Dec 8, 2017

This goes against like 50 years of history between both sides. There have been peace talks on & off for decades now. Both groups of people want a peaceful solution. Issue is neither government wants to give in or claim responsibility for their actions. The Israeli government doesn’t want to admit that what they are doing in the West Bank is totally f----- & it can’t continue. Hamas won’t acknowledge that its continuously broken human rights & international law. The U.S. can’t broker an agreement between these two sides if we continue to act like Israel are saints that do no wrong — they’re not.

I never said there anything wrong with supporting Israel? You keep equating this action as “supporting Israel.” This action wasn’t necessary in order to show our support for Israel. We send them millions of dollars in military aid every year ffs. We funded/designed their state of the art missile defense system. That should speak for itself. The U.S. goal is to reach a peaceful two-state solution. This action basically prevents that from happening hence why it’s a bad move.

What is it with conservatives & their use of whataboutisms. What does this have to even do with the fact that violent protests are breaking out because of Trump’s announcement? As a president, how do you push something like this when: 1) all your foreign policy advisors advise against it 2) regional leaders advise against it due to concerns of violence & 3) you know very well if you make this move, a peaceful solution will be much more difficult to achieve. Like.. explain to me how this is good foreign policy for ANYONE?

 

Dec 8, 2017

But... that’s totally besides the point. It doesn’t matter where we are with peace talks, the fact that this move makes it more difficult to achieve makes it a bad move. Anyone who’s seeking a peaceful two-state solution knows this is bad policy.

Also, Jerusalem is claimed by three major religions. None of them want the other to claim the city as their city. The UN has talked about designating Jerusalem as an international territory in the past. There are middle ground solutions here that can be reached but trump threw them all out the window with this move.

No... that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying trump’s decision to acknowledge Jerusalem as israel’s capital led to violent outbursts. He made this decision even upon being warned that violence would follow. That’s poor leadership & decision making.

Regardless, Arab leaders cited concerns of violence & what do you know? Violence is exactly what followed. It’s just bad policy. You didn’t answer my question in how this move is good for anyone. The U.S. can’t just say “f--- it.... this is too hard. We’re just gonna side with Israel.” That won’t solve anything.

 

Dec 8, 2017

It’s not a fantasy. The Camp David Accords are proof of that. It’s possible for Israel & Palestinians to find a peaceful resolution & the U.S. along with the UN shouldn’t stop trying until one is reached. The UN is largely the reason we haven’t had another World War in 70+ years. They may be inefficient & slow at times but overall, it does maintain a certain level of peace. You seem to have just given up on the idea of a peaceful solution & want the U.S. to double down on Israel & let them toss missiles at each other until one side is completely obliterated. Not exactly a sound policy plan for the world’s leading super power that preaches for peace & prosperity.

They already knew we support Israel. Again, the U.S.’s support for Israel is no secret. We’ve made it very clear over the past 70 years that Israel has the right to exist. The trump administration did not need to make this this move in order to get that message across. This has less to do with Palestinians being offended & more to do with the implications of further peace negotiations in the future. That is the goal & this move puts that goal into even more doubt.

This isn’t “cozying up” to anyone. It’s about remaining neutral & understanding the tension & high stakes this city carries. This move doesn’t benefit anyone. It further insures more bloodshed in the future. Multiple Palestinians died yesterday during protests in Jerusalem. Also, you do realize Hamas is just one of the two major parties in power, right? The Fatah which largely govern areas in the West Bank, are not Islamic extremist. They recognize Israel as its own independent state. They want a two state solution. You can’t just paint with a broad brush that all Palestinians are supporters of Hamas, that’s ridiculous.

 

Dec 8, 2017

So you support and two-state solution but also support a move that pretty much takes a two-state solution off the table? You can’t have both lol.

 

Dec 8, 2017

People will continue to hate Trump and critique him until he fully comes out to support White Heritage Organizations

 

Dec 8, 2017

Both those things are mutually exclusive. It’d be like me turning left & right at the same time. It’s not possible. I’m not acting like the sky is falling, I’m criticizing bad policy because it further prevents a peaceful resolution in what’s already been a bloody conflict. It’s not even like I’m taking this super liberal “anti-trump” stance — his own advisors didn’t want him to do this lol.

 

Dec 10, 2017

Great explanation of the media from David Frum:

 

Dec 12, 2017

 

Dec 14, 2017

Net Neutrality is dead

f---.

 

Dec 14, 2017

You're kinda proving his main point though :/

 

Dec 14, 2017

What’s his main point? No one is pivoting away from the Russia investigation. It’s still ongoing. Numerous of his associates have been charged & arrested.

On a side note, this isn’t surprising:

 

Dec 14, 2017

Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia.

As far as Trump himself is concerned, this is 100% true. Flynn and Manafort are not Trump, and they don't lead to Trump. Besides, Flynn was nailed for his ties to Turkey as opposed to Russia, and Manafort was let go of during the Trump campaign, probably because Trump knew something fishy was going on with him and that his opponents would try to use that against him. You are consuming propaganda mate.

No, it is not. The NY Times is provably biased against Trump, so they are almost certainly lying by omission as usual.

Yes but “as much as the U.S. mainstream media insists that the Russia-gate scandal is growing, what is undeniably growing is the list of major corrections that news outlets have been forced to issue.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/11/russia-gates-litany-of-corrections/

 

Dec 14, 2017

Trump denied his campaign colluded or had any communications with Russia. We now know that’s not true. Manafort went down for various financial crimes & not applying as a foreign agent within the U.S. Papadopoulos took a plea deal & got charged with lying to the FBI about communications with Russia. Michael Flynn also took a plea deal & got charged with lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russians. Trump admited via twitter that he knew Flynn lied to the FBI. High ranking officials within his campaign and administration lied about communications with the Russians. His own son (Trump Jr.) attended a meeting with a lawyer linked to the kremlin, in order to receive “damaging information on Hillary clinton.” Trump’s son was also communicating with Wikileaks as they were leaking emails from the DNC/Clinton. None of this looks good my dude. It’s not propaganda at all.

This is bs. It’s dumb rhetoric that the trump administration has been spewing in attempt to discredit the free press. If you cared an ounce about democracy — you wouldn’t spew that nonsense either. See here:

Refer to the video above. The fact that media outlets make corrections & have accuracy standards is a good thing.

 

Dec 15, 2017

The fact that Manafort supposedly did dubious things doesn't mean that Trump even knew that it was going on or that he green-lit it. It doesn't even necessarily mean that Trump would know whether it was legal or not.

So what? Do you have evidence that Trump ordered Michael Flynn to talk to Russia? If not, it doesn't have anything to do with him. The fact that he lied to the FBI doesn't necessarily prove any criminal wrongdoing beyond the fact that he lied to the FBI. What if he was trying to cover his a--- because he thought he had committed a crime? Same goes for Papadopoulos, by the way. Furthermore, as Caitlin Johnstone of Medium notes:

“what he [Flynn] lied about was the fact that he’d successfully asked the Russians through Kislyak not to overreact to the sanctions the outgoing Obama administration had slammed on them in December, an interaction which according to former Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock would have been standard practice.


As Stephen Cohen wrote in The Nation earlier this year:


Communications, including meetings, between representatives of US presidents-elect and foreign capitals, particularly Moscow, have been “common practice” over the years, according to Jack Matlock, ambassador to Russia for Presidents Reagan and Bush; Matlock had previously arranged meetings in Moscow for President-elect Carter’s transition team. Moreover, Obama’s own Russia adviser, Michael McFaul, told The Washington Post recently that he visited Moscow in 2008, even before that year’s election, for talks with Russian officials. The Post implied that this was “appropriate contact.” So, it seems, was Flynn’s, though perhaps inept.





So this was Flynn trying to influence the Russians, not the other way around, which we see again in part four of the Statement of Offense. Flynn requested that the Russians help k--- a UN resolution on behalf of Israel, and that Russia refused, which is harmful to the Russian collusion narrative but says a lot about collusion with Israel (not that anyone will care). Reportedly Flynn was instructed to make this request of “every member” of the UN Security Council, not just Russia. There is also (not that anyone will care) mention of multiple acts of deception regarding Flynn’s relationship with Turkey.”



​

And that's from a progressive outlet that is of course not pro-Trump, so there’s very little chance of bias. Now if you want a source that’s free of all possible bias, even the Obama Administration confirmed that they had “no problem” with Flynn contacting foreign officials.

This looks like a case of simple negligence rather than ironclad proof of Russian collusion. So if you want to talk about negligence, remember when after the election Obama said his administration was aware that the Russians were attempting to influence the election but didn't say anything because they thought Hillary Clinton was going to win? Yet you still defend him as though he wasn't a liar.

And yet nothing came of it. No private or damaging information was exchanged at all. So what's the scandal here? It doesn't even involve Donald Trump. Even the NY Times said this had nothing to do with the “Russian hacking” claim – which, I should add, rests on very shaky grounds. So who really gives a f---?

Another dead end. See this excerpt from the article I posted earlier that you obviously didn't bother to read:

“The problem, however, was that CNN and other news outlets that jumped on the story misreported the date of the email; it was Sept. 14, 2016, i.e., the day after WikiLeaks released the batch of DNC emails, not Sept. 4. In other words, it appeared that “Erickson” – whoever he was – was simply alerting the Trump campaign to the WikiLeaks disclosure.”

The “free press” does a fine job discrediting itself every day without any help from Donald Trump. The MSM lies constantly — and mind you this is not a left/right issue. It’s not just “liberal” or left-leaning firms like NYT or The Atlantic. An outlet like Fox News is ultimately just as blameworthy. I’m talking about multinational corporations that are all controlled by the same groups. They're all controlled by the same globalists — not like in an Alex Jones sense but in a sober, rational sense grounded in fact rather than theory. Namely, they're not US firms, they're just offshoots that operate in the US of parent companies that are worldwide. Do you honestly think they have any specific loyalty to us? Of course they don’t. And until you realize this you will continue to be duped by corporate propaganda.

Also from the article you didn’t read:

For months into 2017, in dismissing or ignoring those denials, the U.S. mainstream media reported routinely that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the conclusion that Russia was behind the disclosure of Democratic emails as part of a plot initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin to help elect Trump. Anyone who dared question this supposed collective judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies risked being called a “conspiracy theorist” or worse.


But the “consensus” claim was never true. Such a consensus judgment would have called for a comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate, which was never commissioned on the Russian “hacking” issue. Instead there was something called an “Intelligence Community Assessment” on Jan. 6 that – according to testimony by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in May 2017 – was put together by “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies: the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.


Even after Clapper’s testimony, the “consensus” canard continued to circulate. For instance, in The New York Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”


Finally, the Times ran a correction appended to that article. The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of its fallacious reporting which used the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.


After the correction, however, the Times simply shifted to other deceptive wording to continue suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies were in accord on Russian “hacking.” Other times, the Times just asserted the claim of Russian email hacking as flat fact. All of this was quite unprofessional, since the Jan. 6 “assessment” itself stated that it was not asserting Russian “hacking” as fact, explaining: “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”


Even worse than the Times, the “fact-checking” site Politifact, which is part of Google’s First Draft Coalition for deciding what the search engine’s algorithms will promote as true and what information will be disappeared as false, simply decided to tough it out and continued insisting that the false “consensus” claim was true.


When actual experts, such as former National Security Agency technical director William Binney, sought to apply scientific analysis to the core claim about Russian “hacking,” they reached the unpopular conclusion that the one known download speed of a supposed “hack” was not possible over the Internet but closely matched what would occur via a USB download, i.e., from someone with direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s computers using a thumb drive. In other words, the emails more likely came from a DNC insider, not an external “hack” from the Russians or anyone else.


You might have thought that the U.S. news media would have welcomed Binney’s discovery. However, instead he was either ignored or mocked as a “conspiracy theorist.” The near-religious belief in the certainty of the Russian “hack” was not to be mocked or doubted.
​

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/11/russia-gates-litany-of-corrections/

 

Dec 15, 2017

Obama warned Trump about Manafort & told him to stay away from him. He ignored the warning & went ahead & hired him as his campaign head anyway. Manafort represented a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party & did not register as a foreign agent within the U.S. I’m not saying Manafort acted on Trump’s demands, we don’t know that yet. What we do know is that Trump was warned & he hired him anyway.

Once again, whether or not Trump directed any of this is not clear yet. This is why there continues to be an ongoing investigation. Like I pointed out earlier though, Trump admitted via twitter to firing Flynn "because he lied to VP and the FBI." This was prior to the various interactions he had with James Comey in which Comey testified under oath that the president asked him to take it easy on Flynn because "he's a good guy." That in itself sets up an argument for obstruction of justice because as we know, Comey was fired shortly after that.

Nonetheless, your reasoning for them lying is illogical. Why would you lie to the FBI and thus commit a federal crime if you had nothing else to hide? Also, Flynn is cooperating with the Mueller investigation now and has cut off contacts with the president's lawyers. These people aren't naïve and stupid people, they know if they broke the law or not. They have lawyers that advised them to take this path for a reason. As far as Flynn's wrong-doing, there's been subsequent opinions on this. The one state department official said it wasn't particular troubling but this was when the story first broke and there was no confirmation. Other Obama officials have said otherwise:



Clapper also added: "There was great concern at the time, not just with this particular contact, but with the violation of the principle that historically been followed of one president, one administration at a time. So to say that we blessed it, or acquiesced it is a stretch." This also begs the question, if the Obama administration really did allow Trump transition officials to communicate with the Russians, why did Flynn lie to Pence and the FBI about it? Why didn't the White House simply state that to begin with instead of claiming "Flynn acted on his own" which we now know is not true? Why lie?

Uhhh... you're forgetting the fact that Flynn lied about talking to the Russians about the sanctions that Obama had imposed on them for meddling in the election. Flynn told the Russians not to retaliate and told a business associate that the sanctions would be "ripped up."

No, they didn't say anything because they didn't want to be framed as trying to alter the outcome of the election. They didn't want to get criticize for the same thing Comey got criticized for with Clinton's emails: making public announcements about ongoing investigations. Also, this more so makes the argument for obstruction of justice like I explained earlier.

It doesn't matter if nothing came of it. What's critical is that trump associates were willing to communicate and receive help from the Russians. That's what this whole investigation is about, to what extent did Russia interfere in the 2016 election. It's not specifically in regard to whether or not Trump directed any of these actions. People give a f--- because campaign officials shouldn't be receiving assistance from foreign countries in order to win an election.

CNN did not break the Trump Jr-WikiLeaks story, The Atlantic did. Whatever reporting errors they had, it's on them and they were corrected. I'm talking about TheAtlantic story which pointed out that Trump Jr. communicated with WikiLeaks and even took action on their request. He tweeted links there's evidence to suggest he told his father about them and had him tweet about it as well. Trump Jr. also emailed numerous high ranking trump officials and told them when WikiLeaks first contacted him. Trump's inner-circle knew this was happening.

Making mistakes while reporting and then acknowledging/fixing when mistakes are made is not "lying" my dude. The media is not perfect and I never claimed it to be. I never said it was a left or right issue either. I care about the free press. It's needed now more than ever.

Did you not watch the video? Yes, media outlets make mistakes and then proceed to correct those mistakes. That's how journalism works.