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Did McCabe write the dossier? Yes or no.
Those that think Mueller is only looking into the Trump/Russia angle are in for a surprise.
Did McCabe write the dossier? Yes or no.
I suppose I could save some time.
TSA will dissemble and deflect. He knows the answer is no, McCabe did not write the dossier, and has little to no bearing on it.
My thoughts are therefore: It is not really relevant to my consideration of the dossiers veracity. It is relevant if you want to obfuscate and/or deflect bad things that people close to Trump or Trump himself may have done though, which is exactly why you bring it up, as you always do when confronted with you can't really tear down that makes your team look bad.
That pattern is one of dishonest intent, and one I find insulting. Piss on my shoes and tell me its raining...
It's not relevant the #2 at the FBI's wife was paid $700,000 for her senate bid by Clinton allies and for which now the #2 at the FBI is under investigation for?
It's not relevant that the #2 at the FBI paid for a dossier on Trump in order to obtain a FISA warrant that was previously rejected?
It's not relevant this FBI paid for third party dossier was used to justify spying on a Presidential candidate?
when you gonna get that tsa is driving a narrative?
He always is.
I read conservative news feeds, I know what he is told to believe before he parrots it here.
he's told to get under your skin.He always is.
I read conservative news feeds, I know what he is told to believe before he parrots it here.
"Relevant" to considerations of the strength of the dossier's claims:
1. Probably not.
2. No.
3. Restatement of #2.
I think you are overstating the strength of the narrative, even more than you think the left is overstating the dossier.
You have avoided addressing the points the dossier made that turned out to be true.
Most interestingly in the dossier is the tidbit that one of Trumps personal lawyers went to Switzerland to negotiate this back channel (going off memory here). That is something that, if verified, would be pretty hard to ignore, since it is so easily a falsifiable/testable claim. Track the guy's movements would be pretty easy to do for an FBI investigation, should they choose to look.
Which he does, I guess.
Rank intellectual dishonesty is one of my pet peeves. It is why I ing can't stand the likes of Cosmored.
we live in a magical time, friend.
all you have to do is agree to believe.
Although, even that is a good learning opportunity. One should always evaluate underlying assumptions, always. Cognitive dissonance always expresses itself through irritation, so when I get angry I tend to step back and think a bit about possibly missing something.
In this case though, the attempt at building a narrative that is plausible pablum for the converted is becoming a bit more obvious as time goes by. Welcome to the brave new world.
Eyup. One has to use the baloney detection kit.
- Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
- Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
- Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
- Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
- Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quan y attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
- If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
- Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
- Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones — many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity — with examples of each in action:
ad hominem — Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)
argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out)
argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous — perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives)
appeal to ignorance — the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don’t understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don’t understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion — to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: You don’t understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways.)
begging the question, also called assuming the answer (e.g., We must ins ute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors — but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of “adjustment” and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?)
observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable cir stances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers)
statistics of small numbers — a close relative of observational selection (e.g., “They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.” Or: “I’ve thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can’t lose.”)
misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);
inconsistency (e.g., Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they’re not “proved.” Or: Attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past);
non sequitur — Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;
post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or: Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons)
meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa)
excluded middle, or false dichotomy — considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)
short-term vs. long-term — a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: Why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?);
slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception);
confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., A survey shows that more college graduates are sexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore — despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter — the latter causes the former)
straw man — caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t. Or — this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy — environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people)
suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., An amazingly accurate and widely quoted “prophecy” of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but — an important detail — was it recorded before or after the event? Or: These government abuses demand revolution, even if you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)
weasel words (e.g., The separation of powers of the U.S. Cons ution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration by Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else — “police actions,” “armed incursions,” “protective reaction strikes,” “pacification,” “safeguarding American interests,” and a wide variety of “operations,” such as “Operation Just Cause.” Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, “An important art of politicians is to find new names for ins utions which under old names have become odious to the public”)
So let's see if TSA's hypothesis can be falsified, a key element.
To paraphrase (I will have to fill in the blanks a bit, TSA is free to correct anything I get wrong, this is my best stab):It's not relevant the #2 at the FBI's wife was paid $700,000 for her senate bid by Clinton allies and for which now the #2 at the FBI is under investigation for?
It's not relevant that the #2 at the FBI paid for a dossier on Trump in order to obtain a FISA warrant that was previously rejected?
It's not relevant this FBI paid for third party dossier was used to justify spying on a Presidential candidate?
The dossier's credibility is impaired because the #2 guy at the FBI paid for something that was specifically damaging, in order to get a FISA warrant that was previously rejected for the sole purpose of furthering a politically motivated plot. He did it because his wife received $500,000 in campaign donations from someone described as a Clinton ally, on a quid pro quo basis, and most definitely not because there was actually anything wrong.
Ultimately, this fails a very basic test.
It relies on an ad hominem logical fallacy.
"The dossier's claims have to be rejected, because the guy who authorized the FBI to pay for it is doing so out of political animus".
The dossiers claims rise or fall on their own, regardless of the original motivation.
At most, if true, it would simply cause one to be a tad more skeptical.
I say "if true" because I haven't seen any evidence that the motivation was purely political, merely a lot of insinuation.
No one is discussing the dossier anymore except you. Even CNN has given up reporting on it.
I take offense to your earlier comment saying I have dishonest intent as that is just plain false. You may not agree with takes but I assure you I am being honest with my opinions and am not trying to mislead you in any way.
McCabe owed the DNC a favor. I believe McCabe paid for the dossier already knowing Carter Page had Russian contacts from his work in Moscow 10 years ago, and McCabe knew that this fact alone would allow the judge to issue a FISA warrant so the FBI could legally run surveillance on Trump's team. Obama loosened the rules for unmasking on his way and Susan Rice liberally disseminated all that was found to members of the WH/DNC to use to try and take Trump out. It didn't work and now we are seeing the intelligence community and Obama holdovers scramble in an attempt to try and cover up what happened.
I look forward to having my theory proven correct.
Some good advice that you should also apply to your failing Trump/Russia collusion theory.
djohn2oo8!!!!
My points above weren't to question the dossier's credibility but to look at the bigger picture. I've already told you why I found the dossier was lacking credibility which you seemed to agree with me on some points.
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