Deranged Rhino

Serological study from Standford: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

Did you read it? It sounds rational and sane to me -- and works with the governors, per our system.

Because some enemies aren't state based actors (meaning, no country to bomb).

Because he's a partisan and was intentionally deceiving the country. That's an important factor to keep in mind which has nothing to do with our legal system or rule of law. We know this is fact now, not conjecture. His team, many of whom worked on Cross Fire Hurricane, knew in January of 2017 (at the latest) that there was no there-there. Those same people worked as Mueller's investigators. There's no way Mueller didn't know -- unless he was a puppet (which he was) and removed from the day to day activities of the people he was in charge of. The bar in this country is innocent until proven guilty. Full stop. That doesn't change for the president. Volume I was definitive in its conclusion that there was not enough evidence to even bring that charge. There was something more to the story -- but it has everything to do with Brennan, Clapper, Clinton, and Obama who paid foreign spies for information they knew to be false in order to build a FAKE narrative designed to ensure Clinton's victory (at first) and then Trump's ouster (second). The entire story was fiction. Every bit of it. And the parts you think are "correct" I promise you are distortions. Like the Trump Tower meeting -- which was not at all what Mueller tried to paint it as being. All of this was done hide this: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FISC_Memo_Opin_Order_Apr_2017.pdf Which is what really started the Trump/Russia story. It's a FISC opinion memo, describing how the NSA under Admiral Rogers discovered the FBI and DOJ had been abusing the 702 system for years to illegally spy on Americans. The FISC found 85% of the queries run out of the FBI and DOJ on the 702 programs were illegal and done by private contractors (working for the administration). It was a MAJOR scandal, which carry potential jail time in the dozens of years for some of the biggest names in the Obama administration. This broke within the IC in March and April of 2016 -- long before there were any Trump/Russia stories or rumblings. That story didn't exist (because it wasn't real). But in the immediate days and weeks of the NSA ordering the audit of the DOJ/FBI abuses, Obama's intelligence chiefs were suddenly scrambling to hire oppo research firm Fusion GPS and deploying long time western intelligence assets to entrap Trump team members (Halper, Downer, Mifsud et al). Again, you'll recoil at what I said above -- because the media has lied to you about this story for three years. But every single thing above can be backed up with evidence. More evidence than any bit of the Trump/Russia story every produced. Anonymous sources are important, I don't deny that. But the problem comes when the entire profession is based on them to the point of being dependent upon them. Especially when it comes to sources within the Intelligence Community. A dependence can be, and has been, exploited by the IC in order to control the narrative. That's been SOP for the IC and the media since the 60s. It's not new. But it's DEEPLY problematic if your agenda is truth. (and I appreciate the civil conversation even though we disagree )

... Does that apply to our enemies too? Of which there are many, plenty of whom are watching how we respond to see if we're vulnerable to an attack? You can't do that without living in a utopia. We don't live in a utopia. We live in a world with enemies who want to see us burn. Those people just don't go away in times of crisis and say, "gee, you got your hands full, we'll just go over here for a bit". Those people take advantage of weakness.

The point of WMD/Media is not that they bear the responsibilities of making decisions of state, but that they bungled the story from top to bottom -- not because of Cheney, but because their model depended upon trusting anonymous intelligence officials to leak stories to them without providing the evidence to back it up. If the NYTs (as an example, looking at Miller especially) hadn't run the stories they were told to run, they'd lose access to these sources going forward. Because the media is lazy. They don't do their jobs, they parrot what they're told to report by those "with access". That should be alarming to you as a consumer of their product. They earned that moniker based on their model. They knowingly pushed information which they knew to be false about Trump/Russia because they chose to build a narrative with a political agenda rather than tell the public the truth. There's no doubt about this now, the evidence of their malfeasance in terms of covering the Trump/Russia story (which was never true, and even Mueller knew so before he ever took the job as SCO) is overwhelming to the point of absurdity. The media has had three years to apologize, backtrack, or even admit they messed up. But instead of doing any of that, they've doubled down on their lies and pushed the theory (for years) that anyone who disagreed with their take on Russia were either Russian bots or Putin supporters. Now we know, with the distance of time and reams of evidence, that they were wrong from the start. Not because they're bad reporters. But because they chose to deceive the public rather than report the truth. Think of how much ink was spilled covering Trump/Russia over the last 3 years. How many times did you hear: "THIS IS IT! THEY GOT TRUMP NOW!", only to have the whole story fall apart due to it being wrong (Cohen in Prague as an example). My comments are solely about the media. It's our job as citizens to distrust the government, I have no problem with that. But the mistake is in thinking there has been any sort of meaningful divide between the media and the government pre-Trump. There never was. That's not conspiracy, it's fact. Because the model the modern journalists used relied upon anonymous sources from inside that very government -- not to mention the incestuous nature of how many major media outlets were run by (or overseen in an editorial position) by people either directly serving in government, or married to those who were. To paraphrase a wiser man than I: "It's one big club. And you ain't in it." The bolded is false. All the way false. No prosecutor in this country is responsible for exonerating anyone. The bar in this country is innocent until proven guilty, not guilty unless exonerated. Taking this position exposes your own partisan leanings more than a search for truth. Volume I completely cleared Trump of the central charge for 2 years -- namely that there was Trump/Russian collusion to sway the election. Mueller himself, in volume one, said this did not happen. And now we now know for certain, with evidence from the OIG, that Mueller's team knew before he even was assigned the case, that there was no "there there" in terms of collusion/conspiracy. They knew that, yet he dragged out the investigation for 2 years regardless. Why? Because it allowed them to interfere in the 2018 midterms, just as the IC interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Trump/Russia was fiction created by the Obama intelligence heads to interfere and overturn the 2016 election. The evidence for this isn't speculative. It's damning.

No Chance Joe.

I have nothing against polite disagreement — and am always up for conversations on tough topics even with (especially with) people like yourself who hold opposing views. It’s the only way to learn from each other and to test the mettle of our own opinions. So no dear there. The only thing I’d add, with the above intended politeness in mind, look at the media’s recent track record. It’s unimpressive at best, disastrous at worst. * The media got WMD in Iraq all the way wrong — and cost million(s) of lives, and trillions in treasure because of it. Because they relied on anonymous intelligence officials leaking / steering them from the shadows. * The media got mass surveillance ALL the way wrong between 2001-2013. It wasn’t until Snowden presented the world, not the media, with proof that they were lying about mass surveillance that the media suddenly changed its tune. * The media (intentionally) got Trump/Russia all the way wrong, and aided a back door coup attempt during the course of misinforming the public about what really happened in the 2016 election. Add to that list every time they played an out of context clip about Trump which ends up being false when held up to scrutiny: * Trump mocking a disabled reporter (didn’t happen) * Trump “good people on both sides” comments in Charlottesville. (completely distorted) * And now this whole “hoax” virus comment, which also didn’t happen. Don’t trust clips from the same media outlets who ran video of a Kentucky Gun range and said it was Syria, or who ran footage from inside Italian hospitals while saying it was in the US. They’ve proven to be dishonest actors.

Why? One is backed by actual evidence, the other is pure conjecture based on misleading clips. The facts are on my side with that debate. Because it's not about Trump or partisanship. It's about reality. And the media has been lying to you about our reality for decades, but never more overtly or obviously than they have over the past four years. You can learn from that... or not. One path leads to becoming better informed, and thus more empowered and safe. The other path leads to continued ignorance and hysteria, both of which can put you in greater danger.

It's not a "full go"/"full stop" choice is how. There are ways to open up safely that don't include allowing foreign travel quite yet.

Gee. That sounds reasonable and rational.

Following in the footsteps of every modern president in our history, despite the partisan rhetoric during campaign seasons. Rebuilding the military is an expensive proposition when the prior two administrations waged 20 years of war while simultaneously gutting our troops of basic necessities to win said wars. It was a necessary spending spree if you care about national defense. Nope. You're pushing fake news as fact. Trump never referred to the virus as a hoax, but rather the way the democrats would use it (and look, here you are doing precisely that). You aren't separating Trump's words from his actions -- which is necessary with any politician, but doubly so with Trump due to the biased coverage of the administration. He took action sooner than anyone in DC was asking, and took heat for doing so -- despite what he was saying about the virus to the public. Nope. That's nothing I've ever said about the man. You can make assumptions about me, and then try to discuss those assumptions as if they're true -- or you can have a real, honest, conversation with me about my views. Trump was a centrist democrat for 99% of his life. He's not a fiscal conservative, he didn't run as one and certainly has not governed as one.