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The Trump Presidency 13: The (James) Baker's Dozen

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BobTheCoward said:
Good point. Bad evidence is still evidence.
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It is not bad evidence. Those with and without clearances serving in the military are trained to avoid contact that may be suspicious. Flynn ran the DIA. Your notion of "bad" here would be considered just short of a smoking gun in the military because Flynn has no excuse at all for not reporting or not knowing what he did was wrong.
 
The relevant part is the intention to collude - the success is another question entirely.
And the lengths to which Trump&co. have gone to hide their contacts with Russians is strong evidence that they were trying to conspire.
 
Doubt said:
It is not bad evidence. Those with and without clearances serving in the military are trained to avoid contact that may be suspicious. Flynn ran the DIA. Your notion of "bad" here would be considered just short of a smoking gun in the military because Flynn has no excuse at all for not reporting or not knowing what he did was wrong.
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The reason you ask about a subject and the reason a person lies about it are not necessarily the same. That needs to be established by the person making the argument.
 
a_unique_person said:
That is mind boggling in its ignorance of how the pharmaceutical market works. The Japanese aren't getting their drugs subsidised by Americans.
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Indeed - one of the ways that the US government pays more for drugs than it should is because it is prevented by law from negotiating bulk discounts.
 
BobTheCoward said:
The reason you ask about a subject and the reason a person lies about it are not necessarily the same. That needs to be established by the person making the argument.
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You really do not understand what you are writing about. Flynn had a duty to report the contact in the first place without anybody asking. He was already in trouble before he lied.

One of the reasons for reporting contact is so that the contact patterns can be analysed by the US intel community. By not reporting his contact not only did Flynn cover up communication but block the intel community from doing the their job. As a former director of an intelligence agency he had to have known what he is doing.
 
Doubt said:
You really do not understand what you are writing about. Flynn had a duty to report the contact in the first place without anybody asking. He was already in trouble before he lied.

One of the reasons for reporting contact is so that the contact patterns can be analysed by the US intel community. By not reporting his contact not only did Flynn cover up communication but block the intel community from doing the their job. As a former director of an intelligence agency he had to have known what he is doing.
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I'm saying all of that is true. What I'm saying is the fact he did that does not support the explanation "to cover up collusion" more than any other possible reason.
 
Segnosaur said:
Of course there are reasons to suspect.

- Trump has failed to divest himself of his assets prior to taking office, or put things into a proper blind trust. This should raise a huge red flag with everyone, since it helps provide ample opportunities for bribes of various types

.
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Where is the evidence that the last sentence is true?
 
BobTheCoward said:
Where is the evidence that the last sentence is true?
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Do yourself a favor and get a clue.

The issue of Trump and his many conflicts of interests have been covered extensively.

Here is one source to help you get started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Wealth

Conflicts of interest

Before being inaugurated as president, Trump moved his businesses into a revocable trust run by his eldest sons and a business associate. According to ethics experts, as long as Trump continues to profit from his businesses, the measures taken by Trump do not help to avoid conflicts of interest. Because Trump would have knowledge of how his administration's policies would affect his businesses, ethics experts recommend that Trump sell off his businesses. While Trump has said that his organization would eschew "new foreign deals", the Trump Organization has since pursued expansions of its operations in Dubai, Scotland, and the Dominican Republic. Multiple lawsuits have been filed alleging that Trump is violating the emoluments clause of the United States Constitution, which forbids presidents from taking money from foreign governments, due to his business interests; they argue that these interests allow foreign governments to influence him. Previous presidents in the modern era have either divested their holdings or put them in blind trusts, and he is the first president to be sued over the emoluments clause. A suit, D.C. and Maryland v. Trump, brought in June 2017 by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, cleared three judicial hurdles to proceed to the discovery phase during 2018, with prosecutors issuing 38 subpoenas to Trump's businesses and cabinet departments in December before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay days later at the behest of the Justice Department, pending hearings in March 2019.
 
BobTheCoward said:
So, no evidence that it supports bribes then?
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As you are usually so... um... scrupulous about accuracy, you won't mind me pointing out that "provides ample opportunities for bribes" is different to what you posted.

Also, for corruption to be kept in check, holders of public office not only need to be clean, they need to be seen to be clean. Hiding one's financial dealings, in contravention of the law is not being seen to be clean and is (obviously) breaking the law of itself.
 
BobTheCoward said:
So, no evidence that it supports bribes then?
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I guess you don't count it as evidence that, as soon as Trump was elected, his Hotel, which was set to lose a lot of money due to vacancy, suddenly got massively booked at top price for months in advance by the Saudis.
 
jimbob said:
As you are usually so... um... scrupulous about accuracy, you won't mind me pointing out that "provides ample opportunities for bribes" is different to what you posted.

Also, for corruption to be kept in check, holders of public office not only need to be clean, they need to be seen to be clean. Hiding one's financial dealings, in contravention of the law is not being seen to be clean and is (obviously) breaking the law of itself.
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It would be nice to see presented the evidence that there is a correlation between lack of blind trusts and opportunities for bribery such that when someone says it provides ample opportunities, I have reason to think they are not making it up.
 
Prediction: this will be the last continuation of this thread as it devolves into everyone else arguing with a single poster who doesn't recognize causality much less the accepted meanings of words.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Prediction: this will be the last continuation of this thread as it devolves into everyone else arguing with a single poster who doesn't recognize causality much less the accepted meanings of words.
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Can someone tell me, who has the first post in this (new) thread? Apparently, it is someone on my ignore list, so I can't see the thread without going to the old one and clicking the link to the new one.
 
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