FBI/DOJ/Obama corruption: Worse than Watergate? We shall see

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I would agree with that assessment, the trouble I've had though is it's been really challenging to find the right cluster of intellectuals and thinkers who represent that well. I've tried Noam Chomsky but what worries me with him is I find him thinking in ways that are too much like people I already agree with and I can't find the gulf of disagreement that would separate him out - aside from his mystierian metaphysics turning off scientific atheists. I sometimes wonder if the only reason he isn't considered alt-right or to be another Steven Pinker by now is his political history and all it would take is a few more rounds of criticizing AntiFa's preemptive assault policies, his suggestions that Holocaust denial gains unwarranted publicity and notoriety from its illegality, or his critiques on both Leninism and Stalinism, before his left-wing social creds get revoked.

If you or anyone else can think of some really sharp intellects on the progressive side let me know. As far as I can tell it seems like Bret Weinstein and Eric Weinstein are almost in a way what you're looking for in terms of very logical and grounded progressives who want to destigmatize what have been stigmatized narratives (on Eric's four-quadrant political chart) and their stigmatization hasn't been their left-right orientation so much as their nuance and disobedience to party politics but the only trouble here is that they are against identity politics or at least vigorously oppose the way they're enacted at present. TBH I have a lot of capacity at work to listen to podcasts, whether on Soundcloud or Youtube, and for the most part I don't tune out on a podcast or turn it off if the interviewee is making principled points unless they're doing something considerably arrogant and to that extent it's been as tough to listen to Richard Spencer or Greg Johnson for similar reasons to why it's been difficult to listen to the types of Marxists who want to lead a benevolent overthrow of capitalism - they all have the idea that if it's them doing it that it'll turn out okay, and I think people get publicly dangerous, and in need of intellectually strong opposition, when their intellectual and social agility are only matched or superseded by their ideological commitments and other blind spots. I actually like a lot of what Styx is doing because he seems to deliberately separate himself from the group fray and challenge those who are in it (and I say that thinking of his debate with Greg Johnson where I think he's made his arguments against the alt-right much more successfully, and calmly, than Sargon has).

I'm sure it was just an accident.

FBI ‘Failed To Preserve’ Five Months Of Text Messages Between Anti-Trump FBI Agents

The FBI “failed to preserve” five months worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations.

The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of HSGAC....

Boyd attributed the failure to “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”

“The result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected,” Boyd wrote.

Strzok and Page were significant players in the Clinton and Trump investigations. As deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok oversaw the Trump investigation when it was opened in July 2016. Weeks earlier, he had wrapped up his work as one of the top investigators on the Clinton email probe.

Both worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation until July 2017.

But Strzok was removed after the Justice Department’s inspector general discovered text messages he exchanged with Page, with whom he was having an affair, in which both expressed strong criticism of Trump....

In another more cryptic exchange, Strzok spoke of an “insurance policy” that the FBI sought to take out in case Trump defeated Clinton in the election.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/21/fbi-f ... ump-texts/

A thing I've noticed is it seems like most of the right on these forums are Americans, while most of the left, specifically ultra-anti-trump left, are from UK Canada, Australia, NZ.

Some Republicans are talking this up to quite extraordinary levels. Hope they are not trying to just capitalise on the fact they can say they have seen something that the public haven't, but the way they have talked it up, unless this is the mother of all scandals then they are going to look like absolute morons.

The_walrus

I’d prefer trump to Romney, so am I to understand to you I’m a alt right? Alt right is bro Nazi, kkk, clan, racists etc.

Romney showed his true self s d thst he really didn’t have any of my interests at heart, it he sure beat obama. McCain too showed he has non of my interests at heart. But I support quiet s few democrat ideas. And both of them are flip flopped s or rhinos but in a bad way, where there’s keep most their republican ideas but flop on the few republican ideas I side with. Making them a overall terrible choice for me other then to avoid th horribleness of a Democrat party liner president. But an independent who would be more aligned with my center ideas can never run in our crappy two party only system. Can’t even get independents into congress really or local governments. But what can I expect I’m hated by both left and right. Cause it’s a you either with us or against us world. And I’m with neither.
Remdinds me of zap from futurarama and his mistrust towards the neutral planet and people.

I don't have much time for Marxists myself and to be honest I only recognise Spencer and Weinstein from your posts. Also it seems we consume things in very different ways so I'm not sure how useful my suggestions will be.

H. Bomberguy is to the left of me, and started out as a media critic (imo not a very good one), but he also does some great political stuff. It's mostly takedowns of politicised interpretations of media and the culture which generated them. He's entertaining more than anything.

The Echo Chamber Club are a good source. They're primarily pitched at centre to centre-left individuals who want to have their points of view challenged. Interesting podcast I'm listening to right now (here) suggests that even most young conservatives on campuses are prioritising tolerance and "solidarity" today - not sure how he's defining "conservative" but eh.

Vox's "The Weeds" podcast is very policy-focused. Freakonomics Radio is probably more what you're after. Some others to go for could be Hello Internet, The Good Fight (a little alarmist), Make Me Smarter, and Planet Money.
I can't really vouch for any of these, but I feel like listening to one of these would also give you a taste of what people think.

Like I say, this generally isn't how I consume things - I generally read and talk - but hopefully I've at least given you enough to potentially put you down the rabbit hole, if you want.

OK, so I hope my comments towards Mikah show that I was using alt-right fairly loosely to mean "right wingers who are ideologically opposed to the party line" and not to just mean ethnic nationalists.

My interpretation of you, based on things you've said in the past, would be that you care very strongly about preserving gun rights and benefits/welfare. The mainstream American right is generally pro-gun and anti-welfare, while the American left is generally anti-gun and pro-welfare, so you don't fit neatly into either camp. I hope you think that's fair.

I do think that on most issues you take a fairly conservative stance. I can't remember specific issues, but I think that you're pretty sceptical about the importance of women's issues, for example, and you want to bring down immigration. Perhaps you simply feel less need to express your more liberal views - for example, there are rarely conversations here about crime and punishment.

TY.

I actually spend most of my day either in front of a laptop and three screens at work with ear buds in (and no calls to distract me) and even though I'm usually reading or doing something else on weekday nights I've got my computer at my desk and if I have a few spare hours to kill Youtube there as well offers a pretty deep database of info.

Listening to one of Styx's recent shorts I also got the name HA Goodman. I took a listen to him going over this exact issue (FISA memo) and he seems like he's a pretty avid Bernie Sanders supporter ripping into the DNC from the other side. I'd probably have to go through more of his interviews to see what kinds of things he thinks on economics that I'd disagree with but he's clearly got a keen eye for analyzing political corruption so I'll definitely give him points there.

As for Brendan O'Neil I'm almost thinking he's one of a kind in how he pursues his position. He considers himself a leftist, I'm listening again to the full Spiked TV panel that he was on with Laura Kipnis, Angus Johnston, and Bret Weinstein. Brendan opened the debate by answering "No" to the question 'Is the left eating itself?' and it sounds like his reasoning is that SJW and the current controversy over campus morality and speech is distinctly non-left in it's nature, that it's reactionary politics of the early Enlightenment, late 19th/early 20th century type of variety. He's suggesting that this really takes everyone's eye off of the real issue, which is class, and it's one of many issues where he considers the current craze as being left-wing in name only. I'm still trying to figure out where he's correct in this assertion and where he might be almost stepping into something of a 'no true Scotsman'. It seems like both groups, right and left, are generally ill-defined categories and it doesn't seem like there's really enough of an overlap among those on the right, or left, for anyone to call themselves a rightist or leftist and for that to have any more content than being right or left of center.

There was a short clip of Bret Weinstein's contribution on this topic (it's 6:05 - feel free to take or leave) and he said some really cogent things IMHO about the nature of the situation. I think if I were to sum up what he's saying it's too easy for people to cash in the left-wing brand name, it's gained enough power to draw all kinds of bad actors hoping to wield that power for their own purposes, and it seems like he's suggesting that going forward they'd want to look into more vetting processes for who gets to hold a microphone and speak on behalf of a movement. I agree with his observations but my only concern, again reflecting back at my thoughts on Brendan's arguments, is there's probably too much bailing (into two categories) to make the thing work sensibly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9osjKN5VWfM

I'm also wondering if I should listen to more of Laura Kipnis, mainly because she seems to be trying to support identity politics, redistribution, and she also believes freedom of speech is a bit of an illusion (ie. something that doesn't bear itself out in practice in light of economic disparity) but she's also fighting the anti-intellectual side of the spectrum and trying to reflect her basis for these ideas in a nuanced way.

Hmm, a genuine conspiracy in the heart of the government?

Gowdy: Strzok And Page Need To Explain Anti-Trump "Secret Society" Texts

Reps. Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe join FNC's Martha McCallum to talk about another newly released text message between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. This time, Strzok implies a "secret society" of federal agents worked to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.

"It is possible these text messages that are missing, perhaps they really were lost. Perhaps it is another strange coincidence," Ratcliffe said. "It is harder and harder for us to explain one strange coincidence after another."

"We know that Strzok and Page had an intense anti-Trump bias," he said. "And that's OK, so long as they check it at the door and do their job. We learned today in the thousands of text messages we have reviewed, that perhaps they may not have done that. We know about this 'insurance policy' that was referenced trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president."

Ratcliffe continued: "We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of his election, there may have been a 'secret society' of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI, to include Page and Strzok, working against him. I'm not saying that actually happened, but when folks speak in those terms, they need to come forward to explain the context."

About the "secret society," Gowdy said: "You have this 'insurance policy' in Spring 2016, and then the day after the election, what they really didn't want to have happen, there is a text exchange between these two FBI agents, these supposed to be fact-centric FBI agents saying, 'Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society.' So I'm going to want to know what secret society you are talking about, because you're supposed to be investigating objectively the person who just won the electoral college. So yeah -- I'm going to want to know."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... texts.html

For some reason that last bit brings the collusion with russia investigation to mind.

That is something deemed worthy of a full official investigation, so time will tell when it comes to the results I guess.

"A Timeline of Treason: How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election"

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2017/1 ... w-fbi.html

"Why, you'll never guess what events coincide with the start and end of the missing Strzok-Page text messages"

Timing of missing Strzok-Page texts:

Start date: 12/14/16: same date WaPo cites unnamed intel officials stating... wait for it... Russians tried to hack election for Trump.

End date: 5/17/17: same date Mueller is named Special Counsel.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... vents.html

Yeah, yeah and what about the current president...and his corruption.

Summary from North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows outlining what looks increasingly like a criminal conspiracy at the top of the FBI:

Mark Meadows‏ @RepMarkMeadows
THREAD--explaining the context around the Peter Strzok/Lisa Page text messages, and why they're connected to both the Hillary investigation and this so-called "Russian-collusion" investigation
7:37 PM - 23 Jan 2018

Remember the key figure here: Peter Strzok, the former deputy of counter-intelligence at the FBI. Guy who ran the 2016 Clinton investigation, who interviewed key witnesses including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and Hillary Clinton. Former Mueller team member. Strzok is the guy here

We have all these anti-Trump texts in 2016 from Peter Strzok, talking about an "insurance policy" in case Trump gets elected President. We have texts from Strzok to Lisa Page saying "We can't take the risk" Trump wins the Presidency. By itself, that's a huge problem.

But there's more. We now have a text between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, FBI agents, directly talking about the pressure to finish the Hillary Clinton investigation--a text which occurred right after Donald J. Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee

We have a text from May 4, 2016 where Peter Strzok says: “Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE…” (or 'Mid-Year Exam,' the FBI’s code name for the Clinton investigation.) May 4, 2016 is important--because it's when Ted Cruz dropped out. That day, Trump was the nominee.

So we have Peter Strzok, the deputy of FBI counter-intelligence and lead Clinton investigator, who we already know blasted Trump in text messages, talking about the need to end the Clinton investigation... right after he knew Hillary would be running against Trump. Major problem.

Now pause, and circle to FBI Director Comey. Remember Director Comey's exoneration letter? The letter from 2016 that, at first, called Hillary Clinton "grossly negligent" but was mysteriously changed to "extremely careless"? That change is massively important.

Remember, "gross negligence" under the "reasonable person standard" is a crime. "Extreme carelessness" is not, however. That change is hugely significant. Had Dir. Comey called Hillary "grossly negligent" in his letter, he would've essentially been saying she committed a crime.

Now take that letter change, and go back to Peter Strzok. We have email documentation that suggests the "gross negligence" claim in Director Comey's exoneration letter was changed to "extremely careless" between May 4, 2016 and May 6, 2016... by none other than Peter Strzok.

Think about how important that is. We have a text from Peter Strzok talking about the pressure to end the Clinton investigation, and then--within 48 hours--documents suggesting Peter Strzok changed Dir. Comey's letter from criminal charges to just "carelessness." That's major.

Folks, this stinks to high heaven. If this is anything what it looks like--the FBI changing course on investigation, putting their thumb on the scale to undermine Donald Trump and essentially help Hillary Clinton--that is as wrong as it gets. This demands further investigation.

And remember, this doesn't even address a host of other questions! The dossier. The Carter Page FISA application (that they still won't show us). The 5 months of mysteriously "missing" Page/Strzok texts. The FBI communicating with Fusion GPS/DNC-hired Christopher Steele. Come on.

This is not party politics. This is not partisan bickering. This is an issue that gets at the very heart of who we are as a nation. If any officials at the FBI were engaged in this kind of behavior, we need to know.

Bottom line: tell us the truth. Tell us the truth about what happened with the Clinton investigation, the 2016 election, and leading up to this "collusion" investigation. All of it. Americans deserve the truth.


https://twitter.com/RepMarkMeadows/stat ... 0270877696

Anybody consider the possibility that there was both a conspiracy between elements of Trump campaign and Russia and a never Trump conspiracy within the FBI? A person can be both guilty and framed, OJ comes to mind.