ObamaGate is getting big

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Well, I've commented on this many times before, but perhaps you never read them. I'm glad you asked, though, because it gives me another opportunity to drive it home.

The only way to solve the problems is to acknowledge how we got here. For nearly four decades, we have been under the thumb of neoliberalism. The Democrats haven't represented an opposition to neoliberalism for for a very long time. So we have to ask ourselves: How did the rise of right-wing ideology, which Trump completely embodies, happen? It's because Americans were tired of being thrown under the bus by the corporate political establishment. As horrible as Trump is, he was an anti-establishment candidate -- much like Sanders, and Ron Paul in 2012. Usually, the political establishment, with the help of the corporate media, has been very effective at shutting down those candidates. What happened in 2016 was an anomaly. Why didn't the Republicans manage to shut him down? That's simple. The Democrats, along with liberal media outlets like CNN and MSNBC elevated him intentionally. Ordinarily, he MSM smears such candidates. But the Dems were convinced that if Trump got the nomination, there was no way that Hillary couldn't beat such a repulsive guy. They were wrong. (They just didn't understand the political climate.)

The only thing we can do as voters is stop propping up the one-party system by looking to a third-party alternative. It's the only way there will ever be hope for transforming our corrupt system. It may not be possible, but it's our only hope.

Getting rid of Trump is totally meaningless if we are left with the same system that presented him on a silver platter.

I already quoted the passages that provide the conclusions. If I pasted here in possibly over a hundred pages with the details, would you actually bother to read? And you may have noticed, that the conclusions don't fit what you ask me for. The bar for conspiracy is high. I quoted the criteria already. And I pointed out that Mueller narrowly looked at conspiring with the Russian government. And concluded that, by the legal standards for criminal conspiracy, Trump did not personally conspire with the Russian government. Why do you ask me for proof for something Mueller didn't claim, and that I didn't claim?


Do you know that you are moving the goal posts? Do you know by how much? It was part of Mueller's remit to find out whether Russia had tried to influence the election. The answer is yes. It is a totally different problem to quantify how effective they were. Mueller was not asked to do it and didn't try. You are asking my to find something in this report which was never intended to be in the report, and isn't in the report.

If you want me to look outside the report, tell me what you would accept as proof "without a shadow of a doubt". Because scientifically, you are again asking for something impossible. There are no empirical data that establish anything beyond a shadow of a doubt, with the possible exception of "I think, therefore I am". And some philosophers would dispute even that. Seeing that you already twice asked for something impossible, there is a good chance that when you unpack this request, it will turn out to be impossible, too.


True. Exhibit A: the Sinclair Broadcast Group:


Then there is Fox News.


True.


True.


True.


Probably at least partly true. I won't ask you to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the only reason.


Only for one dimension of "establishment". He was not the preferred candidate of the RNC. That doesn't stop him from pushing judicial candidates from lists drawn up by the conservative establishment, or appointing corporate lobbyists to run federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the industries that those lobbyists represent. He also passed the tax cuts that have been a wet dream of the conservative establishment for all these years. Not what I would call an anti-establishment candidate. For people who wanted an anti-establishment candidate, voting for Trump is not so much shooting themselves in the foot, more like nuking themselves. Everything he does to the political system is aimed at reducing accountability. If you want politicians that can be held accountable by the electorate, Trump is the worst choice out of all the candidates the two major parties had in 2016.


Probably true. And Trump knew how to provide such a spectacle that he would get free publicity. According to one estimate, three billion dollars worth. His claim that the media were all against him during the campaign (except for Fox, Infowars, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Facebook, of course) is another of his lies.


With your voting system? You have one as sh***y as the one in Britain, and you have more corporate money in politics. I think you'd have a better chance working on the primaries. The Tea Party did it, but I admit that its Koch funding makes it a mix of grass roots movement and corporate influence. AOC's election, and Omar's, and some others', did upset the cosy arrangement, and they haven't fallen in line yet.


Not quite meaningless. Trump does a lot of harm that neither Romney nor Clinton would likely do.

So..what are you saying? There's no proof for collusion or conspiracy. Aren't we on the same page, then? What is he point of this conversation?




I never claimed that Russia didn't try to influence the election. My claim was that there is no proof that their efforts had any detectable effect. I don't see how I'm moving the goalposts.



I'm looking for the smoking gun. Presidential candidates meet with foreign dignitaries all the time -- it's routine. Hillary met with Russian dignitaries. That's how politics works.






I don't disagree with you there. He is serving the oligarchs as much as his predecessors.






I don't think so. The 2016 election cycle proved how the corporate political establishment has locked down the whole system.




That's debatable. Hillary was far hawkish than Trump. She was advocating a no-fly zone in Syria, which is basically a declaration of war against Russia.

Collusion and conspiracy are not the same thing. It's in the quote I gave you from the Mueller report.

Mueller only concerned himself with Trump or his campaign conspiring with the Russian government. Conspiracy, not collusion. Conspiracy with the Russian government requires that Trump or his campaign ask an official of the Russian government to carry out some specific act. Manafort handing the polls to Kilimnik in the expectation that the IRA would use these data to benefit Trump doesn't do it because that is not asking for a specific action, and because Kilimnik doesn't have an official position in the Russian government. Can you see how much narrower that is than Russia working to get Trump elected? There would also be proof for conspiracy if Trump took political action that the Russian government asked for. The Republican platform was changed to be more friendly to Russia on request by Trump campaign staff. That only counts as conspiracy if Mueller can show that the Russian government asked for these changes.

I don't know why Mueller didn't count Trump's "Russia, if you're listening,..." followed by Russian hacking as conspiracy. It was a specific request. Perhaps it's because he can't prove something specific was promised in return.

If you want proof that the Trump campaign worked with the Russians, look in the Mueller report for the evidence behind this conclusion:

And Don Jr made clear that the Trump campaign welcomed this. So did Trump, in public.


I went back, and I did miss you asking for detectable effects. Sorry.


What would you see as a smoking gun for Russian interference having had measurable effects, and what does that have to do with meetings? If you want to know whether Trump campaign officials welcomed Russian interference, you can look at Trump's public statements, and at the Trump Tower meeting. If you want to know whether the Russian campaign made a difference, the Trump Tower meeting and Trump's public requests are irrelevant, you need totally different information. I need you to separate these different questions, else I can't offer you anything.


Some of my examples for the grip not being all that iron came from the 2018 midterm elections. Also, what is your smoking gun evidence for your claim? Can you name people who met and conspired to choose both Democrat and Republican candidates, can you tell me what they traded, and can you name the corporations who did it? Because that looks pretty similar to what you ask from me. Tell me what standards of proof you apply there, and then we can see whether the same standard of proof has already been met when it comes to Trump.


Trump doing harm that Clinton wouldn't do is compatible with Clinton doing harm that Trump wouldn't do. And in foreign policy, Clinton is far more competent to assess risks than Trump is.

The "smoking gun" regarding our rigged political system is an easy one. There's undeniable evidence that was leaked showing that there were actual concerted efforts to smear Bernie Sanders, and elevate Trump through the liberal media. MSNBC failed to cover Sanders rally in progress, while showing an empty podium at the location of a Trump rally that has not yet commenced.

The political establishment works very hard to silence voices that are shining a light on the oligarchy. It's painfully obvious; almost absurdly out in the open, really. Americans have been so systematically dumbed down for so long, politicians don't even have to be hide their true intentions, and who they serve, any more. The divide and conquer agenda has been marvelously successful. Pick a team, stick what the team, and ignore any wrong doing your team does. That's how the ruling class has operated for centuries. It's been a very effective tactic.

And still, there's zero evidence.

I agree, there's zero evidence Trump isn't a foreign agent.
On the other hand, no matter how many times you insist on ignoring the evidence which other posters have so graciously posted, that evidence does exist. Personally, I'm not playing this game because I know you'll refuse to recognize reality no matter how much evidence is provided so long as it doesn't support your claims.

So you can name someone in the Democratic Party who was interfering with Sanders' campaign. I can name Don Jr, Manafort and Jared Kushner at the Trump Tower meeting. I can't point to evidence that Trump campaign officials offered Russia the list of policy changes they pushed before the Republican National convention, you can't show me which corporations offered what in return for sabotaging Sanders' candidacy. Looks to me like our respective guns smoke about equally much.


I agree, but this relies a lot more on inference than the very concrete proof of who agreed what with whom that is needed for a criminal conspiracy charge.

You can find some more systematic evidence in favour of your view at this link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595.

No. Our guns are not even close to smoking equally -- not by a long-shot. I refer you to the Podestal emails that prove the Democratic establishment conspired against Sanders. If you'd like me to bring those to your attention, I'd be happy to do it. Bear in mind, that everything Wikileaks has produced has been proven to be 100% accurate. They've spent a great deal of time in court proving that. I don't know if you live in the U.S.; if you do, then how much more proof do you need than what is going in front of your own eyes? Aren't you capable of discerning how badly you're being f****d up the ass by both parties? If you're critical thinking skills are that badly damaged by the partisan divide, then what do you want from me? Gosh!

You are trying to persuade me of something that I already accept. That is not where we disagree. I say that the Trump campaign welcoming Russian interference on their behalf is equally well supported by evidence. Don Jr even tweeted it, thinking it was an exoneration instead of a confession. And the law, in this case, requires knowledge of illegality, and it was Don Jr's ignorance that saved him from being indicted.

The burden of proof is on those pushing the Russiagate hoax conspiracy theory. You've yet to provide any because there is nothing.

Other posters have already posted evidence that you've chosen to ignore. You can keep insisting there's no evidence, but you're starting to sound as comical as Dear Leader still insisting 'no collusion'. It's irrelevant whether or not you accept reality, because reality will continue to be reality even if you insist on ignoring it. Good luck with that approach, you'll need it.

If Trump indeed is a "Putin puppet," he's certainly not a very good one. In fact, he's actually ramped up tensions with Russia over the past year, which I think is a very bad thing. Personally, I think establishing a good relationship with Putin is a positive. That's what president's are supposed to do.

All this Russia hysteria is not only absurd, but very dangerous.

And yet he talks to Putin every night, by his own admission. When asked if he ever asked Putin to stop interfering with our elections, he said that they never had the time to broach that subject.
There's a term the intelligence agencies have for putting on a phony act as cover: guerrilla theater. Explains "ramping up" Anti-Russian action without actually accomplishing anything.

Yeah, I remember that question -- and Trump's response. He was just trolling the media.

Well, theories are certainly in no short supply. Rachael Maddow has made quite a career out of it for three years -- along with fear mongering. She sunk the lowest when, during the outbreak of frigid weather this winter, she ramped up the Russia hysteria by explaining how easy it would be for Russia to attack our power grid. Unbelievable! Thank goodness we have real journalists like Chris Hedges, Max Blumenthal, and Aarron Mate to put all this BS into perspective.

I don't want a President who trolls his audience. I want someone with austere dignity who speaks in clear and direct terms to the American people, as Barack Obama or even Bush I and II did.
I don't believe Rachel is wrong.