Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Maybe they thought hard evidence of what everyone already knew would somehow affect the election. You know, if you ignore the university, steaks, ties, bottled water, casinos, airlines ...

It was more about finding out whether or not there were conflicts of interest between his businesses and his policies, which these two pages really don't answer. Considering how little noise there's been from the White House over this leak as opposed to when anything else leaks and how little information you can actually get from these pages you could make an argument that this administration purposefully leaked it themselves to try to both quiet some noise left over from the elections and distract from the rest of the nonsense that comes out of the führer's mouth.

Or, while I may not be a fan and am totally trying to treat everyone equally but this totally answers everything perfectly and nothing else should be asked.

He's distracting us from the distractions by using distractive stuff.

That's okay Trump promised he'd never play golf while President, so it shouldn't have any effect right?

I think you mean "two activists". Activists in robes. Activists in robes dedicated to preserving balance.

Druids. Trumps's travel ban was blocked by druids.

Noobs are in cloth armor, that's the problem. They aren't priests or mages, so shouldn't be rolling on that armor in the first place.

Edited, Mar 16th 2017 7:41am by someproteinguy

So apparently yesterday there was an interview with 45 and Tucker Carlson, where when asked about the wiretaps he said he found out about them when he was reading the New York Times, and then watching Fox News and the word "wiretap" appeared on both.

Edited, Mar 16th 2017 2:45pm by lolgaxe

Huh? It's not about how I feel, or whether I believe in one thing sans evidence or another thing sans evidence. I'm speaking specifically and directly about the media reaction to claims about Obama wiretapping the Trump campaign versus the media reaction to claims about Trumps campaign colluding with the Russians. I'm reasonably certain I made this exact point earlier:




Again. My point has been that both claims have little to no evidence to support them. Both should be treated with a large grain of salt. But I'm seeing a massive disconnect in terms of how each claim is being reported and thus how the public perception of them is different. My point about how different the reaction would have been if it had been Obama making the claim about the Bush administration spying on his campaign was directly aligned with that point. So I'm not sure how you got so far off said point.



No it's not a "distraction", unless by distraction, you really mean "excellent point that puts the event being discussed in proper relative perspective".



What other people may believe is not the point. What I would actually be doing is. And in that case, I'd have the exact same response I've had to every single one of these sorts of issues. I would take a "let's wait for the facts to come out" position. Sure, I might engage in speculative discussion. And yes, if there's an overwhelming theme of "he's guilty!" prior to said facts emerging, I would respond to those in a manner that someone like yourself might interpret as "arguing Bush's innocence". But I'm really arguing "let's not assume someone is guilty until we have actual proof". You know, the standard we're actually supposed to follow for such things?

I'll repeat something I've mentioned many times on this forum. If it appears as though my statements and positions are biased, it's because I'm responding to an overwhelming bias on this forum. If you don't hear me defending or excusing the actions of Democrats often on this forum, it's because there's almost no attacks against, arguments against, or accusations made against Democrats on this forum. If I were posting on a Right leaning forum, and it was chock full of people insisting that "Obama is a Muslim and here's the proof!", or "Obama was born in Kenya, cause here's his Kenyan birth certificate!", or "Obama had Trump tapped, cause here's the story on Breitbart that says so!", I'd be arguing against them, with the same sorts of argument I'm using here. I'd similarly be assessing the likelihood of one action versus another, one theory versus another, and weigh the odds of one versus the other. And you know what? I'd likely be labeled as some crazy anti-American liberal for it too (which would be funny really).



The funny thing is that I actually am. But I'm in an environment where nearly no one else is, so my "centrist" position appears to be biased in opposition to the bias of those in this environment. How many times do I have to say that I put the same amount of weight on claims that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians as I do that the Obama administration tapped the Trump campaign for this to sink in? The reason this appears biased, is because nearly everyone else posting here does not place the same weight on those claims. So to them, it appears as though I'm defending Trump on the whole collusion thing, and then defending Trump again with his claim of wiretapping. When the truth is that I'm taking the exact same "we don't know if it's true, so lets not make any assumptions" in both cases.


I'm trying to get people on this forum to stop picking a position based on the "side" they are on, and rather pick a position because it's objectively true. And in the absence of objective truth, speculate equally in both directions. Weigh possibilities, without assuming conclusions. Why is this so hard for so many people to do? I have no problem at all speculating about the possibility of Trump colluding with the Russians. I have, in fact, done just that. The difference is that I don't assume it's true from the start. And I weigh that possibility against other possibilities (like that the Russians had nothing to do with the leak to wikileaks, and the evidence of Russian malware is just a red herring, or that the Russians did leak the info, but there was no collusion with the Trump campaign). I've even proposed alternative ways that the information could have been leaked, and weighed the likelihood of those ways against the one being claimed.

Guess what? I also have no problem speculating about possible ways the government might have spied on the Trump campaign. I've weighed possibilities that it may not have happened at all, or that it did happen but there were legitimate cause for the taps, or that it happened incidentally while tapping foreign parties (and even the potential that this could still be a violation of FISA), and yes, I've even examined the possibility of a completely off the books illegal spying operation that didn't involve FISA at all (cause, you know, that's still a possibility). I have no problem examining these possibilities, and don't feel the need to tie myself to any of them. That's what you don't get. When I say "It's possible that <alternative thing> could have happened", it's not because I believe it did, or want to believe it did, or even want to sway others into believing it did. I say that because I honestly enjoy the mental exercise of examining possibilities.

Obviously, this does not preclude me having an opinion about what I think is the most likely explanation, but that's just my opinion. Good for discussion, but I find it less than useful to berate someone merely for having a different opinion than you do. It's not like I tie my personal worth to whether a given position I've taken on an issue turns out to be true or not. It's usually just not that important.

I dunno, the anti-Bush Truthers got a label attached to them. It's more about the insanity of your conspiracy theories than your partisan alignment.

No need to ask questions, it'll be before the Supreme Court by December.

Okay, so there's no evidence because Obama used London's spies to wiretap 45's microwave. IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

This is actually fairly plausible, based on FVEY documentation I've looked at. It's happened before to presidential candidates.