[Pete Svarrior]

let's suppose y'all are right that basically no one could rationally believe that "why was there the civil war" expresses uncertainty about why there was the civil war (srsly lol). 

Gary, you keep insisting on cutting his statement in half. Trump's language is chaotic, but not hard to understand. He tends to move from extremely generalised statements towards something less general. You can't try to present the first part as a standalone statement and maintain to be accurate.

I can cherry pick your statements the same way and force a meaning onto them. Example:

fwiw i agree that that's what he probably meant.

Hey guys how inconceivable would it be to take Gary's "I agree" as something else than a statement of total agreement with us (seriously lmao!!!!!!). Therefore, Gary agrees that the article is inaccurate (nevermind his next sentence there, that doesn't affect anything)

It's dumb. We all know what Trump meant. Criticise and discuss the actual meaning of his words to your heart's content. But the moment you start inventing new meanings of his words, you damage your own credibility more than his.

i also genuinely don't want the media to rationalize anything that any president says.  i want them to report on what he did say.  if he meant something else, then that's on him.

You are literally defending the opposite of that here. It's us who want for the media to report on what Trump said instead of writing hit pieces on their own interpretation of his words.

You can't have it both ways. Either you want them to interpret and (ir)rationalise, or you don't.

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

I don't know what is going to happen. I doubt the Democratic Party will die because it does have the support of the cities, and I don't think anything that happens now will be truly catastrophic. But if they continue on the path of disillusionment they appear to currently be on, I think it could be a while before they regain the trust of the general electorate... and that could mean a stalling, if not outright reversal, of progressive ideals having an impact on government.

I wish this bothered more people.

Also third parties lol

So as long as they have somehow continue to receive the support from the cities they've destroyed, they have a chance then?

[honk]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/us/politics/sally-yates-james-clapper-russia-hearing.html

but the emails

[Pete Svarrior]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/us/politics/sally-yates-james-clapper-russia-hearing.html

but the emails

But the e-mails and a Russian spy being granted security clearance by the Obama administration!

[honk]

That's terrible. We should impeach Obama at once.

[Pete Svarrior]

That's terrible. We should impeach Obama at once.

too late ;_;

[garygreen]

yates did not suggest that flynn was ever a russian spy.  she indicts him for lying to the justice department and putting himself in a position to be compromised.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?427577-1/white-house-warned-general-flynn-compromised

so i told them again that there were a number of press accounts, statements that had been made by the vice president and other high ranking white house officials about general flynn's conduct that we knew to be untrue. and we told them how we knew that -- how we had this information, how we had acquired it and how we knew that it was untrue and we walked -- the white house council who also had an associate there with him through general flynn's underlying conduct, the contents of which i obviously cannot go through with you today because it's classified but we took him through a fair amount of detail about the underlying conduct what general flynn had done and then we walked through the various press accounts and how it had been falsely reported.

we also told the white house council that general flynn had been interviewed by the fbi on february 24th. mr. mcgann asked me how he did and i declined to give him an answer to that. and we then walked through with mr. mcgann essentially why we were telling him about this and the first thing we did was to explain to mr. mcgann that the underlying conduct that general flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself. secondly, we told him we felt like the vice president and others were entitled to know that the information that they were conveying to the american people wasn't true and we wanted to make it really clear right out of the gate that we were not accusing vice president pence of knowingly providing false information to the american people and, in fact, mr. mcgann responded back to me to let me know that anything that general flynn would've said would have been based -- anything that vice president pence said would have been based on what general flynn had told him.

we told him the third reason was is because we were concerned that the american people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what general flynn had done and additionally that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the russians also knew about what general flynn had done and the russians also knew that general flynn had misled the vice president and others, because in the media accounts it was clear that they were repeating what general flynn had told them. and that this was a problem because not only did we believe that the russians knew this but that they likely had proof of this information. and that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security advisor essentially could be black mailed by the russians.

finally, we told them that we were given them all of this information so that they could take action, the action that they deemed appropriate. i remember that mr. mcgann asked me whether or not general flynn should be fired and i told him that that really wasn't our call, that was up to them but that we were given them this information so that they could take action and that was the first meeting.

at which point the trump administration fails to even understand the implications of what they've been told, and then sit on their hands for 18 days.

that's right. one of the questions mr. mcgann asked me when i went back over the second day was essentially why does it matter to doj if one white house official lies to another white house official? and so we explained to him it was a whole lot more than that and went back over the same concerns that we had raised with them the prior day, that the concern first about the underlying conduct itself that he had lied to the vice president and others, the american public had been misled and then importantly that every time this lie was repeated and the misrepresentations were getting more and more specific as they were coming out, every time that happened, it increased the compromise and to state the obvious you don't want your national security advisor compromised with the russians.

i fail to see what any of this has anything to do with obama.  i guess he should've anticipated that flynn would lie to the next vice president and become compromised by russian intelligence?  idgi.

[Roundy]

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-courts-should-not-be-pundits-20170509-story.html

Oh look, a conservative journalist is using the Left's handling of Trump's presidency to try to make the Left look bad. Who could have ever predicted something like that I just don't know

[honk]

That article is criticizing excessive editorializing by judges in their rulings. The closest it comes to your concerns is briefly mentioning Colbert, and only then just for being lewd.

[rooster]

Yes. People have no brains - they say and think exactly what Leftist media tells them. Blame the FAKE NEWS!

[Roundy]

That article is criticizing excessive editorializing by judges in their rulings. The closest it comes to your concerns is briefly mentioning Colbert, and only then just for being lewd.

Excessive editorializing by liberal judges, which I think is right in line with my concerns. It goes deeper than editorializing though; the reporter identifies their handling of Trump's executive orders regarding the travel ban as nothing less than a gross miscarriage of justice, while also being politically motivated. And Colbert was enough a part of the story that his name is in the title.

Yes. People have no brains - they say and think exactly what Leftist media tells them.

Is this sarcasm? Because I think it's a fair reflection of most of American society (other than the people that think exactly what Rightist media tells them, of course, and the small percentage able to think for themselves).

[rooster]

I just think it's ridiculous that you're holding the media so accountable. How about we give people some personal responsibility here.

I don't get your end game with this angle. Do you want the media to be held to a higher standard? Cause there are certainly news outlets that still report without such a heavy bias. Do you want media with strong biases to be shut down? Because that sounds awfully authoritarian. I just honestly don't understand why you're placing so much blame on the media, especially ones which are basically glorified opinion pieces anyway. They are not overloads that are pulling strings in our brains. Give the people some fucking credit.

[garygreen]

not to mention that none of it is novel.  the la times piece paints a picture of some new landscape of political bias, but i don't think that's true.  the viciousness of east coast media markets is a decades-old trope, and poorly constructed rulings are as old as the courts themselves.  nothing that's happening right now is really new.  folks said the same thing during clinton's administration, and george w's, and obama's.

[Pete Svarrior]

i fail to see what any of this has anything to do with obama.  i guess he should've anticipated that flynn would lie to the next vice president and become compromised by russian intelligence?  idgi.

Or they could have not renewed security clearance for a year for a person they seriously suspected of being an insider threat shortly before the end of their term. Y'know, seriously enough to supposedly warn the next administration.

[Roundy]

I just think it's ridiculous that you're holding the media so accountable. How about we give people some personal responsibility here.

I don't get your end game with this angle. Do you want the media to be held to a higher standard? Cause there are certainly news outlets that still report without such a heavy bias. Do you want media with strong biases to be shut down? Because that sounds awfully authoritarian. I just honestly don't understand why you're placing so much blame on the media, especially ones which are basically glorified opinion pieces anyway. They are not overloads that are pulling strings in our brains. Give the people some fucking credit.

It's weird you think I have some kind of agenda with this. I'm just a concerned citizen. I have no "end game". I don't think the Media should be policed or anything like that. I just want them to stop fucking things up.

not to mention that none of it is novel.  the la times piece paints a picture of some new landscape of political bias, but i don't think that's true.

I strongly disagree. I've seen viciousness from both sides but never from the Left to the degree I'm seeing now. I guess any complaints liberals have ever had against Fox for lying and distorting facts for political purposes were inherently hypocritical, if this is actually the case. But I really don't think it is!

[rooster]

Or they could have not renewed security clearance for a year for a person they seriously suspected of being an insider threat shortly before the end of their term. Y'know, seriously enough to supposedly warn the next administration.

Where is the proof that they did renew his security clearance?

[Roundy]

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/09/did-donald-trump-try-to-threaten-sally-yates-on-twitter-if-so-he-committed-a-felony/

If someone can explain to me how Trump's tweet actually threatened Yates I'd love to hear it. All I found here was another reporter interpreting Trump's words as he wants to read them. The title is very clever, both carefully couching the question as a hypothetical to avoid coming under heat for what looks like a baseless accusation yet also managing to  accuse Trump of committing a crime.

[honk]

The Obama administration probably shouldn't have renewed Flynn's security clearance, sure. But as Trump is so fond of reminding us, he won the election, and he's the president now. Not Obama, and not Hillary. People are going to be first and foremost concerned with the wrongdoing of the president, not anybody else. That's obvious, and Trump's repeated efforts to redirect his scandals at other people is a very weak, childish tactic.

[Lord Dave]

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/09/did-donald-trump-try-to-threaten-sally-yates-on-twitter-if-so-he-committed-a-felony/

If someone can explain to me how Trump's tweet actually threatened Yates I'd love to hear it. All I found here was another reporter interpreting Trump's words as he wants to read them. The title is very clever, both carefully couching the question as a hypothetical to avoid coming under heat for what looks like a baseless accusation yet also managing to  accuse Trump of committing a crime.

I can try...


*Ahem*


Trump said it.
It also implied (vaguely) that she leaked info or knows something about it.


Thus, his supporters will put on a fresh coat of "fuck you Yates".


Did that harm her?  Fuck if I know but probably.

[honk]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39866170

oh snap