BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

You did read that the FBI under Obama was issued a FISA warrant for wiretapping the Trump phones, etc., right? Obama says that he did not order it, but it did happen on his watch, so some responsibility must accrue to him, right? As Harry Truman famously said: "The buck stops here!"

Comey asked Justice officials to refute Trump’s unproven wiretapping claims
The FBI director’s request is the latest rebuff of Trump’s unfounded accusation that then-President Obama had ordered a wiretap of his campaign headquarters. Former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, denied allegations that wiretaps were authorized against Trump.

It is surely completely obvious to everyone that this tapping thing is merely a distraction from the Russia issue that has refused to go away in the news cycle. Now noone is talking about Russia any more. Job done. The same thing happened the last time with the allegations of voter fraud. This is the pattern and this administrations method of controlling the media cycles. I would hope that the media outlets will get wise to it at some point but news entertainment is set up to focus on the current big story these days, so going back to the real big story (the one with credible facts behind it) is not so easy - viewers just think you are behind the curve and reporting "yesterday's news". As long as it works to block the bad headlines, these fake stories will be put out and used to move things on.

And what is your source for that, seeing how both Comey and Clapper say no FISA warrant ever happened? Let me help you: Breitbart is to news what National Inquirer is to celebrity.

From the Washington Post: (among many reporting the same thing)

https://heatst.com/w...ties-to-russia/

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

But so far it appears that what happened is that the Russians were heavily involved in trying to influence the American election through hacks and leaks, the FBI and other intelligence agencies were aware of this and actively pursuing leads [...]

https://heatst.com/w...ties-to-russia/

Your source is more Murdoch led right wing claptrap: https://mediabiasfac...om/heat-street/

You are trying the Trump tactic of repeating, with no evidence or independent confirmation and, with people who have intimate knowledge of the facts publicly contradicting your position, a non-factual biased story that attacks the very nature of reality. To engage debate with you - or anyone - on these type claims is to legitimize propaganda.

I will not do so.

Did you use the 100-strike rule?

Here is a timeline of Trump’s known connections to Russia:

1987: Trump was invited to Moscow by the Soviet ambassador to the United States to discuss luxury hotel developments. Trump later told Playboy magazine that his plans to build hotels in Moscow failed because the country “was out of control and the leadership knows it.” Four years later, on Christmas Day, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and Russians who had been allowed to buy state-owned enterprises amassed enormous fortunes.

1996: While wrapping up a series of bankruptcies in New York, Trump talked of building a replica of his Trump Tower in Moscow and traveled there to discuss renovating the Moskva and Rossiya hotels, according to Bloomberg News. The bankruptcies led to a change in Trump’s business model: Instead of building projects from the ground up, he signed licensing agreements that in some cases gave him an ownership stake in properties that bore his name without putting up any of his own money. The Trump Organization continued to seek wealthy investors in Russia.

Dozens of condominiums in Trump World Tower in midtown Manhattan were bought by Russians in the late 1990s, said Dolly Lenz, a real estate broker who sold many of the units. Many buyers sought an audience with Trump, whose business acumen they respected, Lenz said.

Early 2000s: The Trump Organization developed several projects abroad, many of them involving Russian money.

2007: Trump debuted his Trump Super Premium Vodka at the Millionaire’s Fair in Moscow. Large orders for the gold-glazed spirit followed, but the brand fizzled by 2009, according to The New York Times.

2008: Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told investors in Moscow that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and planned to build housing and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi, and sell licenses to other developers, the Russian daily Kommersant reported. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump Jr. said at the time. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Trump Jr. traveled to Russia a half-dozen times in 18 months looking for deals, but none materialized. He said there were plenty of investment opportunities, but the business environment was dangerous and trustworthy partners hard to find. “It really is a scary place,” he said, according to eTurboNews, an online business publication.

2010: Trump’s next big U.S. project, the Trump SoHo in New York, was built with partner Bayrock Group, founded by Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet official.

2013: Trump brought the Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow, funded by $20 million from Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov. The venue was Agalarov’s Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow. Trump took part in a music video with Agalarov’s son, Emin.

2016: Trump's presidential campaign manager, Paul Manafort, resigned in August amid reports that he worked on the political campaign of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been forced to flee office because of his pro-Russian stance.

Carter Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker in Moscow, was a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser until August, when Yahoo News reported that U.S. intelligence officials were investigating whether he had been communicating with Russian officials about lifting U.S. sanctions if Trump became president.

Possibly. Or maybe they just did nothing:

https://www.nytimes....ipad-share&_r=0

for starters I read that 50% of our planes are unable to fly....yes 50% or more.

at the same time as he says that our NATO allies aren't doing their fair share and they should contribute more.

So much for Nancy Pelosi never meeting the Russian Ambassador!! lol
He is the fourth from the left.

How to begin an editorial about a violent free-speech debacle at Middlebury College in Vermont? Maybe with some words from John Stuart Mill about the importance of giving despised dissenters a chance to speak. “Truth would lose something by their silence,” Mill wrote, even if their views go against the entire world, and the entire world is right.

Persuasive words. But not last Thursday in an auditorium at Middlebury, where a student recited that very quotation in introducing the notorious social scientist Charles Murray. Moments later caterwauling erupted, and the event collapsed into a night of turned backs, shouted chants, pounding fists and one wrenched neck — belonging to a professor who was supposed to have provided a counterpoint to Mr. Murray’s remarks, and to lead the Q. and A., but instead was attacked while leaving with him.

Mr. Murray’s account of the evening is worth reading: a depressing tale of a missed opportunity for ideas to peaceably collide. In the years since he drew ridicule for promoting widely discredited race-based theories of intelligence in his book “The Bell Curve,” Mr. Murray has been a frequent speaker on college campuses, and the frequent target of protests. He said these events have taken on the ritual decorum of Kabuki theater — students are allowed to deride him, he is allowed to speak, blood pressures rise and fall, and life goes on.

Now, he says, Middlebury may prove an “inflection point” — where colleges yield the lectern to intolerant liberals, hastening a bastion of free thought toward its demise.

It’s an outcome that many on the right seem to be aching for. Though speakers of all ideologies regularly appear at colleges without incident, a few widely publicized disruptions feed a narrative of leftist enclaves of millennial snowflakes refusing to abide ideas they disagree with. From the president to Fox News, right-wing voices wail, through their megaphones, about how put upon they are, like soccer players collapsing to the turf and writhing in pretend agony.

A letter like the one sent by Middlebury alumni assailing Mr. Murray does not help. “The principle” — of free speech — “does not apply, due to not only the nature, but also the quality, of Dr. Murray’s scholarship.”

Hey, hey, ho, ho — heck no. The principle does not distinguish between great minds and mediocrities. Mr. Murray is an academic with an argument to make about class in America — from his 2012 book “Coming Apart” — and maybe it is flawed. But Middlebury students had no chance to challenge him on any of his views. Thought and persuasion, questions and answers, were eclipsed by intimidation.

True ideas need testing by false ones, lest they become mere prejudices and thoughtless slogans. Free speech is a sacred right, and it needs protecting, now more than ever. Middlebury’s president, Laurie Patton, did this admirably, in defending Mr. Murray’s invitation and delivering a public apology to him that Middlebury’s thoughtless agitators should have delivered themselves.

Yes, if she lied about that under oath, she should suffer the same heavy penalty as Sessions.

Sessions and spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores have said his statement was truthful because he met with the Russian ambassador in his capacity as a senator, not as a Trump campaign surrogate.

http://www.politifac...ranken-about-m/

From Smothering Speech at Middlebury by the NYT Editorial Board:


This story

BTW, has anyone seen Hrothgar?

A more sober discussion occurs at http://www.pbs.org/n.../videos/#208965

After scrolling past comments from Spicer such as "But there's been enough reporting that strongly suggests that something occurred" you get to a presentation of opposing views from Adam Schiff and Stuart Baker. Schiff sees things my way ( a wise, wise man) and, in my opinion, came across as far more rational. Yes, I am claiming I can recognize rationality in people who disagree with me. I did not see much here.