose the contacts ahead of his confirmation hearing.

March 18, 2017: “people familiar with the matter” tell the Wall Street Journal that former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn failed to disclose a “contact” with a Russian at Cambridge University, an episode that “came to the notice of U.S. intelligence.”

April 8, 2017, 2017: “law enforcement and other U.S. officials” tell the Washington Post the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge had ruled there was “probable cause” to believe former Trump aide Carter Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”

April 13, 2017: a “source close to UK intelligence” tells Luke Harding at The Guardian that the British analog to the NSA, the GCHQ, passed knowledge of “suspicious interactions” between “figures connected to Trump and “known or suspected Russian agents” to Americans as part of a “routine exchange of information.”

December 17, 2017: “four current and former American and foreign officials” tell the New York Times that during the 2016 campaign, an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer told “American counterparts” that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos revealed “Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

April 13, 2018: “two sources familiar with the matter” tell McClatchy that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has evidence Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was in Prague in 2016, “confirming part of [Steele] dossier.”

November 27, 2018: a “well-placed source” tells Harding at The Guardian that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

January 19, 2019: “former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation” tell the New York Times the FBI opened an inquiry into the “explosive implications” of whether or not Donald Trump was working on behalf of the Russians.

For example, we know that the March 1st leak was likely Rod Rosenstein, the April 8th leak was likely Comey, and the April 13th source was Christopher Steele. We know that Barr and Durham's trips to Italy and talks with Australia are following up on Downer, Mifsud, et. al. We know that Durham is expanding his investigation, which means that they have found criminal activity on the part of the deep state.

The entire Russiagate hoax was implausible from the beginning, but it had all the fingerprints of a deep state intelligence operatives going rogue in a coordinated attack against the POTUS. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer even warned Trump about it.

It's telling that the impeachment drive is not coming from the Judiciary committee, but rather from the intelligence committee.

The sidelined “intel chiefs” are once again playing central roles in making the public case. Comey says “we may now be at a point” where impeachment is necessary. Brennan, with unintentional irony, says the United States is “no longer a democracy.” Clapper says the Ukraine whistleblower complaint is “one of the most credible” he’s seen.

And Taibbi is clearly not a Trump partisan.

As a reporter covering the 2015–2016 presidential race, I thought Trump’s campaign was disturbing on many levels, but logical as a news story. He succeeded for class reasons, because of flaws in the media business that gifted him mass amounts of coverage, and because he took cunning advantage of long-simmering frustrations in the electorate. He also clearly catered to racist fears, and to the collapse in trust in institutions like the news media, the Fed, corporations, NATO, and, yes, the intelligence services. In enormous numbers, voters rejected everything they had ever been told about who was and was not qualified for higher office.

Trump’s campaign antagonism toward the military and intelligence world was at best a millimeter thick. Like almost everything else he said as a candidate, it was a gimmick, designed to get votes. That he was insincere and full of it and irresponsible, at first at least, when he attacked the “deep state” and the “fake news media,” doesn’t change the reality of what’s happened since. Even paranoiacs have enemies, and even Donald “Deep State” Trump is a legitimately elected president whose ouster is being actively sought by the intelligence community.

There is simply no mistaking this. You can pretend you don't understand it, or that you think "whistleblowers" coordinate with Congressional committee chairs and their preferred law firms before filing a whistleblower complaint. That stretches credulity. That the intelligence community is failing at its effort doesn't mean that it isn't doing its level best to overthrow the US government.

The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.

Indeed.

This is a coup d'etat in motion. There is simply no doubt about it.

Trump is missing a few things old school Dems had. He lacks competence, ethics, a belief in the Rule of Law, and dedication to the idea of building a "more perfect Union".

Old school Democrats had many segregationists and organized crime syndicates in their ranks. Whitewashing history doesn't make it true.

Right wing violence is very common.

If you use ADL definitions, perhaps. Their definition of terrorism is pretty broad.

He said he would release his tax returns when he was no longer under audit. The IRS audits him every year. Let's see what happens.

It's amazing that people still take Trump's words and drop context. They think they are harming Trump's credibility, but they are hurting their own and get ever more frustrated that people continue to support Trump.

[late]

Old school Democrats had many segregationists and organized crime syndicates in their ranks. Whitewashing history doesn't make it true.

Old school these days means the period from FDR to LBJ. FDR started opening things up for Blacks. I think it was Truman that integrated the army. LBJ pushed the Civil Rights Act through. And then all the racists fell into the arms of the Republican party and had a good cry.

Your comment about organized crime is silly. In some places they did have influence in local politics. But at the national level, not so much. Congress wasn't Tammany Hall.

Big changes in government often take time. Which is why it took so long to get RICO. There was a lot of reluctance about giving the government all that power. Guess I should mention the timing. Ending Prohibition nearly killed the Mafia. WW2 drained the country of money and manpower, which limited the prospects for crime. Organised crime gained a lot of ground in the 60s, and in 1970, we got RICO.

[late]

He said he would release his tax returns when he was no longer under audit. The IRS audits him every year. Let's see what happens.

He said he couldn't, which was a lie. He said he would eventually, which was also a lie.

There is a anti-corruption law that requires the IRS to hand Congress any tax return at any time. Preventing that release is obstruction of justice, and could land Mnuchin in jail.

You guys really need to look at Watergate, in this instance the people that went to jail for doing crap like that.

[Hindsite]

"Deep state" is not a reference to a single individual; although, most people don't require that to be explained to them.
...
This is a coup d'etat in motion. There is simply no doubt about it.

Before Donald Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate and claiming the existence of a "deep state" conspiracy in which the entire intelligence community was part of a Democratic plot to defeat him, Edward Snoden tried to raise ethical concerns through internal channels of extensive "Deep State" spying on American citizens but was ignored. So Snoden copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy. The U.S. Department of Justice charged Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, following which the Department of State revoked his passport.

According to secret surveillance court rulings partially declassified on Tuesday, the FBI illegally accessed its foreign intelligence gathering apparatus to conduct tens of thousands of improper searches on FBI personnel and contractors. The court documents, released by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), are partially redacted but reveal that beginning in March 2017, months after Trump took office, the FBI searched for information related to over 70,000 digital identifiers (such as email addresses), of people with access to FBI buildings.

In one particular case revealed in the ruling, an FBI official used a database to search for information on other FBI personnel. Over the span of one week in December 2017, the FBI conducted nearly 7,000 searches of NSA databases using the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is responsible for evaluating the use of secret spy tools as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, ruled that such unauthorized searches related to U.S. citizens violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The court further found that the FBI failed to keep specific records of these searches, as required by law.

The rebuke by Judge James Boasberg of the FISA Court last October was part of the regular certification process for the use of surveillance techniques enabled by FISA Section 702, which national security officials use to monitor emails and phone calls of certain foreign nationals outside the U.S., and which has long been flagged for its potential for abuse. Congress last year reauthorized Section 702, despite some hand-waving about these concerns.

Government lawyers argued that the searches were based on a misunderstanding of the required standard, but the judge found that argument unpersuasive. “The court … finds that the FBI’s querying procedures and minimization procedures are not consistent with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment,” wrote Boasberg in last fall's ruling. As the Wall Street Journal first reported, his ruling is only public now because the government lost an appeal in a separate, secret appeals court.

“Last year, when Congress reauthorized Section 702 of FISA, it accepted the FBI’s outright refusal to account for all its warrantless backdoor searches of Americans,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement following Tuesday’s release of the ruling. “Today’s release demonstrates how baseless the FBI’s position was and highlights Congress’ constitutional obligation to act independently and strengthen the checks and balances on government surveillance. Finally, I am concerned that the government has redacted information in these releases that the public deserves to know.”

For the past several months, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been looking into allegations by Trump and his allies that the FBI and DOJ abused FISA to launch an illegal probe into Carter Page, thereby kickstarting the Russia investigation. Horowitz, Trump has repeatedly suggested, will prove that the “deep state” exists and colluded in a “witch hunt” to delegitimize his election victory.