Matt Taibbi

I think the two are totally unrelated.

like is it really that difficult to acknowledge that this isn't a damn conspiracy theory but rather something that actually needs investigating and is only growing larger in volume because the White House, instead of saying "Y'know, fine, investigate, you won't find anything", is actively interfering?

remember how during inauguration week how silent the Russia story had become? It only grew to this height because he kept throwing gasoline on his own fire which led to more and more leaks. personally if an actual bipartisan investigation somehow miraculously happened and revealed there were some shady actions by individual players but no actual collusion with Russia, I'd accept it and move on, but it's impossible to get to that point when nobody will approve a special prosecutor and the White House attempts to get people inside intelligence organizations and even within the House intel committee itself to dismiss negative reports against it.

as much as I'm "yeah, weaken this administration by any legal means necessary because it's dangerous", the concept of Russia interfering in our electoral process actually DOES bother me.

OF COURSE INVESTIGATE. Just don't get your hopes up is all Taibbi is saying.

And who is the Democratic base, O' wise Frederik? Do you ever stop being smug? You were wildly wrong about EVERYTHING last election, and you're still acting like you know what the fuck you're talking about. When I make arguments, I add things like "I think" and "to me." Some of you guys have a real knack for making pronouncements without a hint of humility or uncertainty. Yeah yeah posts that sum up ilx or whatever.

that's not really all that Taibbi is saying

can we knock off this "red-baiting" and "mccarthyist" bullshit already? putin's russia is not the soviet union and nobody has lost their job or been blacklisted for sympathizing with russia. the ppl being attacked for alleged ties to russia are rich powerful reactionary creeps who are currently running the executive branch, not ordinary citizens being terrorized for their political views.

The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time, has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom ("agents of influence") to Glenn Greenwald ("Russian shill") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also "Russian shills"), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted (really, she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office ("moles"). And that's just for starters.

xxxxpost yeah and this is the same seesaw we fucking keep going through.

if Taibbi is saying "don't get your hopes up", he's addressing a small subset of a larger base that thinks there definitively was a mustache-twirly 75 point Russia interference plan that is going to take down the whole admin, whereas the rest of us are sitting here saying "idk maybe could we just ask for an investigation that isn't being run by a partisan cinderblockhead like Nunes?".

besides, "don't get your hopes up" is a fairly pointless message at this point because everything is still mostly classified so we barely have any insight into what's going to come out of it. If Trump was about to go down, the FBI and CIA wouldn't let that shit leak - they're only leaking ancillary shit atm. There's no real way to know the tenor of the investigation. And the White House keeps reacting as if investigators are getting close to something - perhaps that's their dumbshit way of handling investigations, but y'know...

People kept interpreting Schiff's comment of "no info to date to suggest active collusion" to be confirmation that there isn't and not "at this point in the investigation, we haven't seen it, yet".

DJI otm

i also can't fathom how people still want to jedi handwave away how scandals disproportionately affected Trump and Hillary as if it was purely her shittiness as a candidate that sunk her. for instance, there was way more questionable info uncovered about Trump foundation, yet whose Foundation news was the narrative that stuck after the election ended?

few things can be attached to "purely"

I don't see why Taibbi and Greenwald can't wait until the Dems take control of the Senate and/or the House in 2018 or 2010 to write stories about American liberal perfidy.

man I hope we can retroactively take back Congress in 2010

...in the style of the Liberal 8-Year Nap concluded last Jan 20.

xp

The most loyal group of Dem voters is black women, the last primary was decided mostly by black voters in the south. So... how is that not the base?

xxxxxpost

yet whose Foundation news was the narrative that stuck after the election ended?

Whose was? Seriously, I'm asking. In my world, we all moved on from the Clinton non-scandals a long time ago. I guess the right wing media kept the Clinton shit burning, but the MSM has been pretty-much focused Trump's myriad of scandals since the election.

funny, because while I would agree neither are big stories atm, whenever I see any foundation brought up, it's Clinton's (and much of that noise from liberals)

Is there any evidence that black women are clamoring for more Russia investigations?

XPOST jfc seeing Louise Mensch trotted out yet again to defend the idea that "red-baiting" is an aporopriate term to describe the situation.

Is there any evidence that black women are clamoring for more Russia investigations?

― DJI, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 4:38 PM

yeah I believe black women read newspapers and watch TV as well as white Rolling Stone readers.

stylistic similarities in the rhetoric are rather spooky xp

People who "clamor" for pols to do something are often under the illusion that lasting "results" will be forthcoming.

xpost though it doesn't break it down by women, the latest Economist/Yougov Presidential approval poll had 67% of black respondents believing there should be a special prosecutor, which was the highest response rate among the races surveyed (by 10%)

http://tu9srvbirvvtnirkmjvkmjuwnnnmyjk0cy5jbg91zgzyb250lm5lda00.g00.realclearpolitics.com/g00/2_d3d3LnJlYWxjbGVhcnBvbGl0aWNzLmNvbQ%3D%3D_/TU9SRVBIRVVTNiRodHRwczovL2QyNWQyNTA2c2ZiOTRzLmNsb3VkZnJvbnQubmV0L2N1bXVsdXNfdXBsb2Fkcy9kb2N1bWVudC80eG9scjg4am0zL2Vjb25UYWJSZXBvcnQucGRm_$/$/$/$/$

XPOST jfc seeing Louise Mensch trotted out yet again to defend the idea that "red-baiting" is an aporopriate term to describe the situation.

― Nerdstrom Poindexter, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 1:41 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she's getting cosigned by a lot of internet liberals and hillary men, and has had an op-ed in the times, so the idea that her batshittery is irrelevant to the matter at hand doesn't really hold too much water. though she's clearly the ne plus ultra of this shit - i guess along with kendzior.

xpost lol ok that link doesn't work. but you can get to it on REalClearPolitics.

also 71% of the Black respondents believed Congress should investigate Russia, which was also the highest response rate among the races surveyed.

louise mensch is obviously a kook, but focusing on her loopy twitter rants as opposed to the actual in-depth coverage of the trump gang's various connections to russia (some of which is probably benign and some of which might not be) that we've been reading in, like, the new york times for months and months strikes me as kind of weird

and yeah i know mensch has been published in the NYT, remembered that a half-second after i hit "submit post"

My encounters with "something Louise Mensch said" align ALMOST entirely with "straw woman being deployed" or "lol what an obvious dipshit". But I still have to see Greenwald unironically referenced as someone of value, which is particularly egregious/trollish wrt this particular issue.

Thanks for jumping in to troll me, Alfred.

If this Russia stuff ends up bringing down Trump, I'll be completely stoked. I just fear we're going to end up in a typical no true quid-pro-quo situation (similar to the Clinton Foundation stories) that will peter out and end up going nowhere. And then we've created our own derangement syndrome, as Taibbi notes, which doesn't actually help convince anyone that dems are better than republicans.

Who cares? It's driving Trump and his supporters nuts!

That's where the GOP is at this point - their entire policy agenda seems to be "what drives liberals nuts? Let's do that!" Are you all looking at that with cold-eyed realism or something and thinking it's a good way to run a party?

This was a more interesting take on liberal conspiracy hysteria than Taibbi's: http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/trump-conspiracy-tweetstorms-are-the-infowars-of-the-le-1793957969

xpost how, exactly, is the left doing that? most of the actions/statements by Dem Congressmen in the last month or so have been in response to the very partisan turn the investigation seemed to be taking, the Sessions controversy, etc. I don't see anybody but Maxine Waters throwing the "i" word around at every turn.

she's getting cosigned by a lot of internet liberals and hillary men, and has had an op-ed in the times, so the idea that her batshittery is irrelevant to the matter at hand doesn't really hold too much water. though she's clearly the ne plus ultra of this shit - i guess along with kendzior.

Even if you set aside the fawning Guardian profile / NYT editorial space and dismiss her as an outlier, there is enough background noise about cracking down on 'fake news' to make journalists worried. Elected officials have proposed banning Russia Today, sites including ProPublica and Alternet have been defamed as Russian shills by unaccountable activist groups given a platform by mainstream newspapers, Facebook has just set up a $14m consortium to 'restore trust to journalism', etc. Greenwald, Taibbi, and even staunch Putin critics like Masha Gessen, are relentlessly accused of being in on, or dupes for, a grand conspiracy.

that was good. xxpost

That's where the GOP is at this point - their entire policy agenda seems to be "what drives liberals nuts? Let's do that!" Are you all looking at that with cold-eyed realism or something and thinking it's a good way to run a party?

We have evidence, they did not; plus, Trump is a minority president whose approval ratings are lower than my cholesterol numbers. That's the difference.

You're edging awfully close to those Dems who think we shouldn't filibuster Gorsuch because of the Sanctity of the Senate.

I thought I was fighting against those people. Dammit.

Wait, we have evidence?

When you are being kicked repeatedly while lying on the ground, the response isn't "be better than them, the punches will stop hurting"

Xpost circumstantial evidence is still evidence. Just because there isn't a magical smoking gun to tie together an explosive conspiracy atm doesn't mean it's only mediocre innuendo

If anything the evidence probably looks weaker because minor details are being leaked in retaliation for Trump's weird offensives. Anything bigger would be too big to reveal (or doesn't exist)

I don't think Putin's stupid enough to leave behind any smoking-gun-level evidence tbh

pee tape or gtfo

Yeah I don't expect anything big to come out either but the fact that Flynn resigned and Sessions recused himself, and Roger Stone openly bragging about colluding means we're past a point where we say things like "there's evidence?"

that's gen called smoke, in legal environments

Still not past that point :P
xpost

...for me

Interested to know what classified info you've seen

It depends on what you want evidence for. The evidence for Russia hacking the DNC was already pretty strong last summer, and Trump-people repeatedly were in contact with Russians anyway, and lied about it. That's scandalous in and of itself.

But evidence of actual collusion... I haven't really seen any.

xpost yeah I don't even know if everybody agrees on what the 'endgame' is likely to be. evidence of what? minor collusion? impeachable offenses?

meanwhile there's an assload of smoke and Trump admin is saying "that smoke is coming from Obama's house, probably some Islamic reefer smoking ceremony or something"

None of this seems anywhere near as scandalous as running a fake university boiler-room scheme that bilked thousands of people out of their life savings. Or running a phony foundation that has been proved to be self-dealing. Or being on tape talking about assaulting women.

Ugh this is why I removed bookmarks on all of the politics threads. Sorry everyone.