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Adjutant
 
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Post 12 May 2017, 2:22 pm

Trump (tweet): "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."

Spicer (referencing the tweet): "He simply stated a fact."

No he didn't; he stated a maybe. Maybe I did...maybe I didn't.

I don't think it is intimidation, though. I mean, Comey was there--he knows what was said. It's more directed at other people, I think. Basically saying that he might have tapes that confirm his version so don't believe Comey.

Of course, who knows how Trump's mind works.
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Adjutant
 
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Post 12 May 2017, 2:43 pm

By the way, it might be a good time to recall how angry Trump was when Sessions decided to recuse himself.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/04/politics/ ... index.html

Trump does seem...a little sensitive about anything concerning that investigation...
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Post 17 May 2017, 7:55 am

Rickyp:

When Comey testifies to the Senate, he'll be asked about this dinner.... and the responses will once again display Trump as a compulsive liar. Why doesn't that matter to you Dag?


I think you and I have been over this before Rickyp. All politicians lie. All of them. That's just what they do. They lie Rickyp. Politicians lie.

I completely agree with your assessment of Trump as a liar. Yes he is. Lying is simply one tool amongst many others that he has consistently used over the course of his business and now political life.

Some politicians are much more skilled at HOW they lie. Some are very convincing. Some are skilled actors in fact.

To say Trump is bad at lying really misses the greater point, that he doesn't even try to keep track of his lies. It just doesn't matter to him. Like I've mentioned, lying is a tool, a means to an end.

So, believing my assessment of this aspect of the man to be true, and given his perspective on the lying, manipulative, deceitful, cheating liberal press, I think that he purposefully winds them up, almost out of sheer boredom and certainly distain.

This latter point about boredom I've attempted to expound on here elsewhere. It's why I believe he bothered to even run for political office in the first place. He is bored, perceives himself as having conquered all....except, the most powerful position in the world.

So what do you want out of me Rickp? To be upset that Trump is a liar? Or a poor one?
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Adjutant
 
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Post 18 May 2017, 12:02 pm

I think y'all will be interested in this article about Comey and Mueller. The discussion regarding the showdown between Comey and Bush, Cheney et al. about reauthorizing Stellar Wind (the NSA terrorist surveillance program)--which Comey refused to do because he believed it was unconstitutional--and the events surrounding it is very interesting.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... fbi-215154
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Post 18 May 2017, 2:36 pm

dag
So what do you want out of me Rickp?


Lets adapt Lincolns famous quotation .
1. Some politicians lie some of the time to all of us.
2. Some politicians lie all of the time to some of us.
3. But Donald Trump lies all of the time to all of us.

Are all three categories acceptable to you?
Which seems the most acceptable?

There is an interesting book out on tyranny. Its called "On Tyranny". (helpful that title.)

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience
.
https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-L ... 0804190119

One of the points Snyder makes is that democracy fails when dictators eliminate the expectation of truth and facts. They do this by lying all the time, and eliminating the media as an honest bulwark for facts...
If you accept Trump as somehow normal, or accept politicians as nothing but liars .... you are inches from accepting tyranny.
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Post 18 May 2017, 3:28 pm

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin110340.html

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Let's not adapt it, shall we?

It would be pretty easy to disprove your logic concerning Trump. I am sure that you can see that I could rather easily find a word of truth spoken by Trump.

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/true/

Oh look! Even Politifact disproves your pointless barb...
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Post 18 May 2017, 10:38 pm

Rickp,

and eliminating the media as an honest bulwark for facts..


I can not take your posts seriously with comments such as this. That's a shame too.
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Post 19 May 2017, 6:37 am

bbauska
Even Politifact disproves your pointless barb..


http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

So he's completely truthful 5% of the time....
Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then...


dag
I can not take your posts seriously with comments such as this. That's a shame too.


Do you not believe there is such a thing as objective truth?
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Post 19 May 2017, 6:53 am

Keep back peddling...

Actually, just be more careful and objective with your words. You are smarter than this.
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Adjutant
 
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Post 19 May 2017, 8:26 am

How about this: Trump lies more than any president we have ever had and lies more than is acceptable in a democracy where the government is expected to not be a propaganda machine. Yes, we expect politicians to lie sometimes but mostly it is shading of truth, refusing to be pinned down on this or that, emphasizing their interpretation over the other side, misleading statements, partial truths, exaggerations and muddling things so the truth is not clear. But with Trump the breadth and scope of the lies are beyond anything we have seen before--the sheer number of lies and lies that have no plausible assertability. The ONLY reason are not treating it as serious threat to our democracy is that (I think) he is seen as a sui generous phenomenon. But what if all (or most or even many) politicians lied like him? Our democracy would be in trouble. It would undermine people's faith in democratic institutions. Regardless of Trump's connections to the Russians, I am sure Putin is happy with Trump's attack on the truth. This wholesale lying stuff needs to be nipped in the bud. It is unacceptable for a president to be a used car salesman...
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Post 19 May 2017, 9:07 am

freeman3 wrote:How about this: Trump lies more than any president we have ever had and lies more than is acceptable in a democracy where the government is expected to not be a propaganda machine. Yes, we expect politicians to lie sometimes but mostly it is shading of truth, refusing to be pinned down on this or that, emphasizing their interpretation over the other side, misleading statements, partial truths, exaggerations and muddling things so the truth is not clear. But with Trump the breadth and scope of the lies are beyond anything we have seen before--the sheer number of lies and lies that have no plausible assertability. The ONLY reason are not treating it as serious threat to our democracy is that (I think) he is seen as a sui generous phenomenon. But what if all (or most or even many) politicians lied like him? Our democracy would be in trouble. It would undermine people's faith in democratic institutions. Regardless of Trump's connections to the Russians, I am sure Putin is happy with Trump's attack on the truth. This wholesale lying stuff needs to be nipped in the bud. It is unacceptable for a president to be a used car salesman...

You can't quantify the number of lies. Obama was, sorry, a big skinny liar. Clinton was a liar. Clinton 2 was a liar.

Trump does make stuff up, no doubt.

Obama? He and his acolytes said the Iran deal eliminated the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. That is a lie of epic proportions, not like some of Trump's lies which are insignificant and tied to his obnoxious level of arrogance.
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Post 19 May 2017, 9:08 am

Agreed.

Lying bad...
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Adjutant
 
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Post 19 May 2017, 9:52 am

Wait a minute. The Iran deal was for us to get a 15 year window where Iran would not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and they got relief from sanctions. There is nothing to say we can't extend that if we get support from other countries to do so. You have evidence to the contrary? I don't see any lie there. Too bad we didn't get such a deal done in North Korea

Last report in...Iran is complying.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/w ... -deal.html

Meanwhile, we have to see press secretaries lie to cover for Trump and a National Security Advisor lie that what Trump told the Russians was available on open source reporting when it had not actually been publicly revealed that the recent airline laptop ban in the Middle East (and the coming one in Europe) were due to an active Al Qeada plot to have laptops with bombs that still had enough batter power to start up and that the plot was discovered in a certain city.
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Post 19 May 2017, 1:32 pm

freeman3 wrote:Wait a minute. The Iran deal was for us to get a 15 year window where Iran would not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and they got relief from sanctions. There is nothing to say we can't extend that if we get support from other countries to do so. You have evidence to the contrary? I don't see any lie there. Too bad we didn't get such a deal done in North Korea

Last report in...Iran is complying.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/w ... -deal.html


That's weak sauce and you should know that. The deal was bad. It permitted Iran a lot of room to misbehave, which they are stretching as it is. So, that they are "complying" is fairly meaningless.

Meanwhile, we have to see press secretaries lie to cover for Trump and a National Security Advisor lie that what Trump told the Russians was available on open source reporting when it had not actually been publicly revealed that the recent airline laptop ban in the Middle East (and the coming one in Europe) were due to an active Al Qeada plot to have laptops with bombs that still had enough batter power to start up and that the plot was discovered in a certain city.


Meaningless, sorry.

All this "Russia" crap is just that. Trump is trying to control North Korea. What does Russia do? Throw them a lifeline.

Russia is giving us nothing; we are giving them very little. Our Secretary of State says relations are at historic lows.

There is no collusion.

I'm glad Mueller is on the case because the national supply of tinfoil was hitting critical levels.

The next honest President we have will be the first since Lincoln--and he suspended portions of the Constitution.
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Adjutant
 
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Post 19 May 2017, 2:40 pm

I haven't seen a convincing case for how the Iranians will cheat. It seems pretty hard to claim that Obama lied about whether Iran could develop a nuclear weapon under the deal when you can't really show how they could. For Obama to have lied it would have to be very clear that Iran could do so. And it is certainly not clear.

As for Russia...there are so many connections with Russia that it is hard to understand how it could be just by chance. How did get Manafort get hired? Why was Carter Page hired? And then there was Flynn. So that's three Russian connected people tied to the campaign. Manafort makes sure plank about arming Ukranians does not get written into Republican Party platform, even though that plank was supported by most Republicans. Then Flynn and Sessions lie about talking to the Russian ambassador. Page in an interview on MSNBC said maybe, possibly he saw the ambassador in Cleveland but that was the only place he met him, if he did meet him (it was so comical that part got played over and over as a promo for Chris Hayes). Flynn gets hired even though Transition Team knew he was being investigated by the FBI with regard to getting paid by Turkey. And why was there such an obligation by Flynn to assure the Republican ambassador about sanctions by Flynn who then lied about it. And of course Trump keeps trying to contact Flynn even though White House told him not to, finally reaching him in late April, telling him to "stay strong". In other words...don't talk. And of course we know that Russia has been funding far-right parties in Europe. And all the stuff about Trump trying to get Comey to lay off Flynn, to be loyal to Trump, and then firing Comey to stop the Russian investigation. He told the Russians that!

I doubt very much doubt Trump is going to be cleared because if he is he has had an amazing amount of coincidences go against him with regard to Russia.