Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2

[phiwum]

Given the number of anonymous leaks, I'm not so sure that ship is tight.

You said previously that the anonymous sources could be man in the street interviews dressed up as leaks. Now you treat them as investigation insiders.

Some consistency, please.

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[Belz...]

Why don't you go ahead and list out the "obvious" in an objective, unemotional, fact-based way, with supporting references?

Are you suggesting that the flood of evidence already in this thread is insufficient? What else do you want me to dig up? Remember when I said that, once evidence is presented, deniers will pretend like it isn't there? Yeah.

As for confirmed, the people involved have managed to clumsily confirm quite a few of these instances.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Which of those leaks did you trace back to the special counsel's office, and how?

You said previously that the anonymous sources could be man in the street interviews dressed up as leaks. Now you treat them as investigation insiders.

Some consistency, please.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Not sure whether to laugh or cry here.

Let's see... if the leaks about what the investigation is doing aren't coming from the investigation team, then they're baseless. If they are coming from the investigation team, then the team massively sucks at confidentiality.

Yes, anonymous sources could be anyone. That's pretty straightforward, isn't it? IF those anonymous sources are bonafide, THEN they're not very good at their jobs.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Are you suggesting that the flood of evidence already in this thread is insufficient?

No, I'm flat out saying quite clearly that the vast majority of your "flood" doesn't consist of evidence; it consists of speculation, allegation, and hypotheticals. Very little of it is actually evidence, and that evidence by itself is insufficient to reach the conclusion that many in this thread already held on the basis of belief alone.

As for confirmed, the people involved have managed to clumsily confirm quite a few of these instances.

So give a brief list of that "quite a few"... in an objective, unemotional, fact-based way, with supporting references.


ETA:
Wait, let me prognosticate for a moment - this is where you come back with something akin to "well I'm not going to do that, if you can't bother to keep up, then I'm not going to do it for you." Then you'll go on to accuse me of dishonesty, and you'll tell me you already explained, but you won't give a reference to anything, no links, nothing. You'll just insist that it's already been covered, and it's on me somehow.

 

[Belz...]

No, I'm flat out saying quite clearly that the vast majority of your "flood" doesn't consist of evidence; it consists of speculation, allegation, and hypotheticals.

Right, which is why I said you reject evidence: you redefine it as something that doesn't qualify, and then say "hey, no evidence has been presented!" Easy!

So give a brief list of that "quite a few"... in an objective, unemotional, fact-based way, with supporting references.

Why would I do that? You've already redefined them so that you won't accept any of it. All of it's already available here and you rejected it. Hence what I said earlier.

Wait, let me prognosticate for a moment - this is where you come back with something akin to "well I'm not going to do that, if you can't bother to keep up, then I'm not going to do it for you." Then you'll go on to accuse me of dishonesty, and you'll tell me you already explained, but you won't give a reference to anything, no links, nothing.

No. Again, you've just said, in that very post, that none of the evidence presented, which is what I was refering to, matters. So obviously anything I'd repost here wouldn't count for you. You've made sure that it's pointless to go over it again. Of course you'll count this as a successful prediction even though you manipulated words and posts so that this would be the only possible outcome. Either I refuse to go along and you can dance around pretending that no such evidence exists, or I can waste time posting stuff you'll reject anyway, after which point I'll refuse to go along further and you can dance around pretending that no such evidence exists.

You lied when you said you were quite willing to accept evidence and that Trump did something wrong. There is no way you will accept something you've defined in a way that makes it impossible for you to accept.

You'll just insist that it's already been covered, and it's on me somehow.

Of course it's already been covered: you admitted as much at the beginning of the post!

 

[Emily's Cat]

Again, you've just said, in that very post, that none of the evidence presented

That's not what I said. Don't be so dishonest

 

[Emily's Cat]

Right, which is why I said you reject evidence: you redefine it as something that doesn't qualify, and then say "hey, no evidence has been presented!"

In all seriousness, no. You're wrong. Just plain wrong.

The majority of the information presented would have been dismissed immediately by most posters on ISF if the topic were anything other than Trump.

"Someone said that if this thing is true, then it might mean that this other thing happened"

"Someone said that another person is thinking really hard about a thing, and that suggests that this other thing could also be a thing"

"An anonymous person said that this thing is 'of interest' to an investigation"

"Someone who is familiar with the matter said that there's strong indication that the size of bigfoot's feet is of keen interest the people in the know about the bigfoot conspiracy... "

 

[NoahFence]

EC...
You're aware that some of this evidence you don't acknowledge consists of things the suspects (for lack of a better term) themselves freely acknowledge?

 

[Belz...]

That's not what I said.

If you're nitpicking about you saying "the majority", then wouldn't it be faster for YOU to tell us which part of the evidence you find convincing?

 

[phiwum]

Not sure whether to laugh or cry here.

Let's see... if the leaks about what the investigation is doing aren't coming from the investigation team, then they're baseless. If they are coming from the investigation team, then the team massively sucks at confidentiality.

Yes, anonymous sources could be anyone. That's pretty straightforward, isn't it? IF those anonymous sources are bonafide, THEN they're not very good at their jobs.

Here is the point.

In one post, you argued thus:

This article relies on anonymous sources. We have no reason to believe these anonymous sources are privy to the investigation.​

Let's take that as given.

Then, in response to the following,

Because Mueller is running a tight ship, staffed by professionals who know what they are doing.

you wrote,

Given the number of anonymous leaks, I'm not so sure that ship is tight.

Now, the fact is that the second quote from you presumes that anonymous leaks are tied to Mueller's investigation, contradicting your unwillingness to presume the same in the first quote. It's not that d4m10n began with the assumption that such leaks are authoritative. You introduced that presumption your darned self.

You can't take both positions without incoherence. You can't both refuse to accept that leaks are knowledgeable and also claim that leaks show Mueller isn't running a tight ship.

This is why I accused you of inconsistency. Because you are being inconsistent. Which is a good reason for the accusation and all.

 

[sunmaster14]

Here is the point.

In one post, you argued thus:

This article relies on anonymous sources. We have no reason to believe these anonymous sources are privy to the investigation.​

Let's take that as given.

Then, in response to the following,

you wrote,


Now, the fact is that the second quote from you presumes that anonymous leaks are tied to Mueller's investigation, contradicting your unwillingness to presume the same in the first quote. It's not that d4m10n began with the assumption that such leaks are authoritative. You introduced that presumption your darned self.

You can't take both positions without incoherence. You can't both refuse to accept that leaks are knowledgeable and also claim that leaks show Mueller isn't running a tight ship.

This is why I accused you of inconsistency. Because you are being inconsistent. Which is a good reason for the accusation and all.

Emily is not being inconsistent at all. One article, which is entirely sourced anonymously, should be treated with a high degree of skepticism. And in a slight paraphrasing of Emily's words, we really have little evidence that the sources in that article are privy to the investigation.

However, given the enormous number of articles with anonymous sources whom journalists claim to have knowledge of the investigation, it is reasonable to believe that some of them are legitimate and that therefore Mueller's ship is leaking. In any case, Emily only said that she's not sure that d4m10n's completely baseless claim of the tightness of Mueller's ship was correct.

 

[Lurch]

Why on God's Green Earth are some folks bogging themselves down so heavily on the matter of leaks? We see time and again how leaks eventually turn out to have basis in fact. Not all, I surmise, but a bloody good number of them. We could go back in history here and find so many examples of frenetic poo-pooing of leaks which later turned out to have been reliable. After so many proved leaks it makes little sense for the Trumpsters to just keep on harping on about their potential unreliability.

Face it, apologists and defenders of the indefensible. Not just the 'opposition' is out to get the Orange Turd. He's suffering no small number of 'own goals', with leaks originating with his erstwhile 'team'. If anything points to the hate-on for this useless, divisive, incompetent, pretending poser, this does.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Why on God's Green Earth are some folks bogging themselves down so heavily on the matter of leaks? We see time and again how leaks eventually turn out to have basis in fact. Not all, I surmise, but a bloody good number of them. We could go back in history here and find so many examples of frenetic poo-pooing of leaks which later turned out to have been reliable. After so many proved leaks it makes little sense for the Trumpsters to just keep on harping on about their potential unreliability.

Face it, apologists and defenders of the indefensible. Not just the 'opposition' is out to get the Orange Turd. He's suffering no small number of 'own goals', with leaks originating with his erstwhile 'team'. If anything points to the hate-on for this useless, divisive, incompetent, pretending poser, this does.

It is part of their playbook tactic.

1. Deny leak
2. Claim leaks are unreliable
3. When leak is proven true, claim that the leaked fact doesn't matter anyway.
4. Show outrage that there are leaks, even though the leaks don't matter.

 

[Bob001]

An ex-CIA agent says many of the claims in the Steele report have been supported by subsequent revelations.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...eele_dossier_has_since_been_corroborated.html

 

[Roger Ramjets]

An ex-CIA agent says many of the claims in the Steele report have been supported by subsequent revelations.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...eele_dossier_has_since_been_corroborated.html

"Steele could not have known that the Russians stole information on Hillary Clinton, or that they were considering means to weaponize them in the U.S. election, all of which turned out to be stunningly accurate...

How could Steele and Orbis know in June 2016 that the Russians were working actively to elect Donald Trump and damage Hillary Clinton unless at least some of its information was correct? How could Steele and Orbis have known about the Russian overtures to the Trump Team involving derogatory information on Clinton?"

The answer is obvious. The only way Steele could have known is if he had organized it himself. It wasn't the Russians who worked with Manafort, hacked the DNC and released damaging information on Clinton - it was Steele!

And here's the proof:-

the Orbis team reported that a Russian-supported company had been “using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership"... offered to provide potentially compromising material on Hillary Clinton, consisting of bugged conversations during her travels to Russia... developed potentially compromising material on Trump, to include details of “perverted sexual acts” which were arranged and monitored by the FSB.

How is it proof? Because the alternative - that Russia actually did all this - is unthinkable.

 

[Stacko]

Russia has been astroturfing to organize anti-immigration rallies in America.

Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the U.S., including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho, The Daily Beast has learned.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Beast that the social-media giant “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.” The company declined to elaborate, except to confirm that the events were promoted with paid ads. (This is the first time the social media giant has publicly acknowledged the existence of such events.)

The Facebook events—one of which echoed Islamophobic conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump media outlets—are the first indication that the Kremlin’s attempts to shape America’s political discourse moved beyond fake news and led unwitting Americans into specific real-life action.

“This is the next step,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and expert on Russia’s influence campaign, told The Daily Beast. “The objective of influence is to create behavior change. The simplest behavior is to have someone disseminate propaganda that Russia created and seeded. The second part of behavior influence is when you can get people to physically do something.”

What a serendipitous coincidence!

 

[phiwum]

Emily is not being inconsistent at all. One article, which is entirely sourced anonymously, should be treated with a high degree of skepticism. And in a slight paraphrasing of Emily's words, we really have little evidence that the sources in that article are privy to the investigation.

However, given the enormous number of articles with anonymous sources whom journalists claim to have knowledge of the investigation, it is reasonable to believe that some of them are legitimate and that therefore Mueller's ship is leaking. In any case, Emily only said that she's not sure that d4m10n's completely baseless claim of the tightness of Mueller's ship was correct.

Here's what she said.

I DO dismiss newspaper reports using such vague language. They're all unsubstantiated and speculative as far as I'm concerned.

If you dismiss every such report, the fact that there are a large number of reports adds up to nothing at all.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Russia has been astroturfing to organize anti-immigration rallies in America.

What a serendipitous coincidence!

Things like this don't help that narrative at all:



KC police disarm antifa groups, others at Washington Square rally

We have armed 3 percenters showing up at progressive rallies and it's getting hard not to see some soft handling of them.

Then they disarm Antifa.

We've got a weird situation with gun laws right now, Missouri just threw out a lot of the permit requirements (and may have voided all municipal laws, which this incident could get challenged on). But on the other hand, most of the Antifa were not permitted to carry under the city's interpretation. Dumb move.

All in all, with both groups tooling up around here, it's getting really hostile at demonstrations.

Plus this:

As one person was emptying a weapon, he was advised that he hadn’t finished the job.

“You might clear that action because I think you racked another round,” an onlooker said.

No permits, dubious familiarity with handling and safety.

This is why the left and/or anarchists need to just consider violent conflict off the table.

We're terrible at it.

Anyways, not meaning to derail (plenty of racists vs antifa threads already), the communist imagery just seems to be really popular around here. Someone also tagged a Confederate memorial with the hammer and sickle a few weeks ago.

 

[d4m10n]

Let's see... if the leaks about what the investigation is doing aren't coming from the investigation team, then they're baseless.

This is self-evidently untrue. If the leaks are from someone who is familiar with what the investigation is doing, they may well be solid information. You don't need to be *on* the investigation to know what they are doing in specific instances.

For example, if some people receive subpoenas, those people are aware of having received subpoenas. Some of their friends and family may be aware as well.

For any given leak, ask yourself who could possibly have known that information, if it were true.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Not sure whether to laugh or cry here.

Let's see... if the leaks about what the investigation is doing aren't coming from the investigation team, then they're baseless. If they are coming from the investigation team, then the team massively sucks at confidentiality.

Yes, anonymous sources could be anyone. That's pretty straightforward, isn't it? IF those anonymous sources are bonafide, THEN they're not very good at their jobs.

That notion has already been thoroughly debunked...

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