Starkiller

Until they took the House, Dems had no power to do their own investigations.

For example, “Do you support Amazon getting a tax return?” I assume you meant something like getting a tax refund. Though even then I don’t think they got a refund, I would have said paying zero taxes. Or “Is it okay for Walmart to not pay income taxes while they purposely place their employees on Medicaid?” Unlike Amazon, Walmart does pay taxes. But you could have said “Is it okay for Walmart to pay their employees so little that the government has to subsidize them billions through Medicaid and food stamps?” But as I said, he blew off the actual issues themselves, which is on him...

Well SDNY will be looking into Trump's business practices rather than Russian collusion, so that’s a totally different investigation. But yes, I’m sure Muller's team turned up some info that will be of use to SDNY.

Well you did word things poorly, but the fact that he could only attack you on that and not the substantive issues themselves is telling...

I have already stated that there isn’t going to be an impeachment or criminal charges from the Russian collusion, so I don’t really know what you are talking about. Unlike Benghazi, there was actually evidence of intentional collusion. The issue isn’t that there wasn’t evidence that the Trump campaign leaders met with Russians at Trump Tower or that it was supposed to be about dirt on Hillary, they just can’t prove what was discussed or if anything illegal happened. It’s not that they can’t prove that Manafort gave internal polling to a Russian oligarch, they just can’t prove it was done with any malicious intent. They know that Manafort took the job running the Trump campaign for free hoping to pay off a debt to a Russian oligarch (for reasons), but they can’t prove there was any coordination. They know the Trump team changed the GOP platform at the convention to help Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they just can’t prove there was any illegal coordination with the Russian government. We know they were coordinating with Wikileaks, who was in turn working with Russian intelligence, but they can’t prove Trump coordinated it with Russia. There were a variety of other meetings between Trump campaign members and Russians, but again there’s no case to be made without proof of what happened in those meetings. So no, there is no reason to pretend that Trump was exonerated or that the report proves there was “no collusion”. We just know there isn’t enough evidence to make a federal case of it. And no, I don’t plan to just pretend it all didn’t happen...

Causing trouble in Venezuela increases the price of oil on the global market, which increases Russian oil revenue.

Hey, even LittleEarl admits that the report doesn’t exonerate Trump... As for “collusion”, there is plenty of public evidence that the Trump team had very unusual contacts with Russia, both directly and indirectly (Trump tower meeting, Manafort's polling data, Wikileaks coordination, etc). The fact that Mueller didn’t find enough evidence to press charges doesn’t prove that nothing happened. It only means there won’t be any charges.

Rolltide assumes that any man dating an adult woman is gay. This is how committed is his love and devotion for Roy Moore...

Interesting. So, what you are saying is that just because a special council doesn’t have enough evidence to press charges, you believe that is not enough to exonerate them...

1. Starr said he never found anything criminal Clinton was guilty of other than Lewinsky-related. And I have never denied Clinton's guilt of perjury. 2. There was a criminal trial into Whitewater anyway. Based on the outcome, they were innocent of at least any criminal charges. 3. Unlike the Starr investigation, Mueller stuck to his original mandate and didn’t branch off into sex-related crimes. He didn’t go looking into the hush money paid to various women leading up to the election. 4. Also unlike Starr, the Mueller report isn’t public yet.

There’s no desperation, only a desire to see the facts come out.

You act as if bone spurs aren’t a serious medical condition or something...

Barr works for Trump, so his Cliffs Notes version of the report isn’t going to be the final word one way or the other. The fact that the report isn’t going to lead directly to criminal charges is good news for Trump. Beyond that, however, he can claim that it exonerates him as much as he likes but the fact is that at best the Barr summary leaves open lots of questions that (hopefully) the full report will answer.

If you want to be technical, the official report says that “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” From a legal perspective, that means that they don’t have enough evidence to bring charges. So it does clear Trump in the sense they aren’t going to charge him with anything. But it doesn’t mean they didn’t find any evidence of it, nor does it mean that it did not happen. Again, we will have to see the full report. We know, at the very least, they coordinated with WikiLeaks (who worked with Russia). We know Manafort gave internal campaign data to a Russian oligarch. We know about the meeting at Trump Tower. We know Carter Page had direct contact with Russian intelligence. What else did the Mueller team actually find? Still unknown...

Everyone will lean the same way they were already leaning until we get more information.