Political Roundtable Part XXV

[Pointgod]

Partisan Politics at its worse...

‘Now we’re in charge’: Dems freeze out GOP on bipartisan bills

Republicans say Democrats are refusing to work with them on legislation in order to snub vulnerable members ahead of 2020[/i]

During the past two sessions of Congress, Democrat Bobby Rush and Republican Richard Hudson introduced legislation together to improve workforce-training programs.

But this year, Rush altered the language to the bill and stripped out a previous key element: Hudson.

Hudson is among several frustrated Republicans who have lashed out at their Democratic colleagues in recent days, arguing that Democrats have shut them out of the legislative process by refusing to work cooperatively on bills — including some they once co-authored.

Republicans claim Democrats, at the direction of their leadership, are determined to deny GOP incumbents any big victories heading into 2020 on a host of issues — from prescription drugs to immigration reform — and are dropping the bipartisan approach they seemed to promise during the last election.

Democrats have one response: Welcome to the minority.

Politico

I read the whole article and the headline is a little bit sensationalized. A lot of this is based on Republican claims and nothing more. And it’s not surprising that Democrats would push ahead with some bills considering the fact that the two sides are polarized. The article takes complaints from a handful of Republicans and makes it seem like some grand Democratic plot. This is right there in the article:

Democrats have notched several bipartisan wins in the new Congress, even on some of the left’s top priorities, like gun control. The party’s signature universal background check bill had five Republicans as original co-sponsors and eight voted for it on the floor. And at a recent news conference, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) stood side by side with Pelosi as she rolled out a bill to expand the nation’s landmark domestic violence bill, the Violence Against Women Act.

In her return to power, Pelosi and her top deputies have committed to putting the vast majority of their bills through a slog of markups — with ample time for amendments from both sides — before they headed to the floor. The speaker has also made clear Democrats will pursue their agenda without being constrained by the right.

[montestewart]

The media had to cover and report the "Russia Gate story", just as all of the Clinton investigations were covered.

I’d like to remind everyone zero indictments in the so called Clinton scandal.

That's because everyone they were about to indict wound up I dead. I read. Somewhere.

[stilldropin20]

The media had to cover and report the "Russia Gate story", just as all of the Clinton investigations were covered.

I’d like to remind everyone zero indictments in the so called Clinton scandal.

That's because everyone they were about to indict wound up I dead. I read. Somewhere.

James Comey: "we (the FBI that investigated one of the many clinton scandals) changed the language from "grossly negligent" to "careless" because we were told the top of DOJ (only lynch and obama) were not interested in prosecuting her."

^that's comey under oath.

[CobraCommander]

Public service announcement for stilldroppin20....not guilty does not mean innocent...have a nice day

[montestewart]

You can tell a lot about someone by when they choose to cite Comey (especially when it's a made up Comey quote. Someone read. Somewhere) as their authority.

[Pointgod]

We need to look at the facts of the investigation into Russia before claiming that the investigation didn’t find anything. Not true, and it’s a serious indictment on Trump and the people he surrounds himself with. Let’s go through the facts:

But before wrapping up, Mueller's investigation did result in indictments for 34 individuals – seven of whom have been convicted so far – including some senior members of the Trump campaign (although none of the charges involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians).

12 Russian nationals tied to hacking

The twelve Russians were indicted in July 2018 on charges related to a conspiracy to hack Democratic computers with the goal of influencing the 2016 election. Charges included aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Internet Research Agency

Thirteen Russian nationals and three entities, including the Internet Research Agency, were indicted in February 2018 with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for interfering with the election. Three were charged with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud. Five were charged with aggravated identity theft.

So Mueller did prove that Russians actively interferes in the election and this was more than just Facebook ads. They hacked the DNC and used stolen emails with the express purpose of throwing the election to Trump.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/25/muellers-russia-report-special-counsel-indictments-charges/3266050002/

This was also a coordinated attack where millions of dollars when spent.

In an indictment announced Friday in Washington, Mueller describes a years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump. Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities and accused them of defrauding the U.S. government by interfering with the political process.

Those involved spent some $1.25 million per month on ad campaigns and measured their efforts much as an ad agency would, according to the indictment. It says the group kept track of metrics like views and comments, and measured engagement.

https://adage.com/article/digital/russia-spent-1-25m-ads-acted-agency-mueller/312424/

Based on all this evidence that Mueller found there’s no doubt that Russia interfered in the election in an attempt to primarily discredit Clinton and second throw it to Trump. 7 Trump associates are going to jail and Roger Stone has been indicted based on lies related to the stolen emails from the DNC. Trump and his inner circle may not have been directly implicated, but they’ve chosen to surround themselves with criminals. It’s also a proven fact that Trump was doing a deal with Russia during the campaign, Jared had a back channel setup with Russia, The Steele dossier which hasn’t been discredited. The Mueller report needs to be released to the public and more investigations need to occur regarding the not so coincidental ties between Trump and Russia. I want to know why Mueller declined charges and also if any other investigations were farmed out to other departments. The public needs to know.

[FAH1223]

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[Ruzious]

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Basically, we still don't know what's in the Mueller report.

[montestewart]

Read on Twitter

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Barr's whitewash delivery system has helped make the Mueller report appear underwhelming, but Democratic leadership set themselves for this. Had they tailored expectations to what was actually known based on indictments, convictions, and court records, they could have focused now on loudly summarizing such concrete facts and pivoted to the next stages, without the distraction of having to account for unrealized expectations to a chorus of HA! YOU MAD?

Pelosi is some kind of survivor though (and like our president, she avoided service in Vietnam), so perhaps she has some some marked cards up her sleeve.

[Ruzious]

Matt Taibbi just authored the authoritative analysis of the colossal failure of the mainstream media throughout this entire "Russiagate" experience. If any of you partisan Democrats have the stones to do it, I recommend you read the whole thing. It's absolutely devastating. Again, this is Matt Taibbi. A left-of-center journalist who specializes in investigating corruption, be it in government, banks, or big business. He's one of the best reporters in the industry.

There's so much in here, it's hard not to quote the whole thing. Some excerpts:

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”

In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump’s campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have “leverages of pressure” on Trump.

CNN told us Trump officials had been in “constant contact” with “Russians known to U.S. intelligence,” and the former director of the CIA, who’d helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller’s probe, said the President was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” committing acts “nothing short of treasonous.”

Hillary Clinton insisted Russians “could not have known how to weaponize” political ads unless they’d been “guided” by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, “It’s pretty hard not to.” Harry Reid similarly said he had “no doubt” that the Trump campaign was “in on the deal” to help Russians with the leak.

None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the “overwhelming and bipartisan” standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele’s results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele’s revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, “literally spent weeks and months trying to run down” the Cohen story.

“We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,” he said, “and came away empty.”

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen’s name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn’t get a mention in Miller’s own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he’d published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.”

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink” in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story, but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review, Fox, The Daily Caller. The Washington Post’s response was to run an editorial sneering at “How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen’s testimony.”

Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff’s September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, “U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with “high ranking sanctioned officials” in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called “stove-piping,” i.e. officials using the press to “confirm” information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous “fact check” in the Post.) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn’t serious among other things because Steele was not the “foundation” of Isikoff’s piece.

Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones, who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette, including a rumination on the “pee” episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be “mostly false.”

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don’t turn things around, this story will destroy it.

Stones, seriously? I don't have the time or the inclination. But how the f does anyone make an evaluation when we don't have the facts?

[Pointgod]

Read on Twitter

?s=21

Read on Twitter

?s=21

Barr's whitewash delivery system has helped make the Mueller report appear underwhelming, but Democratic leadership set themselves for this. Had they tailored expectations to what was actually known based on indictments, convictions, and court records, they could have focused now on loudly summarizing such concrete facts and pivoted to the next stages, without the distraction of having to account for unrealized expectations to a chorus of HA! YOU MAD?

Pelosi is some kind of survivor though (and like our president, she avoided service in Vietnam), so perhaps she has some some marked cards up her sleeve.

But impeachment is not a political winner anyways. For some reason the majority of Americans have been brainwashed to believe that impeaching a President is a bad idea no matter what crimes they might have committed. Democrats won in the midterms focusing on healthcare, wages, etc.

[Pointgod]

Matt Taibbi just authored the authoritative analysis of the colossal failure of the mainstream media throughout this entire "Russiagate" experience. If any of you partisan Democrats have the stones to do it, I recommend you read the whole thing. It's absolutely devastating. Again, this is Matt Taibbi. A left-of-center journalist who specializes in investigating corruption, be it in government, banks, or big business. He's one of the best reporters in the industry.

There's so much in here, it's hard not to quote the whole thing. Some excerpts:

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”

In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump’s campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have “leverages of pressure” on Trump.

CNN told us Trump officials had been in “constant contact” with “Russians known to U.S. intelligence,” and the former director of the CIA, who’d helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller’s probe, said the President was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” committing acts “nothing short of treasonous.”

Hillary Clinton insisted Russians “could not have known how to weaponize” political ads unless they’d been “guided” by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, “It’s pretty hard not to.” Harry Reid similarly said he had “no doubt” that the Trump campaign was “in on the deal” to help Russians with the leak.

None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the “overwhelming and bipartisan” standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele’s results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele’s revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, “literally spent weeks and months trying to run down” the Cohen story.

“We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,” he said, “and came away empty.”

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen’s name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn’t get a mention in Miller’s own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he’d published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.”

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink” in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story, but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review, Fox, The Daily Caller. The Washington Post’s response was to run an editorial sneering at “How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen’s testimony.”

Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff’s September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, “U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with “high ranking sanctioned officials” in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called “stove-piping,” i.e. officials using the press to “confirm” information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous “fact check” in the Post.) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn’t serious among other things because Steele was not the “foundation” of Isikoff’s piece.

Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones, who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette, including a rumination on the “pee” episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be “mostly false.”

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don’t turn things around, this story will destroy it.

Stones, seriously? I don't have the time or the inclination. But how the f does anyone make an evaluation when we don't have the facts?

Come on now do you expect Nate to post anything that isn’t heavily biased towards his point of view? I read the whole article and it’s a pretty good indictment of issues with the media and what they’ve gotten wrong but it completely fails in its ridiculous critique of Muellers investigation being the new WMDs. Like Glenn Greenwald Tabbibi is so far yo his own ass that he neglects to acknowledge Trump and his campaign’s behavior in implicating him. He never acknowledges clear facts like:

1. Trump continuing to talk with Putin during and after the campaign and presumably after he’d been told that Russia is interfering in the election.

2. Trumps bizarre behavior towards Putin, pretty much showing how much of a weakling he is and casting doubts on whether or not he can be objective.

3. Paul Manafort giving a Russian operative campaign polling data.

4. The email from Trump Jr and the letter Trump drafted lying about the Trump tower meeting. Even if there was nothing there, why lie about it?

5. Trump refusing to release his taxes and the questionable connections to Deutchebank and shady Russian oligarchs.

6. Roger Stone being indicted for lying to the FBI regarding stolen DNC emails.

7. Jared Kushner being denied security clearance and attempting to set up a back channel with Russia

These are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more findings that question Trump and his campaigns connections to Russia. This is nothing like the WMDs where there was manufactured evidence and everyone and their mothers knew there was zero connection between Saddam and 911. Basically he fails to address Trumps lack of transparency and already established connections to the Russian election meddling. Why at no point during the whole time did anyone at the Trump campaign not go to the FBI? I would not be surprised if more information comes out that’s not favourable to Trump, but of course Nate and STD will never acknowledge that.

[stilldropin20]

Matt Taibbi just authored the authoritative analysis of the colossal failure of the mainstream media throughout this entire "Russiagate" experience. If any of you partisan Democrats have the stones to do it, I recommend you read the whole thing. It's absolutely devastating. Again, this is Matt Taibbi. A left-of-center journalist who specializes in investigating corruption, be it in government, banks, or big business. He's one of the best reporters in the industry.

There's so much in here, it's hard not to quote the whole thing. Some excerpts:

For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something “so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.

The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election.

The betrayal narrative was not reported as metaphor. It was not “Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them.” It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump “will die in jail.”

In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump’s campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have “leverages of pressure” on Trump.

CNN told us Trump officials had been in “constant contact” with “Russians known to U.S. intelligence,” and the former director of the CIA, who’d helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller’s probe, said the President was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” committing acts “nothing short of treasonous.”

Hillary Clinton insisted Russians “could not have known how to weaponize” political ads unless they’d been “guided” by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, “It’s pretty hard not to.” Harry Reid similarly said he had “no doubt” that the Trump campaign was “in on the deal” to help Russians with the leak.

None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the “overwhelming and bipartisan” standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele’s results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele’s revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, “literally spent weeks and months trying to run down” the Cohen story.

“We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,” he said, “and came away empty.”

This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen’s name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn’t get a mention in Miller’s own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he’d published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

It was the same when Bob Woodward said, “I did not find [espionage or collusion]… Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard.”

The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he’d succumbed to “groupthink” in the WMD episode and added, “I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder” – didn’t push very hard here, either. News that he’d tried and failed to find collusion didn’t get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

There was a CNN story, but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review, Fox, The Daily Caller. The Washington Post’s response was to run an editorial sneering at “How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen’s testimony.”

Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff’s September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, “U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.” The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with “high ranking sanctioned officials” in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called “stove-piping,” i.e. officials using the press to “confirm” information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous “fact check” in the Post.) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn’t serious among other things because Steele was not the “foundation” of Isikoff’s piece.

Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones, who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette, including a rumination on the “pee” episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be “mostly false.”

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don’t turn things around, this story will destroy it.

Stones, seriously? I don't have the time or the inclination. But how the f does anyone make an evaluation when we don't have the facts?

you're not suggesting that you (alone or collectively with the other nincumpoops armchair investigators) know more about investigating a crime than the 8 angry democrats and bob mueller, are you?

I mean why are you guys struggling to accept Donald Trump won the presidency fair and square. "russian meddling" amounted to 13 trolls in a basement that supported all 3 of bernie, HRC, and Trump and that meddling was meant to do nothing but sow discord. And nobody but You(and the rest of the angry libs) are, heretofore, discorded.

Instead...when the Obama intel community and DOJ understood that russia was attempting to infiltrate the Trump campaign...why didn't they tell him??? Simple as that???

Did they not tell him because instead of simply telling him to look out for it...that instead they could use the fact that they were infiltrating the trump campaign to surveil the trump campaign????? <--Because you know...that's quite a big deal.

And fi you dont think its a big deal then i want trump Intel community and DOJ do the exact same thing in 2020 and 2024:wait for foreign agents to contact the opposition party...and you bet your ass they will contact and lobby the oppposiiton...be it russians, chinese, whatever...and then i want trump to order a counter intel investigation and surveil the crap out of them...and worse...leak the info so as to use it against them.

And then i want to see how the libs feel about that. Because that is exactly what they did to trump. And everybody knows it. Ive known it for 2.5 years. The information literally came out in Novemeber and December 2016!!!! lower echelon FBI leaked what the upper level FBI was up to. And Pompeo leaked what the CIA was up to based on briefings from Comey to Clapper and brennen and eventually Pompeo when he was CIA chief. Sara carter, Jon Solomon have been reporting on this for over 2 years. They have been right the entire time!!!! nate33 and I have been right the entire time.

Look: a counter intel investigation is solely for the president of the united states becauese he is the only person in charge of naitonal security. Obama signed off on this!!! And if you guys are ok with president Obama ordering a counter intel investigation into Trump then you better be OK with Trump doing the exact same thing in 2020 and 2024. And trump is pissed the eff off!!! He will be no holds barred about this. He'll keep no quarters except the ones he wants to torture.

So either denounce what Obama and Comey did in 2016-jan 2017 and carried out through the end of the mueller investigation (because that is where the entire thing ended up). And by denounce I do mean impeach the bum Obama ex post facto OR open wide and bend over and ready BOTH of your sphincters for a 2 year long spit roast in 2020...and I'm talking every single democrat running for office. If one single foreign actor interacts with any of these candidates...i want to see a full blown counter intel into every single one of them with FISA 1 (2 jump warrants)...if they go get a coffee with an old high school acqauintanece i want it not only surveilled but leaked for all to see...because you know...the american people have a right to know who they are voting for.



Bring it on biotches!!!!!

[dckingsfan]

The Rs have lost their collective minds... they don't have a plan B and that is going to kill them in 2020. A supermajority of Rs, Ds and Is support protecting people who have pre-existing conditions .

Department had previously argued to keep the law mostly intact, but that the law's protection of pre-existing conditions needed to be struck down.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/entire-aca-is-unconstitutional-justice-department-says-agreeing-with-texas-court-ruling-2019-03-25

[dckingsfan]

Oops - this will kill them in 2020 too...

Based on the QSS data, economists at JPMorgan estimated that fourth-quarter GDP could be cut to a 1.8 percent rate when the government publishes its revision next Thursday.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-03-21/us-services-data-suggests-downward-revision-to-fourth-quarter-gdp

[dckingsfan]

Yikes... we can't get rid of this Administration fast enough.

The budget gap widened to $234 billion in February, compared with a fiscal gap of $215.2 billion a year earlier. That gap surpassed the previous monthly record of $231.7 billion set seven years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biggest-budget-deficit-20190322-story.html

[montestewart]

Rs were banking more on this outcome than Ds were banking on the other. A Trump Over America tour, a bunch of proclamations and executive orders, more tax cut and deregulation proposals, and more smoke machines. "YOU MAD?" is basically the follow up plan. Going forward, the Trump speech cut up tapes will be fabulous.

PS: STD, your "sphinter" reference is sophomorically homophobic and makes light of sexual assault. Was that your intent?

[I_Like_Dirt]

Yikes... we can't get rid of this Administration fast enough.

The budget gap widened to $234 billion in February, compared with a fiscal gap of $215.2 billion a year earlier. That gap surpassed the previous monthly record of $231.7 billion set seven years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biggest-budget-deficit-20190322-story.html

The problem with financing an economy on government deficits is that it isn't actually a great economy if it needs to be financed that way. At that point, it's become a parasitic economy that is feeding off the state and slowly sucking it dry.

[stilldropin20]

Rs were banking more on this outcome than Ds were banking on the other. A Trump Over America tour, a bunch of proclamations and executive orders, more tax cut and deregulation proposals, and more smoke machines. "YOU MAD?" is basically the follow up plan. Going forward, the Trump speech cut up tapes will be fabulous.

PS: STD, your "sphinter" reference is sophomorically homophobic and makes light of sexual assault. Was that your intent?

no. god no. absolutley not. most of my closest friends are gay. and I believe in the kinsey scale. I think everyone is about 80% straight. I am pro homo. and fully support gay marriage. and said so many times!

[dckingsfan]

Yikes... we can't get rid of this Administration fast enough.

The budget gap widened to $234 billion in February, compared with a fiscal gap of $215.2 billion a year earlier. That gap surpassed the previous monthly record of $231.7 billion set seven years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biggest-budget-deficit-20190322-story.html

The problem with financing an economy on government deficits is that it isn't actually a great economy if it needs to be financed that way. At that point, it's become a parasitic economy that is feeding off the state and slowly sucking it dry.

I hear you... and then you have Trump wanting to expand the military and then we have those that want to increase social program spending and then Trump's tax stimulus and then another discussion on wild stimulus plans

Are there no grownups in the room - where did they all go? I guess you have Pelosi and PAYGO.