Guiliani says, anything goes

Politics and Social Issues
1

Guiliani went on Meet the Press, and apparently a few others this morning, and said it’s okay to get leaked documents from foreign agents, as long as the data in the documents is true and valuable, and you don’t work with them directly to get it. Basically signalling to all foreign agents to go ahead and spy on us.

Clips are started to get posted, but I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t have a long commercial in front of it.

Chuck Todd pressed him on why Trump is not mad at Russia for attempting to disrupt our elections, but is instead mad at his own departments, Rudy said this was obvious. He’s more concerned about our own agencies investigating wrongdoing by our citizens and elected officials than he is about the wrongs of other nations. This is our leadership folks. The 1% have taken off their masks.

2

Let’s define collusion as: 2 parties nefariously taking actions that are informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.

By that definition the Mueller Report reveals a boatload of evidence that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia. But that doesn’t meet the standard of “coordination” as defined by the Mueller investigation. Thus all of the collusion that was shown to have taken place, cannot be established as criminal.

So yes, Bernie and his campaign, could, for example, collude with Russia in the same way that the Trump campaign has been shown to have done, and not be breaking the law. Russia would not have the same advantage of flying beneath the radar in social media as well as they did for Trump in the 2016 election, but I imagine that they are always upgrading their capacities. Bernie could just espouse a policy of ending sanctions against Russia, and maybe announce in his speeches, occasionally, that Russia, if they are listening should dig up dirt on Trump and have it publicly released. Russia is well experienced now, in determining the best timing to release such dirt.

Joe Biden, for example, could have a similar collusion relationship with China. As long as there is no tacit or explicit coordination, it would not be a crime. As long as Bernie and Joe were able to keep their collusion opaque from the American public, these collusion activities could make the difference in one of them beating Trump in 2020.

Then once one of them became POTUS, he would be above the law, anyway, as is our current POTUS. The Dept of Justice will not indict a sitting POTUS for any crime even with clear evidence. And in our purely partisan govt, as long as neither the Dems or Repubs control 2/3 of the Senate, then neither can successfully impeach and evict a POTUS from office. The only possible remaining ways for the POTUS to have to face criminal charges for any offense, would be 1) by State rather than Federal laws (tho the stacked Supreme Court might well still protect a Repub POTUS); OR 2) being voted out of office before the statute of limitations runs out on any particular offense.

 

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Lausten, I never considered myself as part of the 1%, but you must. I don’t give a damn about Russia. If we can’t stop wrongdoings by our own government agencies, then we really don’t have anything worth protecting from other countries. And if a county like Russia can expose corruption in our system and we can’t. What the hell does that tell us?

4

By that definition the Mueller Report reveals a boatload of evidence that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia.

Great spin. Do any Republicans that aren’t against Trump agree with you? One report, two different results. I am going to the store latter today. Need to pick up some food. But how can I tell what food may be involved with Russia? The containers or the ink on the labels. The metal in the cans. Damn, you got me worried. I don’t want to be colluding with Russia.

5

Mike said “…I am going to the store latter today. Need to pick up some food. But how can I tell what food may be involved with Russia? The containers or the ink on the labels. The metal in the cans. Damn, you got me worried. I don’t want to be colluding with Russia.”

TimB replies: Per my operational definition of collusion, (which is basic and simple, which was not at all defined by the Mueller investigation, in which the term “collusion” was not considered at all in establishing a crime), buying vodka or caviar won’t be collusion. So your attempt at a biting analogy is a bit pathetic.

Collusion (my definition): 2 parties nefariously taking actions that are informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.

There is nothing about you buying a can of Russian caviar or a bottle of Vodka, that can fit my definition of collusion. (Why should anyone bother with my definition of collusion? I suggest it is because Trump, et al, have not defined the term that he has thrown about thousands of times. The Mueller investigation did not define the term. Media members who regularly use and throw about the term have not defined it.)

The Mueller report has copious evidence of Trump and his campaign, on the one hand, and elements associated with the Russian govt, on the other hand, taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.

That is not a “nice try” assertion as you tried to declare, Mike. It is in black and white textual form in the Mueller report. A veritable boatload of evidence of massive collusion is there, if you have the self discipline to read and comprehend the report.

Again, the Mueller investigation and report made zero attempt to determine or establish “collusion”. They did, OTOH, define “coordination”. By their definition of coordination and the legal definition of conspiracy, they did NOT establish that the Trump campaign committed a crime. Coordination and conspiracy was NOT established. Had they been trying to establish collusion, by my definition, they would have established it many times over, by virtue of the evidence published in the report.

 

 

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There is NO question that the Russian govt took vast sweeping as well as specific strategic actions that were informed by or responsive to the Trump Campaign. (Read the Mueller report. There is too much there to put in a post.) There is also obvious evidence of the Trump campaign taking actions that were responsive to and informed by what the Russian govt wanted.

Trump colluded fabulously with the Russian govt, and may be continuing to do so, even now. He can certainly collude at the same level in the upcoming campaign, without fear of any subsequent DOJ investigation establishing a crime.

7

Romney is not controlled by Trump, because he just got elected. He cannot be primaried. Trump’s base can primary any Republican that is facing re-election. Thus Republican senators who want to keep their jobs have to fall in behind any inane, insane, profane, law-breaking, constitutional degrading, policy or statement or tweet that comes out of our current POTUS’s butt.

8

Black’s Law Dictionary defines collusion as “a deceitful agreement or compact between two or more persons, for the one party to bring an action against the other for some evil purpose, as to defraud a third party…”

Tim, I picked this article because it used the Black’s Law Dictionary. Which is what I use for most legal terms. Unless it is a term being used by a certain department of the government. Then I must check the departments bylaws. Agencies create regulations (also known as “rules”) under the authority of Congress to help government carry out public policy. And then they sometimes get to rule and govern those rules(laws). The departments write their own meanings of what words means.

What I understand here is that the Black’s Law Dictionary would have to be used for the fear of any other definition being contested in the supreme court and a ruling could come down that congress would have to go to work and make all the laws.

Point being. I disagree, the meaning is defined.

That copious evidence you are talking about is by attorneys who hate Trump and put people in jail that the supreme court over turned unanimously a couple of times. And were caught withholding evidence in those cases. Saying nothing of putting 10,000 people out of work. I don’t even know why I bother about the 10,000 people put out of work. The Democrats have never or ever will feel sorry for that.

If you think for one minute that they would not have charged Trump on evidence that was false and made of lies. You need to change your drugs. What happened is William Barr. The report was written for Jeff Sessions. Mueller had no business even being in charge. Just like the election, you had the deck stacked in your favor and still lost. But if Sessions was still there, Trump would have been charged.

All you are doing is taking a cow paddy and dressing it up with frosting and trying to sell it as a cake. And the American working people are not buying it. But you are doing some good for the upper American elite who need to justify their view points. You are telling them they were right, and the crooked republicans and president are dishonest.

What you need to say is that the Mueller report was what the title implies. A report. A report for the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. But Jeff Sessions stepped out of the picture and now Rod Rosenstein oversaw the report.

To be honest, we would have to say the report was written for Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein is responsible for picking Mueller to lead the investigation.

Devin Nunes has started to investigate the investigators. It’s high time the American people find out who weaponized the FBI and then used them in an illegal attempt to influence an election and that failed to overthrow a duly elected president.

Besides being part of the fake Fisa Court surveillance scam that spied on the Trump campaign. Rosenstein worked with Andy McCabe and should have been removed from the FBI.

Tim, we are going to have two years of looking at what will turn out to be one of the biggest scams in American history. And you are going to leave this out of your viewpoints.

 

Note, sorry for making this so long. I would like to be able to box your statements and then reply. But I cannot get that tool to work on my computer.

9

Going by Black’s definition of collusion, which is:
“A deceitful agreement or compact between two or more persons, for the one party to bring an action against the other for some evil purpose, as to defraud a third party of his right.”

Note: There is no law that makes collusion, by itself, a crime, or if there is, the Mueller investigation did not consider it.

Still, the Trump campaign and Russian govt colluded to defraud the American ppl of having a free and fair election (an election free of an adversarial government’s influence.) Trump and his campaign lied repeatedly and frequently about any contacts with or association with Russia. The Russian govt was devoted to helping Trump become POTUS and acted aggressively accordingly. The Trump campaign made it clearly known that they were open to help from Russia. That sounds like a deceitful agreement to me. Hence Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia, even with your definition.

The Mueller report only stated that the term “collusion” is not a legal term and that they did not use it as a part of the framework of establishing whether a crime was committed. They defined “coordination” and used the legal term of conspiracy to indicate that they did not establish that the Trump campaign had done the crime of coordinated conspiracy.

Thus the Mueller report did not establish the crime of conspiracy, but also made no claims re: collusion. Trump has claimed thousands of times that there was “no collusion”. He is a blatant, shameless, liar.

 

Mike, with your upside-down, inside-out, backwards view of our political landscape, I think that you are compelled to trash the Mueller report, because it holds too much verified truth. You support a perspective that is founded on Trump lies. Aside from your desperate need to discard the truths, using your retro-fitted jury-rigged conspiracy allegations, you would also deny the American ppl from knowing how Russia interfered in the 2016 election. This makes further Russian interference and interference from other adversarial entities more likely to be effective.

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My my, digging up dirt is not collusion. Not a “deceitful agreement” either. America will get to understand the difference between what research is and what fraud is in the coming couple of years as we look into the DNC, FBI, CIA and DOJ actions against Trump.

Mike, with your upside-down, inside-out, backwards view of our political landscape…

I agree. You got that right. The “our” is the upper caste thinking. My thinking is against both the Democrats and the Republicans when they do not follow The Laws of Nature and the Constitution. The political system is full of greed and low morals today. We really need to drain the swamp.

I don’t follow soccer, but there was some sort of big play off games in Russia last year. People from all over the world went to Russia for the games. A month after the games. Russia was still having trouble getting people to leave. The people loved it there and didn’t want to leave. Russia is a more Christian nation than America. Who is painting a picture of all this evil that we need to be fighting? The Democrats. Who does the fake news follow? The Democrats.

America collaborated with Russia on using the Soyuz-FG spacecraft to bring astronauts to the International Space Station. VP Pence said a week ago the U.S. wants to continue international cooperation and collaboration with Russia.

According to your thinking this might be collusion. What Russia did for Trump they also did for Hillary and other candidates. Is that not correct? You’re just taking what was standard methods and changing the goalposts to degrade our president is all. What are the Democrats goals besides trying to take down Trump? Taking people’s rights away and adding more regulations and taxes. Today the government said again that the Soc Sec system does not have long until is broke. Is anyone listening?

The working people understand Mueller’s entrapment methods. If I ask you, if you have been approximately to any Russians lately. And you said no. Then, I could claim you were at the shopping center and there were Russians there. You were going down the freeway and there were also Russians driving on the same freeway. Therefore, you are lying to me and I will have to charge you for evasion and misleading statements. Of course, I would look silly. But no sillier that Mueller looks right now to the working people of America.

I guess I will spell it out for you. When you are calling Trump inane, insane, profane, law-breaking, constitutional degrading. The people love Trump and he is the only voice they have had that really represents them in their lifetime. They take your words as if you are calling them the names too. Why do you not understand that? Maybe a little too much TDS is blocking your vision. President Trump has no problem in quickly filling an arena to listen to his speech. And you can’t stand a word he says. That my friend is TDS.

I did not agree with Obama in his second term. But I never called him the names used on this site against Trump out of respect for the country and presidency. The question I have right now is how is the upper caste is going to react when the Trump campaign spying investigation gets under way and goes all the way from the DNC to Obama?

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Guiliani went on Meet the Press, and apparently a few others this morning, and said it’s okay to get leaked documents from foreign agents, as long as the data in the documents is true and valuable, and you don’t work with them directly to get it. Basically signalling to all foreign agents to go ahead and spy on us.
How do you figure?
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2+2=4

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If you really want to know about some of the lines of evidence and fundamental logic leading to conclusions rational people are making regarding Trump, the basics are easy to grasp:

Washington Post Published on Feb 22, 2019https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-tuKqPnSI Luxury condos are a great place to "clean" dirty money. Law professor Randall D. Eliason explains how special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Southern District of New York and the House Intelligence Committee are probing whether foreign money may have influenced President Trump. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: https://wapo.st/2QOdcqK
Then there are these pieces to the puzzle:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868

What is the real story of Donald Trump and Russia? The answer is still unclear, and Democrats in Congress want to get to the bottom of it with an investigation. But there’s no doubt that a spider web of connections—some public, some private, some clear, some murky—exists between Trump, his associates and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections. …


There’s plenty more, but it’s also plenty late and I’m plenty tired after a day of driving, but couldn’t resist peeking in.

So. I’ll just wait to hear what you have to say about these two summaries of the information at hand.

 

Don’t know how old you are, or if you know anything about Trump’s history but it’s public knowledge he is a dishonest businessman who possesses zero scruples or empathy. He uses bankruptcy as a business strategy and cheats people out of their wages as a profit strategy - that’s a gutter rat stuff. But, so many are okay with it. Profits über Alles.

Oh and yeah you ask, How you figure that? This is how:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZFBB-MntE

What’s beyond me is how so many American’s are okay with all of this, if you can explain it in a rational manner, would love to understand it.

14

Hmmm, here’s some more,

Biggest Headline Of The Mueller Report? Not 'No Collusion, No Obstruction'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYqFBc8Weas

MSNBC, Published on Apr 18, 2019

Andrea Mitchell, John Brennan, Ben Wittes, Julia Ainsley, Mimi Rocah and Betsy Woodruff join the MTPDaily to discuss the conclusions of the Mueller Report.

15

I really don’t give a crap if Trump cultists take it personally when I give honest fact based opinions on the Trump’s character defects. Those ppl are lost, anyway, until they find their way out of their morass of ignorance based faith in Trump. And if they ever do, they will recognize what ass-wipes they have been fooled into being, all along.

You want the Russians to be sweet god fearing white ppl, who want nothing more than to be our best friends. The Russian propaganda machine achieved their #1 goal of making America more divided against itself than since the Civil War. They achieved their #2 goal of having a POTUS elected who would perpetuate that schism. They have made progress in #3 goal of weakening the USA’s alliances, including NATO.

Their current #1 goal appears to be to spread the LIE that anything bad that we have heard about Russia is part of a massive hoax. And the Trumpublica machine is geared up and gung ho in spreading that LIE. This bullcrap has been a constant factor in Trumpublica - with our current POTUS always calling the Russia investigation a “witch hunt”.

Putin is not a kind sweet little man, who has been wronged by sanctions, and who only wants the best for America. He wants our Democracy to fail. He wants us to fail in any way possible, so that Russia will move up a notch in esteem as a world power. He wants (aside from stealing all the money he can from his own country) to re-build the kind of imperialistic power that Russia had when it controlled the USSR.

The Mueller report holds so much evidence that confirms and adds to the reports by the free press of events of collusion and obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. It shows that Trump was lying all along when he perpetually attacked the press as being “fake news”. Trump is the fake.

You are now compelled to latch on to, and try to spread, conspiracy theories about the FBI, etc and about “Russia-gate”. Because your only avenue, with the truth coming out, is to create and spread such alternative reality conspiracy narratives. And you may be successful, as you have at least 35% of voters (those dedicated Trump cultists) acting right out of the gate.

 

 

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My post disappeared.

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I saw it for a split second, something about explainin’ things Barney style. I was looking forward to it.

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You want the Russians to be sweet god fearing white ppl, who want nothing more than to be our best friends. The Russian propaganda machine achieved their #1 goal of making America more divided against itself than since the Civil War. They achieved their #2 goal of having a POTUS elected who would perpetuate that schism. They have made progress in #3 goal of weakening the USA’s alliances, including NATO. Their current #1 goal appears to be to spread the LIE that anything bad that we have heard about Russia is part of a massive hoax. And the Trumpublica machine is geared up and gung ho in spreading that LIE. This bullcrap has been a constant factor in Trumpublica – with our current POTUS always calling the Russia investigation a “witch hunt”. Putin is not a kind sweet little man, who has been wronged by sanctions, and who only wants the best for America. He wants our Democracy to fail. He wants us to fail in any way possible, so that Russia will move up a notch in esteem as a world power. He wants (aside from stealing all the money he can from his own country) to re-build the kind of imperialistic power that Russia had when it controlled the USSR.
I don't recall anyone claiming Russians are nice white people and Putin is our friend. Neither are probably accurate, but they're not our enemy either. They also don't want war with us. Russia will inevitably be powerful and imperialistic in that region because of its geopolitical position. Nothing we can do about that.

NATO strength hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years, as it’s always been about 90% American anyway. During the cold war NATO seemed stronger because it had a concrete mission and there were more US military bases in Europe, the world has changed, and so has our foreign policy.

Divisions in America have been steadily increasing since 9-11. It’s our own making, Russia has done nothing to exacerbate the situation, as the powder keg has been lit for a long time and diversity is messy. Also, the idea that Russians brainwashed Americans into voting Trump is both unscientific – brainwashing isn’t real – and ultimately unprovable. The fact is Hillary’s victory was far from a sure thing because of her cold, robotic personality as well as Sanders diverting a lot of liberal votes. Russian interference was not even necessary.

19
The Mueller report holds so much evidence that confirms and adds to the reports by the free press of events of collusion and obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. It shows that Trump was lying all along when he perpetually attacked the press as being “fake news”. Trump is the fake.
The report has zero evidence of wrongdoing that actually matters. Maybe you don't like Trump's "character flaws" -- well too bad because they're not illegal.

As for obstruction of justice, the president has the right to fire the FBI for any reason he feels like because he serves at the president’s pleasure. Look it up.

If Trump was guilty of criminal activity then obstruction charges could be brought up, but that’s not the case.

Liberals need to move past this shit because you’re drowning in it.

20

Thatoneguy, sort of agree with you.

Except downplaying the impacts of Russian interference. People are gullible and following the climate wars fairly closely I know how much malicious misinformation is being peddled and repeated and then, there’s the Cambridge Analytical story. It would have been an entirely different media landscape has those cyber games not been going on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explained.html

https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files

 

Though in the end you’re spot on about Hilary. The way I see it many many people where waiting for something from her, some message, some humanity, some reaching through, maybe even her framing the Trump fraud in an understandable convincing speech, anything - but she never changed.<i> (It’s sad too, according to some of her supporters who have worked with her, seems she’s not really that bad, but that IceMaidenBitch thing was all we saw.) And the flippant American people gave here the finger, figuring how bad can it be.</i>