Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2

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sunmaster14 said:
Yes, absence of evidence constitutes evidence. If somebody claims that he left his keys in my house during a dinner party, and I search for them and don't find them, then that is strong evidence that he didn't leave his keys in my house.
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I find it absurd to compare a situation as simple as lost keys to the layers of complexity involved here, where, if there is guilt, it is natural to assume evidence for it is well hidden.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Knowingly laundered money? I think that's a low probability. That doesn't strike me as Trump's gig, and he was under constant audit by the IRS. It would be a foolish thing for a billionaire to do.
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That seems quite naive. Is he actually a billionaire? And ask Al Capone why he didn't pay his taxes. Your position might be believable if there weren't many examples in the past of rich people engaging in precisely these foolish behaviors.
 
Cabbage said:
I see no reason to believe that. Opinions are opinions, not evidence.
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Opinions are informed by evidence. At least mine are.

There are news articles almost every week about how Mueller is putting pressure on this guy or that, or focusing on this area or that. Or working with the NY attorney general to pin a state crime on Manafort so that Trump can't pardon him. This information must be coming from somebody on Mueller's team, unless you think the reporters are making it up out of whole cloth.
 
Cabbage said:
I find it absurd to compare a situation as simple as lost keys to the layers of complexity involved here, where, if there is guilt, it is natural to assume evidence for it is well hidden.
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Actually, I think it's the opposite. A conspiracy involving so many people is almost impossible to keep well-hidden. The lost keys, however, have already been hidden well enough that their owner didn't realize he had dropped them, and nobody else at the dinner party noticed them.

An additional factor in my theory's favor is that Trump is an open book. The guy can't stop himself from revealing his innermost thoughts for longer than a few seconds, no matter how muddled they are.
 
Cabbage said:
That seems quite naive. Is he actually a billionaire? And ask Al Capone why he didn't pay his taxes. Your position might be believable if there weren't many examples in the past of rich people engaging in precisely these foolish behaviors.
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Well, in part Al Capone didn't pay taxes because he hadn't figured out how to launder money, which was a new concept at the time. The laundry machine had only recently been invented after all.

More importantly, however, it wasn't until 1927 that the Supreme Court ruled (surprisingly in my view) that you have to report illegal income to the IRS, and that the 5th Amendment didn't protect you from refusing to report it.

Al Capone, being the prodigious legal scholar that he was, evidently disagreed with Oliver Wendell Holmes here, who was a piker in comparison.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Opinions are informed by evidence. At least mine are.

There are news articles almost every week about how Mueller is putting pressure on this guy or that, or focusing on this area or that. Or working with the NY attorney general to pin a state crime on Manafort so that Trump can't pardon him. This information must be coming from somebody on Mueller's team, unless you think the reporters are making it up out of whole cloth.
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None of that matters when forming an opinion of the conclusion of this fiasco.
All your denials that Russian collusion happened are meaningless.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Seems like "highly unimpressive" ought to be closer to the 100% end of the spectrum than the 0% end, wouldn't you say? I'd suggest somewhere around 75% unimpressive. At 20%, I'd probably want something more like "somewhat unimpressive" or "slightly unimpressive".
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While we're working through the details of the unimpressive scale, let me remind you that you still haven't supported your claim, nor have you explained the wild goose chase you initiated with the bogus evidence you foisted.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Actually, I think it's the opposite. A conspiracy involving so many people is almost impossible to keep well-hidden. The lost keys, however, have already been hidden well enough that their owner didn't realize he had dropped them, and nobody else at the dinner party noticed them.

An additional factor in my theory's favor is that Trump is an open book. The guy can't stop himself from revealing his innermost thoughts for longer than a few seconds, no matter how muddled they are.
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Indeed. And this helps explain why he publicly encouraged the Russians to meddle, right around the same time his senior staff, including Donny "I love it" Jr, met with the Russians to get dirt on Hillary.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Opinions are informed by evidence. At least mine are.

There are news articles almost every week about how Mueller is putting pressure on this guy or that, or focusing on this area or that. Or working with the NY attorney general to pin a state crime on Manafort so that Trump can't pardon him. This information must be coming from somebody on Mueller's team, unless you think the reporters are making it up out of whole cloth.
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Yeah, no...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-read-news-story-about-investigation-eight-tips-who-saying-what

espeially:
Rule No. 3: It Is Ethical and Legal for Defense Lawyers to Dish on Matters About Which Prosecutors Cannot Appropriately Talk
 
The open corruption is amazingly brazen.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes lashed out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week in a letter where he threatened Sessions with a public grilling if he doesn't produce documents about the Russia dossier to the House intelligence committee.

Nunes, who despite stepping aside from directing the House Russia investigation has been leading his own separate investigation, accused Sessions and the FBI of stonewalling him repeatedly in a September 1 letter obtained by CNN. In the letter, he threatened to drag Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray before the committee for a public grilling and hold them in contempt of Congress -- a jailable offense -- if they don't hand over the documents.

The House intelligence committee issued a pair of subpoenas last month seeking documentation of whether the FBI or Justice Department used material from the dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele as part of the federal investigation into possible collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and the Kremlin. Nunes also writes that he subpoenaed to discover whether information from the Russia dossier was used in the crafting of applications to conduct surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In the letter, which was signed only by Nunes and no other members of the House intelligence committee, Nunes explained that he was extending the deadline for responding to the subpoenas to September 14. But he capped it off with a sharp threat.
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That's interesting way to interpret being recused by Nunes. The GOP will allow this to continue because they will do anyhting to cut taxes for the rich.
 
varwoche said:
Indeed. And this helps explain why he publicly encouraged the Russians to meddle, right around the same time his senior staff, including Donny "I love it" Jr, met with the Russians to get dirt on Hillary.
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Both you and Noah keep repeating this claim as if it had any basis in reality. It doesn't, as both I and Emily have pointed out many times.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Both you and Noah keep repeating this claim as if it had any basis in reality. It doesn't, as both I and Emily have pointed out many times.
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You're saying Donald Trump DID NOT look right in the camera and say he hopes they find the 30,000 emails? I know you're not stupid enough to think that moment was just innocent banter. I know it.

So please.

Can we PLEASE *********** just acknowledge the reality and move on to the part WHERE YOU EXPLAIN WHY IT'S OK.

I know the answer. I just want a HINT of honesty from you. Just a smidge.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Both you and Noah keep repeating this claim as if it had any basis in reality. It doesn't, as both I and Emily have pointed out many times.
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I must've missed the pointing; too busy viewing T's campaign performances on YT. Big fat invitations on offer, plain as day, tattooed on forehead. All in light of known historical context of T's actions, before and during the campaign.

***
My question for those supporting this Prezzie:

How do his favorite compliments for those he likes/admires, "very rich, very powerful," repeated ad nauseum and in the absence of most any other accolades, mesh with your understanding of what democracy, and democratic leadership, involve? Would you say they are closer, say, to the values typically admired by Redcoats and Loyalists to monarchy, or to those of American Revolutionaries?
 
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