US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[u crank]

A little bit of criticism about Jane Mayer's recent article on Christopher Steele in The New Yorker. It's aptly titled "Jane Mayer’s Publicity Work for Christopher Steele".

https://spectator.org/jane-mayers-pu...topher-steele/

Jane Mayer’s long, lionizing profile of Christopher Steele, the former British spy the Democrats hired to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, is propaganda for the ruling class, premised on its usual double standards and appeals to its own authority. For those who bother to slog through the piece, they will need an interpretive key, which is: if a liberal conducts political espionage, it can’t be partisan and wrong.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by u crank

A little bit of criticism about Jane Mayer's recent article on Christopher Steele in The New Yorker. It's aptly titled "Jane Mayer’s Publicity Work for Christopher Steele".

https://spectator.org/jane-mayers-pu...topher-steele/

Odd, thing about that op-ed piece, it doesn't actually give any solid, verifiable refutation of the facts given in the New Yorker article, its just a long screed of Far-Right oft-refuted claims and wild allegations of no substance; maybe I should quote from a noted authority on the matter:

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Evaluations are a systematic determination of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards.

Once you determined what those standards are you should be able to determine the point you no longer trust or in fact do trust them.

What I think you heard was an opinion. Opinions are judgements made in the mind. And as we all know opinions are like arseholes, everyone got one.

Maybe with a little tweaking of the quote you supplied:

Fox News’s [et. al] long, lionizing profiles and reportages of Donald Trump, the failing president the GOP is saddled with is propaganda for his minority of supporters and apologists, premised on its usual double standards and appeals to its own authority. For those who bother to slog through the Trump Newspeak, they will need an interpretive key, which is: if a Far-Right commentator conducts a falsehood, smear or deflection, it can’t be partisan and wrong.

Nicely fixed...












<O>

[u crank]

Originally Posted by vienna

Odd, thing about that op-ed piece, it doesn't actually give any solid, verifiable refutation of the facts given in the New Yorker article, its just a long screed of Far-Right oft-refuted claims and wild allegations of no substance;

So let me see if I understand this logic. When a very left biased journalist, writes an article in a very left biased publication that's basically written in stone truth that's beyond criticism? Mayer has a long history of attacking conservatives and could hardly be considered anything but a left wing/progressive hack. That's my op-ed opinion.

Some 'refutation of the facts'....

The piece reads like an Adam Schiff memo, with Mayer peddling the Democratic spin at every turn. Steele, we’re told, is a staggeringly talented spy, but not quite talented enough to know the origins of the funding for his dossier.

Mayer’s treatment of the Winer-Steele-Shearer part of the story is comically dishonest. Once again, our omniscient spy doesn't know anything. Steele, according to Mayer, didn't know that Cody Shearer is “tied to the Clintons,” and so passes on his dossier to the FBI in perfect innocence. Yet at the end of the piece we’re told that Strobe Talbott has known “Steele professionally for ten years” and praises him. But Mayer never tells readers that Talbott is Shearer’s brother-in-law. That would have been too embarrassing and inconvenient and so she leaves it out.

It is whoppers like that one which mark Mayer out as the perfect stenographer for the ruling class and render her piece no more credible than the Steele dossier.

https://spectator.org/jane-mayers-pu...topher-steele/

As for the dossier.....

A private company had minute by minute intelligence on the Manchurian Candidate scheme and all the indictable illegal activity that was going on, which the CIA/NSA/GCHQ/MI6 did not have, despite their specific tasking and enormous technical, staff and financial resources amounting between them to over 150,000 staff and the availability of hundreds of billions of dollars to do nothing but this.

A private western company is able to run a state level intelligence operation in Russia for years, continually interviewing senior security sources and people personally close to Putin, without being caught by the Russian security services – despite the fact the latter are brilliant enough to install a Manchurian candidate as President of the USA. This private western company can for example secretly interview staff in top Moscow hotels – which they themselves say are Russian security service controlled – without the staff being too scared to speak to them or ending up dead. They can continually pump Putin’s friends for information and get it.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...nged-mattress/

[vienna]

Originally Posted by u crank

So let me see if I understand this logic. When a very left biased journalist, writes an article in a very left biased publication that's basically written in stone truth that's beyond criticism? Mayer has a long history of attacking conservatives and could hardly be considered anything but a left wing/progressive hack. That's my op-ed opinion.

Some 'refutation of the facts'....




https://spectator.org/jane-mayers-pu...topher-steele/

As for the dossier.....



https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...nged-mattress/

So, basically, you are using another Far-Right op-ed piece to back up another Far-right op-ed piece?...


Let's take a look at the Craig Murray piece. Firstly, the piece is dated 11 Jan 2017, three (3) full months before the New Yorker piece. I'm going to take a wild guess you still haven't actually read the New Yorker piece at all, just did a Google search for keywords to support your opinion of the opinion of the opinion; the reason I highly suspect this is a fact is because the New Yorker article covers some of the issues raised by Murray. I chose this passage because Murray, himself, apparently deemed it so vitally important a point, he actually bold printed his point and it is the only such emphasis in his article:

There is of course an extra level of venial inaccuracy here because unlike an MI6 officer, Steele himself was then flogging the information for cash. Nobody in the mainstream media has asked the most important question of all. What was the charlatan Christopher Steele paid for this dossier?

This is the danger, when dealing with developing news, in using, as a source, something that predates current situations without first affirming its current accuracy. The highly bold-faced question is answered in the New Yorker as follows:

In the spring of 2016, Orbis Business Intelligence—a small investigative-research firm that Steele and a partner had founded, in 2009, after leaving M.I.6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—had agreed to do opposition research on Trump’s murky relationship with Russia. Under the arrangement, Orbis was a subcontractor working for Fusion GPS, a private research firm in Washington. Fusion, in turn, had been contracted by a law firm, Perkins Coie, which represented both Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Several months after Steele signed the deal, he learned that, through this chain, his research was being jointly subsidized by the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. In all, Steele was paid a hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars for his work.

(Please Note: The bold type and italics are mine and not in the original article.)

If you're going to offer a rebuttal, at least try to make sure your cites are current...

I just want to also quote this little gem from the Murray piece:

...

2) Hillary Clinton is so stupid and unaware that she held compromising conversations over telephone lines whilst in Russia itself.

...

Need it be pointed out that in several instances members of the Trump campaign and the current Trump administration have themselves been upended by being "so stupid and unaware" that they "held compromising conversations" and exchanged emails while discussing their activities related to highly questionable Russia-involved matters, up to and including Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner? Granted, thus far, no one in the Trump circle has exhibited any great deal of brain power, but it is apparent stupidity know no political affiliation, yet another good reason I do not subscribe to any political party...

I would also like to address another one of Murray's assertions:

...

Michael Cohen has now stated he has never been to Prague in his life. If that is true the extremely weak credibility of the entire forgery collapses in total. What is more, contrary to the claims of the Guardian and Washington Post that the material is “unverifiable”, the veracity of it could be tested extremely easily by the most basic journalism, ie asking Mr Cohen who has produced his passport.

...

I did a Google search of the phrase "Michael Cohen Prague" and found this interesting bit of information:


This Is The Inside Of Trump’s Lawyer’s Passport --

https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycorm...9V#.vn996M8gD7

The above article is dated 5 May 2017, published eight (8) months before Murray's screed. Apparently Murray also doesn't know how to use Google properly...

...

Since the publication of an unverified 35-page dossier alleging that President Donald Trump’s associates conspired with foreign agents to help influence November’s election, one mystery has endured:

Did Trump’s longtime personal lawyer travel to Prague for a secret meeting with Russians?

Michael Cohen has repeatedly denied it. But one of his first responses in the wake of the allegations — tweeting a photograph of his passport cover — was widely criticized for failing to prove anything since it didn’t reveal the stamps inside.

So BuzzFeed News asked to see the inside pages. He said yes. We have pictures.

The passport shows Cohen has traveled the globe since 2009, the year the document was issued. There is no stamp showing Cohen visited the Czech Republic.

“Nope. Never been,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that he had visited Prague once before, in 2001.

The stamps indicate he traveled abroad at least four times in 2016: twice to London, once to St. Maarten, and once to Italy in July. The Italian trip is the most intriguing, because it places Cohen in what’s known as the Schengen Area: a group of 26 European countries, including the Czech Republic, that allows visitors to travel freely among them without getting any additional passport stamps.

...

The article goes on to note it is possible for a US citizen to have a second passport:

...

Further complicating matters is the fact that there is no way to prove, just by looking at someone’s passport, that the person does not also have a second passport, with a different set of stamps. The State Department allows second passports in some circumstances, such as when a stamp from one country would prevent a traveler from entering another. Those records are not public, a State Department official said.

Cohen denied having a second passport.


"This is my only one," he said.

...

So, we have Michael Cohen's word as a measure; however, aside from the fact he is a lawyer, the standard of truth for those thus far implicated in the activities of those involved with the Trump campaign and administration is very, very low, again, even if he is a lawyer...

I'm sure whatever are the facts regarding Cohen will come out in the Special Counsel's investigations. Until then, and a subject in which Rockstar has expressed a very keen interest, Cohen has been kept busy trying to explain the somewhat convoluted NDA arrangement Trump has had with porn star Stormy Daniels:


The White House is being suspiciously coy about Stormy Daniels --

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.5e612d6972d9














<O>

[u crank]

Originally Posted by vienna

So, basically, you are using another Far-Right op-ed piece to back up another Far-right op-ed piece?...

Perhaps you didn't notice but the first two quotes are from the same article previously quoted. You asked for 'some refutation of the facts' from that article it so I gave it to you.

As for referring to The American Spectator as Far-right, Media Bias/Fact Check puts The New Yorker at the exact same spot on the bias scale. One spot from extreme.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-yorker/

As for the quote by Murray, it was not made in reference to Mayer's article. Again, perhaps you didn't notice..new paragraph and the header...

As for the dossier.....

I'm well aware of when it was written but that has nothing to do with why I quoted a part of it. I noticed you made much of other parts of Murray's article but no comment on the section I quoted. Any thoughts?

Finally one more gem from Mayer's piece.

Obama stayed silent. All through the campaign, he and others in his Administration had insisted on playing by the rules, and not interfering unduly in the election, to the point that, after Trump’s victory, some critics accused them of political negligence. The Democrats, far from being engaged in a political conspiracy with Steele, had been politically paralyzed by their high-mindedness.

She should be writing satire for The Onion.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by u crank

Perhaps you didn't notice but the first two quotes are from the same article previously quoted. You asked for 'some refutation of the facts' from that article it so I gave it to you.

...

...and what exactly are those verifiable facts supposed to be in the quote you gave? All I see are opiniions without substance to back them up (cites, references, etc.)...

Originally Posted by u crank

...

As for the quote by Murray, it was not made in reference to Mayer's article. Again, perhaps you didn't notice..new paragraph and the header...



I'm well aware of when it was written but that has nothing to do with why I quoted a part of it. I noticed you made much of other parts of Murray's article but no comment on the section I quoted. Any thoughts?

...

Any thoughts? Yes, indeed: you tried to used an outdated article with outdated "facts" to address a current issue, not exactly a good course of action. If you want to argue the here and now, argue it with the here and now; otherwise its like trying to do chemistry with an outdated Periodical Table or navigating a changed city with an outdated map....

As for this:

Quote:
A private company had minute by minute intelligence on the Manchurian Candidate scheme and all the indictable illegal activity that was going on, which the CIA/NSA/GCHQ/MI6 did not have, despite their specific tasking and enormous technical, staff and financial resources amounting between them to over 150,000 staff and the availability of hundreds of billions of dollars to do nothing but this.

A private western company is able to run a state level intelligence operation in Russia for years, continually interviewing senior security sources and people personally close to Putin, without being caught by the Russian security services – despite the fact the latter are brilliant enough to install a Manchurian candidate as President of the USA. This private western company can for example secretly interview staff in top Moscow hotels – which they themselves say are Russian security service controlled – without the staff being too scared to speak to them or ending up dead. They can continually pump Putin’s friends for information and get it.

I had thought it is quite apparent many nations, not just the US, Russia, China, etc., make wide and very substantial use of private security companies as sources of and for the collection of intelligence of interest to their concerns. Many times, a private concern will be far more informed about possible threats than the institutional governmental agencies; the mere fact Fusion/GPS developed as much intel on the shady dealings and criminality of some of those involved with the Trump campaign and/or administration as they did while the US Federal agencies were seemingly in the dark speaks to that reality. Governments have long depended on 'third-party' intel to supplement and reinforce their own agencies' efforts, in some cases actually 'hiring' private firms to do intelligence gathering the governmental agencies cant't accomplish, for a variety of reasons. Did it ever occur to Murray, or you, that Russia may have (in my opinion, must have) had a good knowledge of Fusion/GPS' activities and chose to allow them to proceed because they saw those activities as a means of gathering intel for themselves?; intel such as exactly who on the Russian side is talking and what are they saying and what are their connections to possibly exploitable opportunities. Sometimes you don't bust the junkie if his activities might lead you to the dealer(s)...

[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by u crank

...

Finally one more gem from Mayer's piece.

...

She should be writing satire for The Onion.

Well, at least it got you to actually read something you want to criticize...

Well, let's see who Jane Mayer is (from her New Yorker bio):

Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer has been a New Yorker staff writer since 1995. She covers politics, culture, and national security for the magazine. Previously, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she covered the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1984, she became the paper’s first female White House correspondent. She is the author of the 2016 Times best-seller "Dark Money," which the Times named as one of the ten best books of the year, and which began as a 2010 New Yorker piece about the Koch brothers’ deep influence on American politics. She also wrote the 2008 Times best-seller “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals,” which was based on her New Yorker articles and was named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by N.Y.U.’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and one of the ten best books of the year by the Times. She is the co-author, with Jill Abramson, of “Strange Justice,” and, with Doyle McManus, of “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President 1984-1988.” In 2009, Mayer was chosen as Princeton University’s Ferris Professor of Journalism. Her numerous honors include the George Polk Prize, the John Chancellor Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Goldsmith Book Prize; the Edward Weintal Prize, the Ridenhour Prize, two Helen Bernstein Book Awards for Excellence in Journalism, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, the Sidney Hillman Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the James Aronson Award for social justice journalism, the Toner Prize for political reporting, the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, and, most recently, the Frances Perkins Prize for Courage.

Not a bad resume, at all and one I would trust over a niche blogger who rants rather than reports...


Regarding Obama and the situation he faced about the intel on Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 elections, here is a 23 June 2017 article about the details behind Obama's reluctance to act:


Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault --

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...=.9417b9c6a1b2















<O>

[u crank]

Originally Posted by vienna

...and what exactly are those verifiable facts supposed to be in the quote you gave? All I see are opiniions without substance to back them up (cites, references, etc.)...

Mayer’s treatment of the Winer-Steele-Shearer part of the story is comically dishonest. Once again, our omniscient spy doesn't know anything. Steele, according to Mayer, didn't know that Cody Shearer is “tied to the Clintons,” and so passes on his dossier to the FBI in perfect innocence. Yet at the end of the piece we’re told that Strobe Talbott has known “Steele professionally for ten years” and praises him. But Mayer never tells readers that Talbott is Shearer’s brother-in-law. That would have been too embarrassing and inconvenient and so she leaves it out.

Are you disputing this as fact? Substance to back it up please.

Any thoughts? Yes, indeed: you tried to used an outdated article with outdated "facts" to address a current issue, not exactly a good course of action.

Hardly. I quoted two paragraphs of an article and made no comment on it. I did not present it as facts. I'm not sure he was presenting it as facts. He prefaced the six points with...

Here are a short list of six impossible things we are asked to believe before breakfast:

Seems to me he is asking the reader if these things should be believed, not that they are qualified facts. It's something that journalists and writers do all the time. I also think he makes a good point about the Hitler Diaries comparison. The media after all has shown us just how gullible they can be. Throw in a little political bias and you're away to the races.

Did it ever occur to Murray, or you, that Russia may have (in my opinion, must have) had a good knowledge of Fusion/GPS' activities and chose to allow them to proceed because they saw those activities as a means of gathering intel for themselves?; intel such as exactly who on the Russian side is talking and what are they saying and what are their connections to possibly exploitable opportunities. Sometimes you don't bust the junkie if his activities might lead you to the dealer(s)...

So Murray and others speculate on the validity of something and you dismiss it. Then you speculate on something and I'm suppose to what? Sorry but that ain't gonna fly. You are also making an unqualified assumption about how Russian Intelligence operates. More speculation.

Well, at least it got you to actually read something you want to criticize...

What are you suggesting?

Well, let's see who Jane Mayer is (from her New Yorker bio):

I'm well aware of who Jane Mayer is, thanks anyway.

Not a bad resume, at all and one I would trust over a niche blogger who rants rather than reports...

You can trust her all you want. She is a left wing liberal entity and her resume shows that quite clearly. She railed against GW Bush for eight years and I expect she'll do the same for Trump. Hey I'm not holding that against her but I'm not under any allusion about anything she says. I have little respect for a journalist with the kind of biased writing that she has done. Of course she is not alone and they are on both sides of the political divide. Pick your poison.

Regarding Obama and the situation he faced about the intel on Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 elections, here is a 23 June 2017 article about the details behind Obama's reluctance to act:

Well you missed it again. Satire much? The accusation of course is that he did act. That he and people in his administration weaponized the DOJ and the FBI and used, lets say, less than accurate intel to accuse Trump of colluding with the Russians. I'm not saying it's true but it has not been proven to be definitively not true. If Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte get their request for a special council to investigate how the FBI handled applications to wiretap Trump associates in 2016 and 2017 we may get some insight into those accusations. Seems to me that anyone interested in justice and accountability would be in favor of that.

[burgwaechter]

who wants Obama back ?
I like him more as this Trump-.-

[August]

Originally Posted by burgwaechter

who wants Obama back ?
I like him more as this fxxcking Trump-.-

Not me. Obama and the rest of his gangsters ought to be in jail.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by August

Not me. Obama and the rest of his gangsters ought to be in jail.

I have this dreadful feeling that we are not in charge of the future
adding to that thought is the fact that if the Democrats get back into the White House (read that as power) they will utilize ex- POTUS Obama to the fullest extent to represent all of us in America, possibly as SOS.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

I have this dreadful feeling that we are not in charge of the future
adding to that thought is the fact that if the Democrats get back into the White House (read that as power) they will utilize ex- POTUS Obama to the fullest extent to represent all of us in America, possibly as SOS.

I thought the Republic was already lost anyway, Trump will just be a little bump in the road toward socialism. It was a nice dream at least.

[mapuc]

burgwaechter's comment made me think of a question to you Americans and of course others who have interest in American politics

If you could, which President would you like to see as the President of USA again ?

Markus

[burgwaechter]

Barrack Obama ! or Ronald Reagan!

[Catfish]

Trade war is officially on.

[Rockstar]

Meh, I look at the call for tariffs as political hay. Already its changed from 25% tariffs across the board to we're open to suggestions. I bet you sooner rather than later the calls for protectionism will quietly be laid to rest. BUT what's more important is it can now be said campaign promises were kept. Free trade, not protectionism is what makes the world go around. Unless of course they forgot the lessons of Smoot Hawley then we're quite possibly screwed.