Also consider the implications of the supposed "Clinton Plan": it would have meant that the Campaign was pushing some disinformation about Trump. I admit that I would find this appalling, but a Trump supporter - who embraces and repeats Trump's frequent lies, would be hypocritical to do so.

The steele dossier. It was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign. It worked exactly as they intended.

I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions about why Trump obstructed the investigation. I fully realize you don't care that he did, but how would you defend it to someone who's open-minded? Imagine some other politician being investigated by the FBI, who took steps to silence witnesses - don't you think that would be a major scandal if it came out?

If he did obstruct the investigation, it was because it was an unjust investigation. Obstruction of justice is wrong, Obstruction of injustice is laudable.

As usual, you're repeating Trump-campaign propoganda.

The fact is that primaries elect delegates, not candidates. No nomination rules were broken and the system is working as designed. If Democrats are unhappy with the way it played out (or Republicans fear this could happen to them) they can push to change the rules (as was done with the prior role of superdelegates). There aren't many Democrats who are upset with the result, though - despite so many Republicans trying to convince them that they should be.

I can repeat Biden campaign propaganda and get the same result. In a letter to Democrats:

“We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, 87% of the votes cast across the entire nominating process. I have nearly 3,000 delegates, making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin.

This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run. Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated. The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party.

Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?

I decline to do that. I feel a deep obligation to the faith and the trust the voters of the Democratic Party have placed in me to run this year. It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned. The voters — and the voters alone — decide the nominee of the Democratic Party. How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.“

https://apnews.com/article/biden-letter-democrats-4562a72aa3a891e55261617d0d494d00

So as usual you’re spouting DNC and big donor propaganda.

So you have no evidence of unfair practices, rigging, or cheating. Why did you assert it? Did you dream that there was some cheating?

I already stated why so think it was unfair. Do you think it’s fair to the millions who voted for Biden in the primaries? Do you think it was fair to lie about his condition throughout his presidency, past the primaries, until 3 months before the election? Do you think it is fair that they threatened him to drop out, only when it was clear he would lose?

He probably was sharp when Schumer said that. 80 y.o. dudes don't go into dementia like falling off a cliff. Even those closest to him might just suspect at first.

Schumer said it 5 months ago after the Hur report came out questioning Biden’s mental competence.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4465074-schumer-biden-mental-acuity-is-great/

So let me get this straight. The primary voters chose Biden, then Biden said he wasn't going to run. Now you're verklempt over the disappointment the voters must feel about that. Is that correct?

That’s wrong. The question at the end of the sentance indicates I was asking you a question.

Who lied, and about what? Give us facts we can check.

It would be unfair if the Republican party wasn't capable of doing exactly the same thing if they so chose. Since the parties are following the same rules, it's fair.

Do you think it’s fair to the millions who voted for Biden in the primaries?

Do you think it’s fair to lie about Biden’s abilities up until the moment they couldn’t lie about it any more?

"Cheating" does not imply rules have been broken? Please. You can troll better than that.

Uh oh, RogueAI appears with his valuable insight.

So we need some fraud, some dishonesty, or unfair dealings. It appears none of that exists.

It’s unfair to replace a candidate from a race because you’re losing, especially against the will of the voters, and it’s dishonest and fraudulent to say you’ve done so for any other reason as Joe Biden and his surrogates did.

And those conditions are the same for everyone; yet we have different colour experiences. So the point stands, and your comments here are irrelevant.

And it doesn’t happen under different conditions. That something novel occurs in one set of conditions doesn’t mean it applies to all. So using this one example while dismissing the rest is tantamount to pseudoscience.

We have evidence of neural correlates of self-reported visual perception. We have evidence of visual perception caused by direct neural stimulation.

None of what I am saying requires substance or property dualism. I am not saying that mental phenomena is non-physical. I am only saying that colour is a property of mental phenomena and that mental phenomena do not extend beyond the brain. This is perfectly consistent with mental phenomena being reducible to neural activity.

Again, this is the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, and differences in colour perception – all of which are real.

We hallucinate and dream, sure, but these are biological acts, not things worthy of their own noun phrase upon which we can ascribe properties. Properties are properties of things, not actions. The body is real, while what the body does is merely an account of what the body is doing from this time and that.

In order to reduce mental phenomena to neural activity, one has to describe the neural activity, the objects involved in it, and then one can list their properties, and I suspect we’ll find no property called “color” among them unless it’s the color of those objects. White and gold or blue and black, for example, is unlikely to be the measurable properties of these objects in the brain.

Those words do not imply rules have been broken. You’re starting to spread disinfo now.

They threatened Biden to pull out of the race when they knew he was losing and replaced him with a candidate who did not even get a single vote.

But it's the same distal object and same proximal stimulus, yet a different colour experience. So how does that not suggest phenomenology? Any differences in colour experience must be explained by differences in the body.

The distal object is a backlit screen, capable of shooting light in all sorts of different directions, or stopping light, sometimes through liquid crystal, etc. it seems to me such conditions can illicit different experiences. The dress itself did not illicit a different experience, as everyone saw it was blue and black upon viewing off the screen. This seems to me to suggest the conditions had much to do with it.

Even if you want to say that colours are also properties of mind-independent things, you simply cannot deny that they are (also) properties of mental phenomena. It is the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, and variations in colour perception – all of which are real.

I can deny that they are properties of mental phenomena because mental phenomena do not exist. Again, nothing of the sort has ever been found, and until they have, it needs to be explained in terms of things that are actually there.

Subjective accounts of states of affairs are limited by the fact that one cannot be aware of what is actually occurring behind his own eyes, or in the brain, at any given moment, so treating them as accurate assessments of the biology seems to me absurd.

No doubt the image of dress appears different to different people. It first appeared to me black and blue when I first looked at it, now it is a light blue and goldy-brown. This indeed suggests a difference in the workings of the body.

But we know the medium also has something to do with it, as we know the actual dress is blue and black. As reported, everyone who saw a difference in color on the screen saw no such difference upon seeing it in real life. For example, we’re not actually looking at a dress, but a digital image as it appears on a backlit screen. If you place the image in a program, choose a spot, and get the color value, that never changes.

So while I can’t explain it in terms of naive realism, if it is strictly limited to artificial conditions, I don’t think it suggests phenomenology.

I'm not saying that the banana is in my head. I'm saying that colours are in my head. They are a property of the visual percepts that are produced by activity in the visual cortex.

We’ve never found any of those, either. Rather, it appears to be a property of the object.

Sure we have. It's how we make sense of synesthesia, dreams, hallucinations, variations in colour perception, and so on. Visual phenomenology is distinct from distal objects and proximal stimuli. The second and third are often the causal explanation for the first, but that's all there is to it. Yours is the mistaken, naive view that projects the properties of the first onto the second.

I do accept the naive view. But no, we haven’t found any percepts or phenomenon as you describe them in the head, and we’ve looked. Therefor, phenomenology doesn’t deal with reality.

Not purposefully. Can you give me an example?

We’ve examined many brains and discovered no such thing.

I don't know what this means. But digital cameras work by measuring the energy of the light that strikes its sensors and uses that to determine which of the red, green, and blue pixels to turn on and at what intensity. Our brains probably work mostly the same way, but with neurons in the visual cortex in lieu of phosphors

It means that if you see a banana, you’re not seeing one in your head. I can record you looking at a banana, the location of both your head and the banana, and discern that nothing about the banana is in your head.

Like what, for example?

What have I posted that is wrong?

Oh yes all the talking points have returned. You almost got all of them fit into one post. Bravo.

No such thing exists in your head. I can take a picture of any object and it will undoubtedly show that it is outside your head, and this includes all colored objects except your brain.

The judge’s daughter owns a company that helps Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win elections. The judge donated to democrats against ethics code. The DA ran on prosecuting Trump. The prosecutor was Biden’s top 3rd man in the Department of Justice. Are you just ignorant of all these things?

Your question is misguided. Light stimulates our eyes, signals are sent to our brain, and the brain produces a visual percept with such qualities as shape and colour and depth. Our minds and conscious experiences don't literally extend beyond the body to encompass distal objects.

Then how come the color of the percept isn’t outside the object if the light is outside the object?

Wavelengths travel beyond the objects but the color never does. If the color is determined in part by the wavelength, how is it that if light bounces off an object at a certain wave length, we do not see the color anywhere outside of the object?

I see nothing wrong with a firebrand, and in fact prefer them. And the argument there are or were no firebrands in American politics is simply false. But your complaints about name-calling and smearing is betrayed when you seem quite comfortable with the smearing and name-calling yourself, and in Trumpian fashion no less. So what’s really the problem? Something else must be bothering you.

My guess is you are yearning for the placating platitudes, euphemisms, and bromides that tend to lull the public to sleep. It serves to disguise a politician’s actual thoughts and intentions behind an opaque cloud of political play-acting, so that they may get away with murder or convince you to war. This sort of language is designed so that you don’t have to think about politics, so it’s no strange wonder that one might resent when he sees its opposite. It’s the kind of rhetoric that makes Orwell turn in his grave, and the daily Two Minutes Hate we see at little shows like that one make it all the more egregious.

Isn’t this so? Or is it something else?

I don't really care what you think it exposed because all of it turned out to be a big nothing-burger. And I'm glad I saw those emails.

But no, Durham didn't just opine it should have started as a preliminary investigation.

He said they started a full investigation based on flimsy evidence. They did so "without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information", "without any significant review of its own intelligence databases", "without any collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities", "without interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received" or "without using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence". "Had it done so," writes Durham, "the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject. In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials". If you have any reason to dispute this, let me know.

Further, he writes of the two-tiered system. He writes: “Unlike the FBI’s opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information. This lack of action was despite the fact that the significance of the Clinton plan intelligence was such as to have prompted the Director of the CIA to brief the President, Vice President, Attorney General, Director of the FBI, and other senior government officials about its content within days of its receipt. It was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum to Director Comey and the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Peter Strzok, for their consideration and action.”

Everyone knew of intelligence regarding the Clinton plan to tie Trump to Russians. The CIA knew, Obama knew, Biden knew, Comey knew, Strzok and McCabe knew. They let it happen.

I alluded to this in my prior post: the "intelligence" was from Russian intelligence! It was part of their misinformation to convince people they weren't involved. There was no evidence this occurred other than this Russian fabrication! No one took it seriously for that reason.Durham and Barr flew around the world to try and get more evidence of it, but failed - because there was nothing. Read about it in this NY Times Article

Read about it in this New York Times article! Let me guess, unnamed sources, current and former officials, like Adam Schiff or Hilary Clinton? Former officials like Comey, Strzok, and McCabe? Let me guess, Russian disinfo? Like Hunter’s laptop? This is what it has come to!

It's a complete lie. The Durham report goes over the specifics with named officials, where the Clinton intel went, where it came from, who had it, who knew about it, and what they did in response to it. No one interviewed mentions your claim as the reason they didn’t take it seriously. Brennan said he didn't even remember it. And against your baseless claim, no one in the IC knew the accuracy of the information. Despite knowing that they were using Clinton-funded dirt as their evidence, and that there was intel suggesting it might be a Clinton ploy, they didn't even stop to investigate. There is no evidence of even a cursory glance, "preliminary investigation", let alone a full blown investigation by Crossfire Hurricane, like the one premised on a dodgy dossier and some flimsy tip from an Australian ambassador, all of which turned up absolute garbage.

What we have is hindsight and evidence. We not only have the plan, the bad and biased actors, and the Clinton-funded dossier which lead the FBI, DOJ, and the media on a wild goose chase, we have the fact that it all played out on the world stage. They got played, the media got played, you got played.

I'm sorry, but in a normal candidate, this might make sense, but Trump spews nasty rhetoric every day of his public life, when someone calls him out on it, he shouldn't act as if he doesn't deserve to be called out. Ridiculous. I would have supported you if it was your average politician, but then again, the amount of vitriol read back to that person would not be the same in the first place, so wouldn't even be an issue.

Politicians use critical rhetoric against their opponents all the time, and rightfully so. Personally I see nothing wrong with it, especially when it's defensive in nature, as it was against most of the comments she mentions, painted as they were in identity politics. Of course if one wants bromides, platitudes, and euphemisms he can find another politician.

Journalism is meant to inform us, not to repeat an opponents criticism or otherwise engage in the politics of a guest's opponents. That wasn't what was going on with that one particular journo. What she did was campaign for the opposition, using their own talking points, in an effort to smear her guest. The journalist in the middle was far more graceful in both insult and substance, both subduing Trump and asking him questions he seemingly could not answer, and making him look rather silly in the process. But because of the organization's failures we, as listeners, were robbed of any fruitful info because of it. At least we got the show, though.

I was simply answering your question, particularly regarding “being ruled guilty in a trial should have been enough for them to sway away from voting him into office”. Or were you just wondering what members of your own cult were thinking?

You couldn’t dispute anything I wrote, resorting to ad hominem by your own admission, then lecture me about “epistemological responsibility”.

I gave you my opinion, but since you cannot find what’s wrong in it, you fall back on what you know best.

If you fear the facts and resort to imagination, and seek only comments that validate what amounts to propaganda-driven gossip, you’re not fit for discussing anything. None of that is going to stop me from pointing out your failures.

But then the question is, if they didn't understand how he's unfit for presidency before, would any of the current problems matter to them? Being ruled guilty in a trial should have been enough for them to sway away from voting him into office, so what's the parameters that actually matter to these people who aren't directly in the cult?

As a cult member myself, being ruled guilty by a corrupt, anti-Trump, Democrat Judge, whose daughter raked in millions from the Biden and Harris campaign, is a badge of honor. Non-cult members are seeing that too and they’re joining in droves.

It was awesome. The rude journo, recycling DNC talking points, was roundly handled and came off looking like a sour apparatchik. The other two were at least professional. But the whole thing was sabotage from the get-go, and it made them and their organization look like a shit-show. Kamala avoided it like the plague.

At any rate, nativists and racists would be unhappy about Trump’s statements.

You don’t mention that the Mueller probe took over from crossfire hurricane, for some reason, acting as if they were somehow separate. The only reason we got a special counsel was because the conspiracy theorists among Congress demanded one after Comey’s firing.

So independent was it that the incompetent and biased investigators on the failed Crossfire Hurricane investigation were simply moved to the office of the Special Counsel. You won’t mention that these investigators were fired for anti-Trump texts.

The whole charade was the fruit of a poisoned tree, none of which should have went past a preliminary investigation, but all of which had been used against just one political campaign.

Knowing all you know about counter-intelligence investigations, would you apply your discernment towards the other campaign? because according to DNI Radcliffe: “U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI%27s%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf

Perhaps you don’t know, or at least won’t mention, that “On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.” Again this was released by DNI Radcliffe, and this info was briefed to Obama himself by CIA director John Brennon. Despite the knowledge, referral, and briefing to the president, no investigation had started as far as we know or.

That sounds suspiciously like the hoax proffered by the press and the anti-Trump brigade, exactly what the FBI fell for, and subsequently tried to cover up—a Clinton campaign ploy to use Russian active measures to injure her political opponent. Yet it went on. It appears to have worked because even now you’re defending it.

So...it seems that your judgement of the DOJ is based on Trumpian falsehoods.

It’s based on special counsel findings. They should never have launched a full investigation. They used raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence. Investigators concluded “the (Justice) Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report”.

You’re just repeating media falsehoods.

So it's just paranoia toward the FBI (hmm. I wonder where that came from ;-)) that induces you to assume the worst about them....

It comes from a mix of principle and evidence. I don't trust authority in principle. As for evidence, most of those convicted in the Mueller investigation, for example, were for process crimes. Now that we know that there was no underlying crime to begin with, that the entire investigation was a failure and had no reason to start in the first place, it makes their indictments all the more unjust.

...but the paranoia of people who've worked for Trump and fear for what he might do (based on what they've heard him say and things he tried to do) is the only thing that's unreasonable.

It is unreasonable because it isn't grounded in any reality and completely unfounded.

Trump just had a glorious interview in hostile territory with the NABJ (The National Association of Black Journalists). Gold mine.

When has the DOJ ever gone after Trump for a "process crime"?

Never. But my point was that they are going to, not that they have.

Applying the law equitably entails "moral panic"?!

No, believing Trump is an existential threat entails a moral panic, and many of his disgruntled former employees have stated as much.

I don’t think it sticks because it implies those who say it are in some way normal. For instance they just had a whites-only Harris rally. The years of child-sniffing and gender ideology and hoaxes kind of renders it hilarious.

But the speed with which the phrase was downloaded and installed in pliant brains was quite extraordinary. It’s like Skynet.

The worst is they lied and covered for Biden’s condition for years. So not only did they nullify the primaries and deny the votes of tens of millions of people with their palace coup, they did so only because they couldn’t keep up the charade any longer.

Votes and elections and so-called democratic institutions mean very little to them in principle. It’s probably why they dropped the “threat to democracy” schtick and went with calling their opponents “weird”. But remember all this when they avail you of the sanctity of elections.

Project 25 didn’t release its mandate until April 2023. Trump started Agenda 47 in January 2023, and remains his only official agenda. Trump also endorsed the RNC platform, which is softer on many issues than Project 25. He never once endorsed Project 25’s mandate.

Some will skirt around these facts and never even mention them because it contradicts their imagination.

Another conspiracy theory down the drain with Project 25. What’s odd is that they won’t focus on Trump’s actual agenda, which he’s had for over a year now. There is much red meat there that any Kamala fan can use to fill that Trump-sized hole in his soul.

But the brief event, and the subsequent attempt to pick up the pieces, shows how easily viral nonsense can be effectively downloaded and installed as knowledge without much effort, much like Russiagate. All that’s left is motivated reasoning bias to keep it in the mind’s eye.

Many of Trump's employees descend into the moral panic, as do many seemingly qualified and rational people. Add on top of that the historical failures of that agency, their likelihood to use methods like entrapment and deception, the situation is ripe with danger.

Trump agrees to be interviewed by the one agency that will use it to indict him with some sort of specious process crime.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-assassination-attempt-fbi-9c3838fcf9753b3e61caf97804112fca

Spread the propaganda as far and wide as you can, friend. But one day you’ll get tired of being lied to. Count on it.