leh-nerd skin-erd

I agree with this, though I felt it was entirely fair to hammer Obama Inc for the false propaganda story they manufactured after the event. He was way better at spreading disinformation than the Russians.

Yes, and we've entered the nuclear age of political warfare. Nothing is too brash, too outlandish to accuse people of coupled with the willingness of the nations top law enforcement agencies to do whatever it takes to make sure the status quo is maintained. Add to that a populace willing to be lead along by their noses and you get what we have today. Taminy (Sp?) Hall on a massive scale.

Maybe. The media is reporting he is a Russian asset, running the country for 25 months. He's hiding in plain sight. No one can catch him, not even the FBI after investigating for 2.5 years. But...soon, soon. Example to your point re the media: Many outlets have speculated endlessly about when he might fire Mueller. They reference sources within the govt. Question...are the media outlets that reported firing was pending incompetent, spreading false information or something else? Because it seems clear that Herr Mueller plods on. You tell me.

Look, it's not complicated if you're an independent thinker. A quick glance at the history of the world reveals that governments are corruptible and people in positions of power may not be 4 square folks in the middle. A quick glance at the history of corporations in the US reveals that companies and their people are corruptible and people in positions of power may not be 4 square folks in the middle. Public side: Spitzer/Schneiderman/Skelos/Silver/Percoco/Kalyeros Private side: Weinstein/Fay/Ciminelli/madhoff And so on. I have some friends at the NYS govt level and it was apparently common knowledge that Schneiderman in particular had a drug problem. On top of that, in the wake of his departure a local news reporter suggested it was pretty well known on their side of things that he bought drugs, used them and may have had an issue with women. So...of everyone knows, why no reporting on it? Where are the reports about that failure to prosecute Spitzer? Incompetence, or selective reporting?

First, your post starts out on a very weak note as you acknowledge being under-informed, and take an odd turn to Fetish Mountain with this licking thing. Second, if you were not under-informed, you would know that there is no "everyone" Here. Third, as a reasonable man willing to listen to your thoughts, here is what I still do not follow from your logic: You seem to believe that Trump is a Russian Asset, that the FBI and Mueller got the goods on him. You're passionate enough to come to this thread, acknowlede you're behind the curve as you do so, and lay out (flimsy)case for ouster of the president. Why is he still in office? Where are the American patriots picking up the mantle for dear James Comey who had so much dirt on 45 that he was fired? I'd think with all the troglodytes willing to set D.C. aflame just based on the things Trump says, surely the greatest intelligence agency in the world could button the Trump case up in a month or so post-Comey. i'll answer your question as well. This is the first time we know a candidate for president was targeted for surveillance by his political adversaries, the first time we have seen the leadership of the FBI exposed as partisan political operatives, and if you're correct, the first time DOJ, FBI, Congress and the US military/joint chiefs of staff have knowingly allowed a "Russian asset" to act as president, no doubt worried sick that it's taking Mueller so long to button up a case that was so obviously treason 3 or 4 months before Trump took office. Sadly, it's also the first time a whole bunch of dipshits knowingly, willingly and with no hesitation decided that it was perfectly acceptable to weaponize intelligence so long as it was against "the other guy". If this had happened to Obama, I'd be a democrat by now. Along the way, I'd have been wondering how the $)&@ it is taking so long when we know the guy is a "Russian asset". You so seem to take every curveball they throw out and think "Yeah, that makes sense!".

Regulation is not a bad thing, taxation isn't a bad thing, and people working for the state of ny is most definitely not a bad thing. My complaint is not that Fireball is properly labeled. The good news news is that when weed gets to the point where I can walk into a dispensary and buy something for personal consumption, I may care a whole lot less about all the rest.

Thanks for the well thought out reply. I don't agree with any of it, and I understood your prior post to mean that you were undecided and awaiting the final word. I've been trying to think of the best way to respond. It's an anonymous message board but I'm really not interested in name calling or insulting someone. My biggest issue with your position is "The collusion stuff is up-for-grabs". It isn't, and if you think it is at this point, I think you're naive. If DJT is Boris Badinov, we have all been let down by the elected officials and law enforcement agencies entrusted to safeguard our process. In fact, if that's the case, the DOJ and FBI are either grossly incompetent or complicit in allowing DJT to serve as president if that's the case. if he's not Boris Badinov, as appears likely given the fact that Boy Scout Bob Mueller is taking his own sweet time sending his minions to kick down doors of people guilty of...anything they can turn up, then all you have is the weaponization of the intelligence community to disrupt and taint the opposition candidate supported by 60m Americans with the sole purpose being to deny them the power of their vote. Personally, I don't care if Trump is someone I'd hang out with or not. It's never been important to me. One of my liberal buddies said to me one day "Trump is despicable, but you know Obama is a good guy that you just disagree with on policy matters.". He was offended when I told him how limited his vision of the world was, that he was so tied up in his own judgement it was inconceivable that someone else might not like Obama as a human being. As for all the other anecdotal "facts" about Trump, it might help to be more specific than he's a worser liar than any of the previous liars that you like. I was just making this point in my prior message. If they were wrong, they are either grossly incompetent or knee deep in corruption. They are knee deep in corruption.

I've heard of the ATF, and one time I was outside in my baby pajamas eating chicken wings and drinking beer while climbing my ladder to paint the wood trim on my house. I took a selfie and can prove it. But that's not really the point, is it? my response was in regards to the narrative that republicans want to control people's lives but that legalizing/regulating marijuana is liberating us all from the nanny state. Chef Jim was more direct and 100% correct. For what it's worth, while I don't believe the narrative that smoking weed is harmless, when NY sorts this all out I've pretty much decided that I'm back in again for recreational use. I've long believed I'd much rather see my children smoke marijuana than fire down shots of Shnumpernagelz or whatever is the hot shot today. And, no sir, I am NOT spearheading a movement to return to Prohibition! Respectfully, Freddy's Special

Not really. If you've been unable to make up your mind about an administration using the power of the government to run intelligence operations on the opposition, and the DOJ launching an investigation simple for the purpose of creating an investigation ---couched with the unbelievably moronic allegation that "We thought maybe he was/is an agent of the Russian government but really had no idea how to proceed and decided the best way forward was to let him be President but take him apart with a series of paper cuts over the duration of his presidency"...you've already made your mind up. Apologies for the run-on sentence, but after all this, it makes you wonder why Watergate is anything more than a little misunderstanding between friends.

NYS will need to add about 15 different agencies, staffed by 20-45 employees per, beset by multiple redundancies while providing cradle to grave entitlements to get out of people's business. Very liberating.

I wa saying the same thing to my wife the other day as we rode the Pacific Coast Highway down through Omaha on our way to Lafayette, Louisiana. Real middle America stuff.

The federal budget exceeds $4 trillion dollars. What exactly does "help our system” mean to you? DHS estimated in 2015 there were 12,000,000 unauthorized immigrants in the US. The "official" number has stayed between 10-12 million for the past years, with the acknowledgement from the government that while certain mathematical assumptions are made, they really have no $&$&ing clue. Recent study by some folks at MIT suggests the number is closer to 22 million, with an estimate the the floor is no lower than 16 million. I think the time for "but ...." has passed. There is no one solution to this problem, there is plenty of blame to go around and it's time to move forward with some semblance of a plan. As for "more pressing issues...", that's all in the eye of the beholder. Every politician involved in this absurd dialogue has spoken passionately about the need to address this crisis, and spoken about it as if it's a crisis at one point or another. I'd argue the victims of violent crime might suggest the issue is pretty pressing, and we can deal with the mating habits of the McCain-Kennedy skunkfish at a later time.

Plenz = fake news. LS = believe everything he sees on the internet. Everyone wins (though DR has written expanisvely on the issue that bias appears on both sides of the aisle)

Whatever side of the issue you come down on, the story here is about manipulated news coverage. The "Sinclair owned" station was contacted by the notoriously unTrump CNN for commentary about issues in their neighborhood, but apparently the messaging did not fit the narrative they were pushing. My question has always been "Why decide for the people what news is newsworthy?". That always leads me to the conclusion that since someone else is deciding what I should/should not hear, it's not news, it's an infomercial. The interesting part of what was reported here was the reference to "treatment" of the migrants, apparently not a story with enough pop when the narrative being pumped is about how ineffective the barriers are. Question for you...do you see this type of coverage as anything all that different than a Hannity or Maddow segment? The only real difference I can find is instead of one talking head there are multiples, and instead of a one hour segment its 24x7.

I live in the Albany area, not far from the NXIVM offices and had no idea. Apparently the mind control and branding cult has had its 15 minutes.

I'm not sure what any of that means. My method wasn't really all that complicated, I just looked at the data driving the polls, the source of the poll itself, and tried to discern whether or not there might be any inherent that would make me question the data. Given all that, I thought Hillary Clinton was going to be president. It was a joyful day when it turned out otherwise. But if walking in lockstep with the pollsters is your thing, have at it.

Not long ago, polls had a large portion of the population dvr'ing the Hillary Rodham Clinton Coronation and Uranimum Sale Jamboree. So, there's that.

Plenz must now be a Trump supporter due to the facts provided...no?

No sir...before the dangerous and vilified old conservative folks who dare to have opinions and share them, you got Zuck and the gang dealing from the deck in a decidedly non-organic way: https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 who the hell knows what else they got cooked into the algorithm before the "news" hits the streets? As for Princeton, a relatively recent story surfaced about a faculty member expressing concern about the lack of intellectual diversity when it came to the study of conservatism. If he is to be believed, the entirety of the cited survey is suspect. To boot, the Harvard prof quoted....one must wonder about his street cred given the accusation of systemic bias against certain ethnic groups that has been the subject of litigation. What did he know, and when?

Yeah, I know, you mentioned you were libertarian a while back, but where is the fun in labeling you as something you already indicated you are? I have always struggled with understanding someone whi has the "your liar is worse than mine.". Seems arbitrary to me.

Thank you. Finally, an honest liberal broker speaks here. Your moral compass can handle your own guy lying and spinning, but gets out of whack when someone else's guy lies and spins. Classic squeeze play in American political theater. Solve the border crisis, save some lives, he can dress up as Evita Peron and sing "Dont cry for me Argentina" and I'm ok with it.

There were 19 terrorists on the planes on 9/11. Had there only been 6, perhaps the death toll and ensuing chaos would have been substantially less. Maybe we would not refer to it as 9/11, maybe we would just call it "That second Tuesday in the fall early in the new millenium when only a thousand people were murdered.".

He has to qualify it for his followers with "If it were possible...". ?

Stop...you're arguing a point you seem not to even believe based on earlier posts. The president, elected by the people, has chosen to address the nation on what he deems to be an issue critical to the security of the nation. He wants free, unobstructed, non-challenged airtime to directly address the American people. Rest assured the guardians at the gate will be ready to rip into everything he says or does, and rest assured the dems will be prepared to reject everything said or done about the border in spite of everything THEY have said about the border. What will follow will be series of pre-scripted, focus-group tested word tracks from news media types, border security experts and the whitest person in America Chuck Todd. In fact, the responses are already written.

I find it painful to read through an opinion piece like this. I can imagine this guy sitting in a room somewhere, struggling with all his insecurities, thinking of the successes and failures earned over his lifetime, struggling to figure out all the great problems of the world and what he must write about to truly make a difference in the world. so, he does a little research, talks with a professor from the university of wherever, and comes up with this trash. He might just as well have summed it up with "white people can be good or bad, but it's pretty obvious that while bad white people are not good, good white people are bad too.". The end game, by the way, is embedded in the piece. The bad good white people are hurting their kids by trying to do what's right for them, and they should follow the liberal collective and avoid their own counsel. I feel comfortable having conversations with reasonable folks who disagree with me, I feel things can be learned when you shut your mouth and open your ears. However, after we've had that dialogue, I reserve the right to tell a guy like Nate that he's full of sh/t. He's dangerous, too, but that's a conversation for the family.