Well, I don't know why that matters. Because Mueller is not investigating whether or not there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He is investigating whether and how Russia tried to influence our elections. And, if someone's preferred party played a part in that influence, and that is the reason why that person opposes the investigation, then that person is an absolute partisan idiot who is putting their own preferred political party above the country.
Voting participation is directly related to the fact that the D-R system gives us shit choices every time. That is the system that needs to end, and when people feel like there is a candidate who actually represents them then they will vote. I would even contend that many of the people who do not vote are in fact informed, and that is specifically why they choose to not vote. I disagree with that choice, I think they should vote for the person who represents them the most, but whatever.
Yeah, the polls hated him more than her, but the voters hated her more than him.
Well, the popular vote shows otherwise, but the major takeaway is that both major parties put up absolutely awful candidates and tried to convince everyone that voting for anyone else was pointless. 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of that. The D-R system is actively damaging the US.
As the election demonstrated, it was the will of the voters, not the will of the pollsters.
It was the will of the electoral college, not the people who took the time to vote.
Their estimates of who was more hated is irrelevant because we have an objective measurement of who actually was hated more.
Right, the person with fewer votes, which also matches what the polls say. In a competition between the 2 most-hated candidates in the history of presidential polling, #1 got fewer votes than #2, which is what you would expect.
What's troubling is that even though no actual evidence has come to light in the 18 months since the allegations were made the conspiracy theories still abound.
I know exactly what you mean. We have a special investigator who is able to control his people and not leak information, and he has a ton of evidence that he is still collecting and occasionally issuing indictments around, but people want to claim that since he's not releasing all of his evidence, which would destroy his investigation if he hasn't completed it yet, that this means that there is in fact no evidence of the thing he's actively investigating. It's troubling, I agree. He's obviously working with the best interests of the country in mind, and it's troubling that so many people have these conspiracy theories around him and want to politicize his work.
Should Canada be indicting and prosecuting US citizens?
If there is evidence that Americans committed crimes against Canada, then yes.
I say the internet is free reign for opinions.
For better or worse. The old-time village idiots have now gone global.
His job is to advance US interests, not anyone else's, and he's doing that.
I disagree. First, the only interests he advances are his. Second, attacking countries like Canada, Germany, the UK, etc, who have been our allies for decades and who have stood by us on every important international issue, is not in our interest. Neither is starting a trade war with China where "victory" for either side is impossible.
That is some pretty finely distilled idiocy you've managed to put in a single sentence.
I don't think anyone is surprised that Russia is attacking us. The question is how they are, and what are we going to do to protect ourselves. The answer is not to stop the investigation.
If you want to politicize the issue like a complete fuckhead, that's your choice.
Yeah, that's a major problem. It's also a major problem that 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else was pointless.
Fuck off, come talk shit to me when 45% of the electorate doesn't decide to stay home because they're given 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else is worthless.
This isn't about me.
That being said, you want to go over how many people talking shit about "Obamacare" then defended the "ACA" because they had no idea the two were the same thing? Because that clearly shows a lack of critical thinking, and these people vote.
What's tiresome is people feigning ignorance that this has been happening for hundreds of years and the US is just as dirty as Russia or any other foreign power.
And, what, we should just let it continue? Really, what's your solution? Not investigate? Act like it's not happening? Or just try to shit all over the people trying to protect the country like you did in your original post?
I mean, you understand that we currently live in an age where it is possible to remotely attack infrastructure in ways that used to require a bomber fleet? The US has destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Russia has fucked up Ukrainian power grids. This is reality. But, what, since countries have been spying on each other for centuries, you want to.... what, ignore it? Not determine if we are defending ourselves as well as we could? What exactly? Please respond, this is not a rhetorical question.
If investigating foreign influencing of elections and cyber-attacks is not the thing we should be doing, what do you think we should be doing instead? Spell it out.
I mean, other than attacking the people doing the actual investigating, like you did in your original post. Other than attacking the people trying to make the country secure, what else should we be doing? How about just killing Mueller outright, would that help? Maybe Trump can pick up a little Novichok when he meets Putin, hmm?
What is also tiring is people denying facts because the source of those facts doesn't meet to their approval.
No shit, I agree completely. But what people have against Mueller to try to discredit him or deny what he's doing, I have no idea. He seems like someone genuinely trying to help the country in as apolitically a way as possible, but some people seem to have more love for Trump than for their own country, which is really strange, like I said.
The facts of this information is readily available from numerous sources.
The only source for any facts about the investigation is Mueller himself, and we only see what he gives to the courts. Obviously, if he operated transparently it would cause major problems for his investigation until he can file all of the indictments that he feels are appropriate, and then defend them. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that has any level of functionality at all that he will not want to release any evidence that will tip off anyone that he is actively investigating before he can indict those people. But some people apparently see that and want to politicize it. I have no idea what the agenda is of the people trying to politicize that, but the well-being of the United States is clearly not high on their list.
I made the assumption that the sentence would be interpreted in the context of the Russian collusion narrative, which is that Trump owes his Presidency to the Russians.
I think that claim would be both irrelevant and counter-productive, and Mueller is not interested in answering that. We have no way to remove Trump if that were true, so it's a pointless exercise, it's not like that can even be quantified and, even if it could, there is not any constitutional way to remove Trump and install, for example, Clinton. It's a non-issue. If Trump actually worked with foreign governments to influence the election then he can and should be impeached and removed, but that's just going to follow the normal impeachment process and we'll end up with either Pence or Ryan (if it happened today).
What Mueller is investigating is if and how Russia is trying to influence US democratic processes, and that should be important to any American regardless of political preference. For some reason one political party is trying to discredit the investigation, but in a perfect world any political party should want that investigation to continue. In fact, it may not even be a bad idea to set up a department or agency who has the sole purpose of continuously monitoring our elections and other democratic processes for any signs of foreign interference.
If anything, the indictment goes to prove just how little Papadopolous managed to accomplish.
That's OK, a criminal's level of success doesn't change whether or not they were breaking the law to start with. Thankfully, it sounds like Papadopolous is cooperating with the investigation. All I'm interested in is the truth - what happened, and what are we going to do about it, how are we going to make the country stronger?
It would be very unfortunate if the country was left weaker because of political opposition towards an investigation into whether or not foreign governments are influencing our elections.
For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.
Those people are fooling themselves if they think Trump is doing what he does because it's best for the nation. I'm not going to comment on whether his policies are good for the US or not, but his motivation should be crystal clear to anyone who has paid attention to Donald Trump at any point over the last 30 years or so. Everything he does, every decision he makes, is based upon whether or not it is good for him personally. I don't think he cares about the country beyond the fact that he lives in it and wants it to help him through tax breaks or whatever else. Absolutely everything he does is done because he thinks it will benefit him. Even the North Korea thing - the ink isn't even dry yet and he's on TV talking about how their beaches would look great with high-end condo and apartment buildings on them. I wonder what name he imagines on those buildings.
Like I said, I'm not commenting on whether or not his actions benefit the country, but if you think his motivation is anything other than his own personal self-interest, even if it hurts the country overall, then I think you're not paying attention.
I believe the correct spelling of your name should be Arkhangelsk. But, really, feel free to keep linking to a site actively trying to discredit an ongoing investigation into Russians trying to subvert the democratic processes of the US. Let's just act like that's not happening, because that's totally patriotic and in all of our best interests, right?
Really, it's becoming so tiresome that so many people in the US apparently don't want to know whether and how Russia is trying to influence our country at the highest levels. These people seem to love Donald Trump more than they love the US, and it's really weird to see.
I heard on the radio that, the day he said that, a new spear-phishing campaign against the Democrats started. That's stupid though, he was totally being sarcastic, dude!
No evidence that you've seen, but who the hell are you? You're not the special counsel, right? You're not on his team? You have no idea what evidence they do or do not have or who their targets might be?
Rosenstein did not claim that election results or vote counts were not affected. Let me bold the important part for you:
There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
Every time Mueller puts anything in a court filing, people can't wait to jump up and conclude that this is all there is, and that this is all there ever will be. That's a bit premature. Mueller isn't finished yet.
Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.
You should probably re-read the Papadopoulos indictment. His perjury crimes were relating to his statements about which Russians he was talking to, about what, and whether they were before or during the campaign. It turns out that he was talking to Russians who he thought had ties to their government, trying to arrange meetings or get information from them, while he was working with and for the campaign.
I didn't read through the other indictments, but that one example makes your statement false.
You'd really like that to happen, wouldn't you? Never mind that you have no idea what evidence Mueller has, or who his targets are, or the fact that no one around him leaks so the only information we have from his investigation is court filings. You want to just end everything, in an investigation primarily to determine whether or not a foreign power is actively influencing US democratic processes. You have no idea what he has, but you want the investigation to end. It almost sounds like you're worried about what he might have.
Are you limiting your scope to the latest indictments? Because people like Manafort and Papadopoulos have already been indicted by Mueller, and some have pled guilty. The scope of his investigation is very large. It's also not over, and he's actually able to control his people so there aren't any leaks, we have no idea what evidence he has or who his other targets are. The only information we get from Mueller is when he files things in court. So it's probably premature for anyone to conclude anything other than what his filings say. Just because there has not been a filing charging someone with collusion, for example, does not mean that there is no collusion or that he's not investigating it or that he doesn't have evidence of it. He just hasn't filed that yet, so let's hold off on making conclusions about what people definitely did or did not do until he finishes his work.
Really though, Hillary Clinton lost to the single most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling. The major reason she lost is probably because she's in second place on that list.
Very awful, and highly disliked (you might even say the second most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, after Trump himself).
But that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Russians are actively trying to influence elections and subvert democratic processes in the US and Europe.
And it's troubling that so many people in the US are trying to discredit an investigation into whether or not our democratic processes are being actively subverted.
You can do whatever you want, it doesn't change the fact that OP's bullshit about "crap nobody asked us for" and "unsolicited changes" and whatever else is full of shit. If you'd like to move the goal posts though, go right ahead.
Call me romantic because I think I can persuade you with logic and critical thinking, but I'm not holding out hope. In fact, after reading the above post which contains several examples of the un-American activities of our president, I bet you're actually going to hold on to your convictions even tighter. That's an interesting phenomenon that happens - when people hold factually incorrect ideas, and are presented with counter-proof, they will often believe the incorrect ideas even more strongly. I suspect you're an example of that, but still I try to reason with you.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't know why that matters. Because Mueller is not investigating whether or not there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He is investigating whether and how Russia tried to influence our elections. And, if someone's preferred party played a part in that influence, and that is the reason why that person opposes the investigation, then that person is an absolute partisan idiot who is putting their own preferred political party above the country.
Voting participation is directly related to the fact that the D-R system gives us shit choices every time. That is the system that needs to end, and when people feel like there is a candidate who actually represents them then they will vote. I would even contend that many of the people who do not vote are in fact informed, and that is specifically why they choose to not vote. I disagree with that choice, I think they should vote for the person who represents them the most, but whatever.
Yeah, the polls hated him more than her, but the voters hated her more than him.
Well, the popular vote shows otherwise, but the major takeaway is that both major parties put up absolutely awful candidates and tried to convince everyone that voting for anyone else was pointless. 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of that. The D-R system is actively damaging the US.
As the election demonstrated, it was the will of the voters, not the will of the pollsters.
It was the will of the electoral college, not the people who took the time to vote.
Their estimates of who was more hated is irrelevant because we have an objective measurement of who actually was hated more.
Right, the person with fewer votes, which also matches what the polls say. In a competition between the 2 most-hated candidates in the history of presidential polling, #1 got fewer votes than #2, which is what you would expect.
What's troubling is that even though no actual evidence has come to light in the 18 months since the allegations were made the conspiracy theories still abound.
I know exactly what you mean. We have a special investigator who is able to control his people and not leak information, and he has a ton of evidence that he is still collecting and occasionally issuing indictments around, but people want to claim that since he's not releasing all of his evidence, which would destroy his investigation if he hasn't completed it yet, that this means that there is in fact no evidence of the thing he's actively investigating. It's troubling, I agree. He's obviously working with the best interests of the country in mind, and it's troubling that so many people have these conspiracy theories around him and want to politicize his work.
Should Canada be indicting and prosecuting US citizens?
If there is evidence that Americans committed crimes against Canada, then yes.
I say the internet is free reign for opinions.
For better or worse. The old-time village idiots have now gone global.
His job is to advance US interests, not anyone else's, and he's doing that.
I disagree. First, the only interests he advances are his. Second, attacking countries like Canada, Germany, the UK, etc, who have been our allies for decades and who have stood by us on every important international issue, is not in our interest. Neither is starting a trade war with China where "victory" for either side is impossible.
That is some pretty finely distilled idiocy you've managed to put in a single sentence.
I don't think anyone is surprised that Russia is attacking us. The question is how they are, and what are we going to do to protect ourselves. The answer is not to stop the investigation.
If you want to politicize the issue like a complete fuckhead, that's your choice.
Yeah, that's a major problem. It's also a major problem that 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else was pointless.
Fuck off, come talk shit to me when 45% of the electorate doesn't decide to stay home because they're given 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else is worthless.
This isn't about me.
That being said, you want to go over how many people talking shit about "Obamacare" then defended the "ACA" because they had no idea the two were the same thing? Because that clearly shows a lack of critical thinking, and these people vote.
What's tiresome is people feigning ignorance that this has been happening for hundreds of years and the US is just as dirty as Russia or any other foreign power.
And, what, we should just let it continue? Really, what's your solution? Not investigate? Act like it's not happening? Or just try to shit all over the people trying to protect the country like you did in your original post?
I mean, you understand that we currently live in an age where it is possible to remotely attack infrastructure in ways that used to require a bomber fleet? The US has destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Russia has fucked up Ukrainian power grids. This is reality. But, what, since countries have been spying on each other for centuries, you want to.... what, ignore it? Not determine if we are defending ourselves as well as we could? What exactly? Please respond, this is not a rhetorical question.
If investigating foreign influencing of elections and cyber-attacks is not the thing we should be doing, what do you think we should be doing instead? Spell it out.
I mean, other than attacking the people doing the actual investigating, like you did in your original post. Other than attacking the people trying to make the country secure, what else should we be doing? How about just killing Mueller outright, would that help? Maybe Trump can pick up a little Novichok when he meets Putin, hmm?
What is also tiring is people denying facts because the source of those facts doesn't meet to their approval.
No shit, I agree completely. But what people have against Mueller to try to discredit him or deny what he's doing, I have no idea. He seems like someone genuinely trying to help the country in as apolitically a way as possible, but some people seem to have more love for Trump than for their own country, which is really strange, like I said.
The facts of this information is readily available from numerous sources.
The only source for any facts about the investigation is Mueller himself, and we only see what he gives to the courts. Obviously, if he operated transparently it would cause major problems for his investigation until he can file all of the indictments that he feels are appropriate, and then defend them. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that has any level of functionality at all that he will not want to release any evidence that will tip off anyone that he is actively investigating before he can indict those people. But some people apparently see that and want to politicize it. I have no idea what the agenda is of the people trying to politicize that, but the well-being of the United States is clearly not high on their list.
I made the assumption that the sentence would be interpreted in the context of the Russian collusion narrative, which is that Trump owes his Presidency to the Russians.
I think that claim would be both irrelevant and counter-productive, and Mueller is not interested in answering that. We have no way to remove Trump if that were true, so it's a pointless exercise, it's not like that can even be quantified and, even if it could, there is not any constitutional way to remove Trump and install, for example, Clinton. It's a non-issue. If Trump actually worked with foreign governments to influence the election then he can and should be impeached and removed, but that's just going to follow the normal impeachment process and we'll end up with either Pence or Ryan (if it happened today).
What Mueller is investigating is if and how Russia is trying to influence US democratic processes, and that should be important to any American regardless of political preference. For some reason one political party is trying to discredit the investigation, but in a perfect world any political party should want that investigation to continue. In fact, it may not even be a bad idea to set up a department or agency who has the sole purpose of continuously monitoring our elections and other democratic processes for any signs of foreign interference.
If anything, the indictment goes to prove just how little Papadopolous managed to accomplish.
That's OK, a criminal's level of success doesn't change whether or not they were breaking the law to start with. Thankfully, it sounds like Papadopolous is cooperating with the investigation. All I'm interested in is the truth - what happened, and what are we going to do about it, how are we going to make the country stronger?
It would be very unfortunate if the country was left weaker because of political opposition towards an investigation into whether or not foreign governments are influencing our elections.
They certainly don't produce themselves. You can tell based on how people vote.
For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.
Those people are fooling themselves if they think Trump is doing what he does because it's best for the nation. I'm not going to comment on whether his policies are good for the US or not, but his motivation should be crystal clear to anyone who has paid attention to Donald Trump at any point over the last 30 years or so. Everything he does, every decision he makes, is based upon whether or not it is good for him personally. I don't think he cares about the country beyond the fact that he lives in it and wants it to help him through tax breaks or whatever else. Absolutely everything he does is done because he thinks it will benefit him. Even the North Korea thing - the ink isn't even dry yet and he's on TV talking about how their beaches would look great with high-end condo and apartment buildings on them. I wonder what name he imagines on those buildings.
Like I said, I'm not commenting on whether or not his actions benefit the country, but if you think his motivation is anything other than his own personal self-interest, even if it hurts the country overall, then I think you're not paying attention.
I believe the correct spelling of your name should be Arkhangelsk. But, really, feel free to keep linking to a site actively trying to discredit an ongoing investigation into Russians trying to subvert the democratic processes of the US. Let's just act like that's not happening, because that's totally patriotic and in all of our best interests, right?
Really, it's becoming so tiresome that so many people in the US apparently don't want to know whether and how Russia is trying to influence our country at the highest levels. These people seem to love Donald Trump more than they love the US, and it's really weird to see.
So, what you're saying, is that we're fucked.
Is that the legal defense?
"Dude, I was totally being sarcastic."
I heard on the radio that, the day he said that, a new spear-phishing campaign against the Democrats started. That's stupid though, he was totally being sarcastic, dude!
No evidence that you've seen, but who the hell are you? You're not the special counsel, right? You're not on his team? You have no idea what evidence they do or do not have or who their targets might be?
OK, I thought so.
Rosenstein did not claim that election results or vote counts were not affected. Let me bold the important part for you:
There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
Every time Mueller puts anything in a court filing, people can't wait to jump up and conclude that this is all there is, and that this is all there ever will be. That's a bit premature. Mueller isn't finished yet.
Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.
You should probably re-read the Papadopoulos indictment. His perjury crimes were relating to his statements about which Russians he was talking to, about what, and whether they were before or during the campaign. It turns out that he was talking to Russians who he thought had ties to their government, trying to arrange meetings or get information from them, while he was working with and for the campaign.
I didn't read through the other indictments, but that one example makes your statement false.
Time to... MoveOn...
You'd really like that to happen, wouldn't you? Never mind that you have no idea what evidence Mueller has, or who his targets are, or the fact that no one around him leaks so the only information we have from his investigation is court filings. You want to just end everything, in an investigation primarily to determine whether or not a foreign power is actively influencing US democratic processes. You have no idea what he has, but you want the investigation to end. It almost sounds like you're worried about what he might have.
Are you limiting your scope to the latest indictments? Because people like Manafort and Papadopoulos have already been indicted by Mueller, and some have pled guilty. The scope of his investigation is very large. It's also not over, and he's actually able to control his people so there aren't any leaks, we have no idea what evidence he has or who his other targets are. The only information we get from Mueller is when he files things in court. So it's probably premature for anyone to conclude anything other than what his filings say. Just because there has not been a filing charging someone with collusion, for example, does not mean that there is no collusion or that he's not investigating it or that he doesn't have evidence of it. He just hasn't filed that yet, so let's hold off on making conclusions about what people definitely did or did not do until he finishes his work.
Really though, Hillary Clinton lost to the single most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling. The major reason she lost is probably because she's in second place on that list.
Very awful, and highly disliked (you might even say the second most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, after Trump himself).
But that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Russians are actively trying to influence elections and subvert democratic processes in the US and Europe.
And it's troubling that so many people in the US are trying to discredit an investigation into whether or not our democratic processes are being actively subverted.
How's the weather in St. Petersburg today? Do the people you work with still call it Leningrad?
You can do whatever you want, it doesn't change the fact that OP's bullshit about "crap nobody asked us for" and "unsolicited changes" and whatever else is full of shit. If you'd like to move the goal posts though, go right ahead.
Is this where I point out that people have wanted Notepad to handle different line endings correctly for a long, long time?
Call me romantic because I think I can persuade you with logic and critical thinking, but I'm not holding out hope. In fact, after reading the above post which contains several examples of the un-American activities of our president, I bet you're actually going to hold on to your convictions even tighter. That's an interesting phenomenon that happens - when people hold factually incorrect ideas, and are presented with counter-proof, they will often believe the incorrect ideas even more strongly. I suspect you're an example of that, but still I try to reason with you.