The Trump Presidency

how is it democratic that politically elected officials can simply hand jobs to their family

i never quite understood how self proclaimed American democrats can reason such nepotism

how is that leading by example
it surely is not setting a democratic standard

it is clearly the creation of an elitist class system that openly opposes the core principal of democracy.

can anyone explain the American moral principal that drives it ?

 

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It is doing such things only in Western propaganda.

In a world full of completely unnecessary information one has to make choices what is worth to be ignored. If one does not make such choices, one ends up knowing nothing about everything. US internal policies are not a question which is of some interest for me - I will never enter that fascist country, even as a tourist, too uncivilized, too totalitarian. Unfortunately, given that the US is the greatest organized criminal organization of the world, one has to care about who rules there and to discuss a lot of questions, like how to defend against the various criminal attacks from this mafia state.

That a lot of things irrelevant for me are relevant for you is a triviality. Supremacism has no relation to what I have discussed, so I don't understand.

This point is my argument, thus, not a change of subject. It is one thing to start criminal investigations out of nothing in "three felonies a day" land, and another point to suggest to start investigations if something quite obviously suspect has happened.

You have not known that I'm in favor of Putin previously? I have never hidden this. He has started in Russia when it was ruled by a swamp even worse than the actual swamp in Washington, because this swamp had also a lot of support from the outside, the US. Russia was ruled by seven big oligarchs cooperating with the mafia, the political class consisted of those hired by them, and police, justice, and the whole state bureaucracy were completely corrupted. How he managed to clear that swamp win is simply beyond my imagination. But he did it. Of course, not in the Western propaganda, but the facts are obvious enough, Russia survived and is powerful again, and that Russia is presented today much more often as dangerous, not like an ignorable Third World swamp full of the street children, is evidence for this too.

These difference may be reasonable and important for a lawyer, but my consideration was not about a lawyer analyzing what has been done according to the official documents, but about a common person thinking with simple common sense if Biden is suspect or not, and if telling Selenskij that this looks suspect is good or bad. I could tell such things, after studying them. But in the context which I consider, this is not relevant, thus, I don't have to be able to tell it.

It looks like there is a fundamental difference in thinking. I'm a mathematician. That means I have learned to extract a maximal set of conclusions from a minimal set of assumptions, and what is not relevant to derive the conclusion I tend to ignore. In this case, I have made an argument about what voters (not lawyers, but, ok, in the US lawyers may be an important group of voters) would think about this. So, I focus on what is relevant for those voters.

This is what I have read in this transcript or whatever it is.

After this, Tiassa supports iceaura's "you know nothing" nonsense. Looks like whenever I see something positive on the other side, I have to remain silent on this. Else, the positive thing will be stopped immediately, and the behavior becomes worse. But so what, such is life.

 

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Democracy and Capitalism (the pursuit of wealth by a few) are not compatible states.
The moral principle of Democracy (socio-economic distribution) is sharing in the wealth, inevitably becoming opposite to the morality of the Capitalist' pursuit of wealth by a few individuals or coprporations.

 

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...

 

It is interesting to note that USA media has immediately, since the launch of impeachment proceedings, polarized in their editorial opinions and analysis. In particular the WSJ in it's particular use of insinuation and pro Trump propaganda.

 

Serial-Rapist-in-Chief tweeted this morning:

Jesus fuck! So, "many more"... does he mean Jews, women, and brown people here, or Democrats generally?

Without revisiting the whole "punching a Nazi/nazi" thing, at what point... Well, really, I don't even know what I'm asking here--maybe something like this: when ought a reasonable person acknowledge that such persons (Trump, and now, anyone who does not condemn this shit) are simply too dangerous?

 

For Trump, we need to learn from this interesting lecture on the death pennalty.
(warning crude language)

 

No, really clearing the swamp.

There is, of course, nothing I can prove to believers of anti-Russian propaganda. Those who want to believe it, will continue to believe it. And from point of view of this propaganda, Putin has done nothing except taking power and suppressing free press.

In reality, you can take whatever you like - crime rates, imprisonment rates, living standards, murder rates, life expectancy, suicide rates, alcohol and tobacco consumption, suicide rates, income, rents, the economy as a whole, industry, agriculture, infrastructure, diversification, foreign debt, currency and gold reserves, balanced budget, military strength, military, dependency on imports, income from exports, birth rates, essentially whatever, and you will see the same scheme - decline during the Yeltsin time and improvement during the Putin time. And this despite being a US vassal at the start and one of the worst enemies of the US now, which usually would make everything in such a country much much worse.

And similar things hold for those parts you cannot prove in simple statistic numbers too, those parts relevant for "clearing the swamp". The oligarchs remain rich but are out of politics now. They pay taxes and follow the law. Police and court corruption which had established tariffs for criminals to buy their freedom during the Yeltsin time is in the past. The police forces have learned to handle demonstrations in a civilized way. There is a serious fight against the remaining corruption at the highest level. The bureaucracy is much less problematic than it was in the past, if you have all the documents, you get an appointment via the internet and have to wait only a few minutes. There is much less "deep state" because Putin has put those who really decide the relevant questions at the positions where these questions have to be decided by the law. The institution of civil law, arbitrage, essentially new to Russia (there was no such thing in Soviet time) becomes increasingly accepted by the population for private conflict resolution. One of the most corrupt parts of Russia seems to be Crimea - for the simple reason that it has yet a corrupt Ukrainian past, the local politicians are, yet, remains of a corrupt swamp.

Reaching such things is that justifies to be named a "political genius".

BTW, about my point that what Biden has done was suspect from the start, and this was obvious even to US mainstream media:

My point is not if doing such things is legal or not - in three felonies a day everything may be legal as well as illegal. The point is if it makes Biden sufficiently suspect of corruption in the eye of the people.

And another one about how easy it is for Trump to sell this message:

Here, also, my point is not that what Trump has done is legal or not - in three felonies a day everything may be legal as well as illegal. It is about how it will be recognized by the people. So that it would be a Pyrrhic victory to impeach him based on this action.

 

Quite interesting about the psychology of the left.

Don't forget, the left is somehow traditionally against the death penalty. And so, quite consistently, the whole thing is presented as satirical against all those Christian fundamentalists who are assumed to support the death penalty.

But how this works here? The first frenetic applause starts at 0:30 when it is proposed to apply the death penalty against the enemy of the left. The next one when he proposed crucifixion and then describes how to exaggerate it further. The proposal of "nailing one white banker per week" is something the people find very funny too. Ok, there is yet a minor difference to the traditional proposal where "white" is replaced by "Jewish". But this is not that important, given that the Jewish bankers are only seldom black.

So, the whole concept of this "comedy" or whatever is quite interesting. The official target remains those evil capitalist firms who are proposed as candidates to sponsor this. But the really funny thing, which gains the applause, is the proposal for various methods of executing. And, don't forget, those who are proposed to be executed are the enemies of the left, the "white banker".

Will those who applaud here do anything against a practical realization of all this, exactly as described, sponsored, say, by Google or whatever politically correct firms, as long as those executed are "one white banker per week"? I doubt.

 

There is a point I've been reminding people of, to assess according to what is not explicitly untrue. Consider:

Well, yes, sure, that's true, but wrapped up in that is also an obligation to occasionally make reasonable choices.

Well, yes, sure, but that argument has more effect when the one making such choices is sincere, honest, rational, &c.

In and of itself, there is nothing objectionable about this statement. However, your behavioral-political critique actually requires such consideration. Really: When you say stupid things and then declare that reality is not of interest to you, okay, we get it.

To reiterate, since you skipped out on it: We can look at your turn to Biden according to the notion that, apparently, you cannot discern the difference.

Nor is that an empty political hit; you make the point yourself:

After a while, it's clear that reality is generally irrelevant to your would-be assessments. For instance, if your standard purports to have anything to do with, "from the point of view of a reasonable person, sufficiently suspect to be corrupt to start criminal investigations", then it should not decide that actual, observable corruption is nothing you care about; it should not disdain the letter of the law. Your argument is paradoxical and self-defeating: If this is merely, "telling the law enforcement of the country where the crime has possibly happened", then there are actually ways to do that. But Trump chose to skip out on that, and if it was merely a slip of the tongue it would not coincide with other factors. For instance, even before we had the complaint, the information leaking as this one came unstitched forewarned us that this was about more than one event; what was actually surprising was just how blatant the one event was. The rest is there, too: Five cabinet secretaries, CIA officials, Acting DNI, and the Vice President, at least, as well as explicit behavior considered demonstrative of cognizance of guilt. Furthermore, President Trump and AG Barr alike operate under the presupposition of a unitary executive, essentially the imperial presidency American conservatives always accuse of Democrats. This is important to bear in mind as we learn more details about how much the administration knew about the whistleblower, and when; resignations of former DNI Dan Coats, as well as his top deputy, Susan Gordon, announced three days after the phone call, and effective what turns out to be three days after the whistleblower files with the Inspector General; nobody is certain whether NSA Bolton's resignation is tied what turns out to be an apparently scandalous aid disbursement to Ukraine.

Compared to the appropriate for "telling the law enforcement of the country where the crime has possibly happened", there seems to be a lot that isn't relevant, and thus you excuse yourself from considering.

Yet you base your entire grandeur boast on presuppositions derived from proud fancy.

Sure, two plus two equals four, but that would be something that might come up along the way in explaining the math of a twelve-six hammer. Still, though, telling me two plus two equals four means nothing if you're also telling me the secret to a killer curveball is rubber nen.

Given what you consider irrelevant compared your own aesthetic fixations, your assessment of voters is unreliable.

Compared to what you consider irrelevant, this is not surprising.

Schmelzer, if you actually had a clue, you would understand that "know nothing" has a particular American context, and whenever we see know-nothingism, it reflects the same human values and outcomes it always does. Persistently dismissing reality as irrelevant is the actual heart of know-nothingist behavior.

And it's all you've ever really brought.

We should take a moment for something someone else said:

The irony of this line depends entirely on other people, but in terms of subtlety and humor what probably isn't relevant to your aeesthetics is not simply a recent discussion of James R's sense of humor, but the detail of who said what, because some bullshit broke out about whether someone was paid to post here, and some of us had a pretty good chuckle at that, because, well, right, there's always you, and what is relevant to your aesthetics is the underlying joke:

• No, Schmelzer is not a paid advocate; this is obvious, because:

(1) This is Sciforums. In American terms, we're not even farm league; in software terms, this isn't even beta testing. Comparatively, it's spaghetti-monster lorem ipsum.

(2) Three words: Troll farm washout.​

That is to say, there's a bit of good meta, there, and such a shame you can't appreciate the humor. Don't worry, though, as comedy is cruelty, this should slip off you about as lightly and easily as a fact.

But that's the joke: Your sullen determination, anti-Americanism, and Putiphilia might make people wonder, but that's only if they skip the detail of just how blatantly detached from reality your generally unreliable—even unto themselves—postings really are. Like a couple religious evangelists around here, and even a couple of their nonunion antireligious equivalents, it's almost like you're trolling the gutter, aiming to hook some lowest common denominator. So, yeah, when someone accused that someone else might be a paid advocate, we all laughed, because, well, compared to Schmelzer, and then laughed again.

Because anyone who pays attention already knows: If Schmelzer can't cope with it, he will decide it isn't relevant, is nothing he cares about. It's hard to imagine who would actually pay for such staggering incompetence. Even as a leftist, anti-Putin provocateur trying to denigrate the Russian strongman's supporters, you're just too clumsy about it.

So, yeah—

—quit whining. In fifty-two months of opportunity, you have utterly failed to start making sense. Know-nothingism is one of most consistent behaviors of American cruelty; you're over a hundred sixty years behind.

 

So the whole point of your post is to point at the potential nominee and insinuate scandal and corruption.
Are you going to devote yourself to destroying any credibility you believe Biden has?
Is Putin going to repeat his efforts against Biden as he had against Hillary?
and employ the likes of you to troll accordingly?
These are questions I ask myself as it appears obvious that this is your intent.
Extorting favor in the way that it appears Trump has done, in the name of the American people, is considerably worse than just a felony, in case you wondered. If it were an official in Russia abusing his office in similar ways a firing squad at dawn would by summarily ordered and an unmarked grave utilised, with out any of the fuss of a prolonged inquiry.

The gravity of what has been reported so far is enormous, and even deflecting to Biden or perhaps even Hillary, is not going to prevent the best truth from being revealed.
This is what an impeachment process is primarily about or so I believe...

 

No, I have simply provided arguments for a point I have made before. The point was that this impeachment attempt is stupid given that even if it would be successful it would be a dangerous Pyrrhic victory because the people would not follow. Part of this was the observation that the corruption of Biden is something every reasonable person would suspect given the facts. This was my impression, and once I have found some support for this, I have posted this support, that's all. About Biden's fate itself, I'm not interested at all. In fact, I would have no problem with Biden becoming president, he does not look as dangerous as Clinton. In fact, a US president known to be corrupt is a good thing. China pays him another 1.5 billion and there will be no trade war. A corrupt guy will not start a world war. (Of course, there was a similar argument about Hillary too, but she looked far too much warmongering, so to rely on the known corruption alone seemed not sufficient. Anyway, Trump was in this relation not worse.)

You seem to think a lot about intents. That's quite childish. Up to a degree, it makes sense to identify the political direction of somebody, because this would be the direction he is likely to distort something. But I have never hidden that I'm personally involved with Russian culture, like Putin, and against the unipolar world. Beyond a rough classification, intend is quite unimportant, other things are much more important. To care about intend is childish because this is what one has to teach small children first. The other, more important things are much more difficult to evaluate correctly. So, this is not accessible to everybody.

Nonsense. The typical Russian comment is that there was nothing at all in this transcript or whatever it is, same for that whistleblower's second-hand bs.

They comment more about that the Dems together with Trump have seriously harmed US diplomacy for many years because there are now no more any channels for secret negotiations on the highest level, which is essentially a necessity for successful diplomacy. Moreover, the Russians have joked a lot about the clown Zelensky because it became quite obvious that nobody has cared to get his agreement for that publication.

And I explain to you the difference is irrelevant.

You don't need the letter of the law to know that corruption is forbidden. For evaluating the known facts you don't need them too. The facts are that a short time after a coup Biden's incompetent son gets a very good paid job for doing nothing in a foreign country. This is a known standard way to pay bribes. And then father Biden insists with a clear case of extortion that the general prosecutor has to be fired. You don't need more to make this case of corruption sufficiently plausible.

We will see. What I have written was a correct guess about Trump's line of defense, and I have guessed it correctly given the video. It is now your problem to fight that line of defense. Trump's line of defense, not my line, given that my guess was successful.

Who will win this I don't know, but I don't have to care yet. What I said is that starting the impeachment was a political error, independent of the question if it is formally justified. Even a successful impeachment would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Quite probable. But to access their thinking, I don't have to care about what lawyers think about the situation. For this point, it is sufficient to know that common people in the US hate lawyers.

Thanks for the information that what in civilized countries would be considered to be an unacceptable personal attack is in the US some sort of joking.

 

The Russian annexation of Crimea happened in the real world.

It isn't. If you want evidence of that, observe your failure to access the thinking of common Americans. (You missed twice: most Americans do not hate lawyers, most Americans dislike Trump).

They would.
"The people" are quite willing to impeach Trump, and that is before most of them have seen the evidence an impeachment inquiry will make common knowledge.
He's already not a popular guy, his lies are getting more embarrassing by the week, and that's before the evidence of his corruption is laid out under oath.

I am sorry to hear that the typical Russian is that dumb and ignorant - imagine coming to such conclusions without even knowing what's in the phone calls and whistleblower reports. That's almost as silly as you posting about the Mueller Report without ever reading it.

Which you said without knowing anything about the politics involved, what Trump has been doing, etc.
Which is typical of you, although it's hard to believe of the "typical Russian".

 

No. To name what happened "annexation" is Western propaganda.

Except that I have not claimed that most Americans like Trump. And the other claim is simply your claim (no evidence presented from either side, thus, it simply remains unclear who is right). To find something about typical prejudices against certain groups, looking at jokes is a good idea:

Part of my argument was a description of the danger related with this impeachment, in comparison with simply waiting for the next elections to get rid of Trump. And this danger is that the Trump supporters will not accept this impeachment as legitimate but as a coup organized by the swamp. So, the relevant question for this is not how those who anyway vote for the Dems will react, but how Trump supporters will react. Remember, the number of people who expect a civil war during the next years was shockingly high. At least for me. To start such an impeachment based on such a base in a land where a lot of people already think that a civil war is a possibility (instead of a stupid fantasy with no base in reality) is at least irresponsible.

Of course, everybody who disagrees with you has not read the relevant things. Except that my sources have even quoted the whistleblowers report. And have also laughed about this: https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/2...rement-of-first-hand-whistleblower-knowledge/

 

So do you think that the USA government should just turn a blind eye and be intimidated into allowing Trump to do as he likes?
If Civil war is the fear then civil war is already having an impact.
Trump has repeatedly played the civil war card...which is just another reason for his impeachment.
Of course Putin would like nothing more than the USA to get into a civil war...and I am surprised.. you not actually rooting for it..

 

I do not give recommendations on what to do. This would be quite meaningless because to give recommendations, one would have to know what is the aim. It is completely unclear what are the aims of the various Dem politicians. One possibility would be that his competitors want to get rid of Biden by making sure that Biden's corruption case will be in the media all the time.

All that I do is to point out that some actions are stupidly dangerous. In this case, all one needs is the hypothesis that the Dems don't aim to start a civil war themselves.

But, ok, if you want a recommendation: If Trump is really that evil, they cannot find another pretense to start impeachment? Something where he does not have the natural defense of draining the swamp by suggesting investigations against politicians highly suspect of corruption?

Very simple - it would contradict my own values to root for wars. Moreover, I know that civil wars are quite horrible wars where what would be war crimes in wars between states is the everyday business of both sides. So, sorry, I don't wish such things even to Americans. Even if there is a nation which would deserve such a fate, it would be Americans, given the number of such civil wars all over the world initiated by the US.

 

Glad to hear that you are not rooting for a civil war in the USA.
Perhaps you do not know that the USA has been constantly having to deal with the threat of civil war ever since the... uhm ...civil war supposedly ended?
Today it is not much more than usual and to allow Trump to continue with out any checks and balances for the remainder of his term would be incredibly foolish.
The Mueller inquiry, just by being in place was a significant restraint on Trump. Whether it found anything or not is not so much the point. IMO
Now we have impeachment proceedings that are also going to place Trumps future behavior under a microscope. Thus dampening his enthusiasm for abusing his power and making a fool of himself and the USA population simultaneously.
It basically means that Trump has to behave in legal and constitutional ways for the time being at least and perform the duties he swore an oath to perform ( re: the constitution)
It also allows for accurate assessments to be made with out the restrictions made on Congress. If Trump has nothing to hide he should welcome the chance to clear his name and destroy the Democrats at the same time... I doubt that that will be the case though...
Trump will probably attempt to incite civil war as his frustration increases and for a POTUS to do so would be rather damning because whether he likes it or not he is President for everyone in Union and not just his preferred sector.
It also has significant input into Trumps future once he leaves office...
I am sure my American colleagues here will correct me if I am mistaken...

 

Greed.

 

I'll just borrow notes from a post in another thread, since you missed it in that one; see #3601485/746 ("The Mueller Investigation")↑.

†​

The particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable. What that sort of ignorance leads to is pretty stupid:

The smoking gun in the putative conspiracy is an obscure government form, IC IG ICWSP Form 401, also known as the Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form. The document is put out by the IC IG for intelligence workers who need to file urgent complaints that trigger special treatment under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act.

According to the GOP and an army of conservative commentators, the old version of the form prohibited workers from submitting urgent complaints based on secondhand information; only misconduct witnessed personally could be reported. That changed in early August, the false claim goes, when ICIG Michael Atkinson snuck through a hasty revision to the complaint form that reversed long-standing policy.

"Whistleblowers were required to provide direct, first-hand knowledge of allegations," reads a Saturday tweet by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. "But just days before the Ukraine whistleblower came forward, the IC secretly removed that requirement from the complaint form."

"Records show that the intelligence community quietly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019," Rudy Giuliani tweeted on Sunday. "Eliminating the requirement to have direct, first-hand knowledge of perceived wrongdoing. Coincidence?"

"That was on the form literally until apparently very recently," said Trump's other lawyer, Jay Sukulow, in an appearance on Hannity. "Months ago: no first hand information, no report."

"WOW, they got caught," tweeted Trump. "End the Witch Hunt now!"

The Atkinson smear comes amid a broad GOP campaign seemingly calculated to discredit the whistleblower report as unreliable, partisan hearsay, despite it having already been corroborated by an IC IG review and confirmed by the White House's own transcript of Trump's call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. It began late Friday with a story from the conservative website The Federalist headlined "Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge." The article claimed "the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing." ....

.... What the article didn't mention or screenshot is a nearly identical field gracing Form 401 since at least May 2018, making it impossible that it was added as an easement for Trump's whistleblower. The major difference in the fields is that the old form includes three options instead of two, subdividing secondhand sources into outside source and "other employees."

There's a reason the form has allowed secondhand reports all along. The requirement for firsthand whistleblowing only is completely made up.

"There's never been a requirement that a whistleblower have firsthand knowledge of what they're reporting," said Irvin McCullough, an investigator at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project (and the son of a former IC IG). "They need to have a reasonable belief. The firsthand information is usually gathered by the inspector general, as I believe did occur here."

(Poulsen↱)​

A bit of American trivia: The coincidence between the Party long famous for arguing that government doesn't work, and those who need to complain when a system works like it is supposed to.

McCarthy, Giuliani, Sekulow, Hannity, The Federalist; to revive an old expression, these are divorced from reality. Of course, they're not sinister, right? They just don't know, right? No, really, they either know or not, and toward the latter, the particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable.

It is downright stupid.

†​

There was a lot to keep up with, yesterday, as Trump surrogates flailed and drowned in their spaghetti; still, Friday's Federalist article that helped your sources laugh so much was debunked before you posted it here.

And, sure, we know such details aren't necessarily of some interest for you, are nothing you care about, or seem completely unnecessary and irrelevant for you, but the detail shows you're wrong, and over the course of years such results become hardly unexpected. More directly, after a while, the correlation between Schmelzer being wrong, and such niceties being beyond Schmelzer's concern, is perhaps the most reliable things about you.
____________________

Notes:

Poulsen, Kevin. "GOP Shows Russian Trolls How It’s Done With Whistleblower Smear". The Daily Beast. 29 September 2019. DailyBeast.com. 30 September 2019. http://bit.ly/2mg2j7o

 

I'm aware about the genocide against the native population, and one can classify this as a civil war too. Beyond this, no, I don't know such a thing.

In three felonies a day land everybody who will not hide all he is able to hide is a fool.

I doubt. To be honest, I have no idea how a civil war would start. What I could imagine as starting a civil war would be something harmless like a natural disaster, followed by blacks looting something, and some whites fighting back with self-defense militias. There seems so much racial hatred in the US that such a racial component is inevitable and will play a central role if a civil war really starts. There will be probably already a lot of dead people before Trump has made his first twit about this. Of course, as Trump's twits, as the liberal media reaction to them will both escalate the situation, so that what would have otherwise remained some local riot with some racial elements becomes a civil war.

I simply have seen polls that there is a large number of Americans who think there will be such a war during the next years. Who would think so if locally everything would be fine and the only conflict is infight between politicians in Washington which are despised everywhere? I would guess that those who think there will be a civil war during the next years are also those who already know who is their enemy and those who already prepare themselves for the fight. Not? Ok, they all may be simply snowflakes afraid of such a war, while there is no such danger in reality at all. Whatever, if this would be, say, a 50:50 between those two possibilities, that would be no good news.

Except that the information I have given was correct. Namely "And have also laughed about this: [Federalist link]". I have not made any judgment about the correctness of the content, and do not plan to do such a thing in the future. It was simply objective information about what was viral in the Russian net. So, where I was wrong?

I see here a strong correlation between thinking I'm wrong and not reading carefully what I write. This, by the way, nicely explains your correlation. If I don't care about something, I make no explicit claims about this. But those who do not read carefully often misinterpret my texts. This is not necessarily intentional distortion (even if distortions in what iceaura claims I have said are so obvious and regular that I think they are intentional). This may be as well the inability to think mathematically as I do. The simple failure to ask oneself "If he writes 'and have also laughed about this: [Federalist link]', does it follow that he claims that the content of that link is correct?"