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[MetalSlimeHunt]

There is no reason or possibility of getting people who actually fucking believe in the Deep State to vote against the Republicans, no more then there was any reason to do that for Christian dominionists. All that is needed is for Democrats and Dem-leaning independents to vote, campaign, and smash the system.

The only way one loses is if their supporters don't come out and vote. It's true for every election ever held.

[smjjames]

It seems like one cruicial piece of evidence is missing, the FISA warrant itself. I realize that it's classified because reasons, but the best way to refute or confirm it is to release the text of the FISA warrant. If theres any shady doings, it's going to be there.

Also, it has been noted that Nunes (the author of the memo) never saw or read the FISA application central to the memo.

That would certainly explain everything, and the memo seems to be attacking Steele rather than Carter Page. The first question I had was "Why are they focused on Chris Steele and not Carter Page?" I get that the Steele stuff is the alleged reason, but the authors real target seems to be Chris Steele and not Carter Page.

The original memo and the Democrat rebuttal should be released since Nunes allegedly made changes and I'm curious as to what the rebuttal says (though I can predict some of it).

I read through the entire thing, and it is mostly a tirade against the Steele dossier. It only ties to Page because the FISA application cites the Steele dossier, among other things. It is very clear from reading that the full picture is not being provided; you can’t expect me or anyone else to believe that a FISA application cited an uncorroborated dossier, a Yahoo News article, and a couple of texts. Either the dossier has corroboration, or more sound stuff was cited.

The easiest counter to this is the FBI releasing the number of pages the FISA application was.

I came here to say basically this. The main thrust of the memo is that the FISA application was critically dependent on the Steele dossier, that Christopher Steele had ties to the DNC that were not disclosed in the application or renewals, and that, therefore, the FBI and DOJ were trying to abuse the FISA system to get dirt on the Trump campaign for partisan reasons.

They're not even saying that anything in the application was false or misleading. The best they can do is to state that Steele discussed certain details with Yahoo News, and therefore the aforementioned article shouldn't have been presented as corroborative. They can't attack the actual content of the application, so instead they're focusing on one piece of evidence that was cited and doing their best to paint its author as biased against Trump's campaign.

It's just a complete waste of ink.

So they whine to the congressional committee with the Republican at its head.  People don't like it when the WH interferes with investigations.  Oooh, I know, let's get congress to do it.

This truly is the most incompetent administration ever.  One of the bullet points on Mueller's legal case against Trump is going to be "intent to interfere with ongoing investigations e. g. by firing James Comey."  This memo not only was useless, it can be presented as evidence by Mueller to demonstrate Trump's intent.  And then he can ask Trump, "were you aware of this memo being sent?"  And since there's been at least one dude in the White House wearing a wire, and Trump doesn't have a very good memory, he won't know how to answer that question.  Nothing about this memo is illegal but it was still foolish to send it.

Not to mention that there is pretty much only one Congressmember behind it, Nunes, with a bunch of others jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon.

[Frumple]

They're focused on steele mostly because the shit he stuck in the dossier keeps getting corroborated and, considering the subject, it makes certain particularly odious folks in our government rather interested in trying to discredit it.

[smjjames]

It was a rhetorical question really, since the only connection with Steele to Carter Page mentioned is Page mentioning an article on Yahoo News which Steele had also did an article for the same.

[EnigmaticHat]

So our politicians actually get to spend their bribes then?

[nenjin]

And here we plebs complain about the accountability of Kickstarter money

[wierd]

Obligatory:

(Fake shock and awe)
You mean there is graft and corruption in politics!? How can this be!?
(/fake shock and awe)


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graft_(politics)

Yup, sure looks like what is being discussed here. People just don't really understand the word when used this way anymore it seems.

[EnigmaticHat]

This isn't graft tho.  Its bribery.  Graft would be spending government revenue on personal gain.  This is spending personal revenue that they should never have been allowed to accrue.

Edit: The difference being that campaign donations were never part of the government's budget.  They never could have been spent on anything useful.  The problem here isn't misspending that money (caimpaign donations are basically throwing money in a toilet anyway).  The problem is that we've allowed a legal avenue for bribes and that creates a conflict of interest.  Even if that money were spent correctly on winning campaigns and then given to charity afterwards, it would still represent a conflict of interest because it ties a politician's career success to their ability to please their donors.  Their career success is supposed to be tied to their ability to please their voters.

[wierd]

This isn't graft tho.  Its bribery.  Graft would be spending government revenue on personal gain.  This is spending personal revenue that they should never have been allowed to accrue.

No, its campaign money, raised by a political action group, or by a political faction, for the purposes of financing an electoral campaign.  That money has a specific use, and buying a personal luncheon after there is no longer a campaign is misappropriation, for a personal gain. (Fancy lunch)

The best argument from a technical standpoint is that it is not general public funds, however, it is still misuse for personal gain.

A better solution would be to require unused funds to be donated to an active campaign of a different politician, or to an unaffiliated charity.

[EnigmaticHat]

But after the campaign is over its purposeless money.  You don't give donations back, and if they won the campaign it was money spent correctly.  You can't misappropriate money that isn't for anything.

[wierd]

See my edit, you ninja'ed in mid edit.

[Starver]

But after the campaign is over its purposeless money.

Yes.

You don't give donations back,

Is I read it, that is one of the options given. (Along with others. My generic preference is that unused campaign funds should be passed on like a relay baton to whichever candidate(s) the ex-candidate feels is their spiritual heir, and so the old fund is signed off and the monies given in good faith to the original recipient goes wherever their trust is now placed, to continue fighting the fight, on behalf of their original donors so long as there's no obvious challenge/request-for-return. But probably needs to be looked at with an eye to removing the potential for 100 half-hearted candidates to raise Max_Money each (per candidate, or per donor), barely spend anything and then each defer, one by one to the One True Candidate giving them otherwise dissallowed quantities of income. Greater minds than mine have doubtless thought of how to exploit/prevent such loopholes, though.)

And then the ninjaed Weird somewhat ninjas me.

and if they won the campaign it was money spent correctly.

If it wasn't spent, then it wasn't spent correctly. They did not need it. Maybe demand that monies directly accounted for as "to win Election2020" that remains after the final shout of the 2020 election (inclusive of recounts and legal challenges) be returned to donors in direct proportion to their initial stake. Win or lose.

You can't misappropriate money that isn't for anything.

There shouldn't be money not for anything. The payments are surely accounted for as "donations to the campaign", or similar, or else they're bypassing all the funding controls in place to govern these things/party funds/SuperPACs/etc.

Not that I understand the intricracies, but I can't believe that there is not a way to keep 'purple money that cannot be used for yellow things' and 'yellow money that cannot be used for purple things' separate, give or take the vaguaries of the smart evader of the rules like recharging a purple subset of the organisation for services given by the yellow subset (if not anticipated and with the will to prevent it). And rainbow-coloured money might exist, but there'll still be 'orange things cannot use money that has any colour other than orange' or at least 'puce things cannot be paid for by money that has any hint of teal or ruby colours in it, but plum is not a bar' rules.

[EnigmaticHat]

You're missing the point.  The money was a bribe in the first place.  You're basically complaining that the Koch brothers didn't get their money's worth.

Buying an election is so much more corrupt than buying a fancy dinner.

[Starver]

(I'm dealing with the generic case. Koch brothers or Joe Jones a handyman of Power Cable, NE, if a politician received funds to fight an election then after the election any spare funds are surplus. If that politician did not have enough and had to top up from his/her "being a politician" fund that continues across multiple events, then there are going to be rules about how much can be pushed into event-specific spending (or make it an "Mr Politician is a politician you'd like!" ad, which has rules against (over)use at the crux-times of specific campaigns, rather than a "Vote Mr Politician for This Position" one) to, so they might well also be their own beneficiary, but auditably so, and regulatable.  It is complicated, as I already acknowledged. But I don't begrudge Kochs getting money back. In proportion, though, so if a fund was double the size it needed to be, they would get half of their X millions back and each and every Joe would get five of his ten dollars back.)


Out of interest, do you think Trump misunderstood the situation again, or did he just deliberately spin things for his Base. Given he has a definite history with this (like the anniversary Women's Marches being 'praised' as being in support of him.)

[RedKing]

By the way, we're almost ready for our monthly installment of "Who Wants To Fund A Government?"

Basically, last time around they shut it down for a weekend, then passed a two-week continuing resolution to give themselves space to negotiate (on DACA and budgetary impasses). And then did pretty much no negotiating at all.

We also have a new debt ceiling vote coming up sooner than expected, because the Trump tax cut tacked on a trillion in new debt. So that's fun !!FUN!!