My idea is to provide something with rigorous criteria that is more objective than the rumors and claims that fill these threads, not that their is anything wrong with those. I enjoy reading them as much as anyone. Some of them are pretty ridiculous, some are quite sane.
I have admitted to being a Q skeptic, and noting that in my opinion most of the predictions made by he and his interpreters have failed to materialize.
Rather than belabor that point, which irritates a lot of people here, I have chosen to try to provide something interesting that provides a complimentary secondary way of looking at what is going on.
Hopefully within every 1,500 response thread there is a place for touching base with some simple raw numbers. That is all I am providing.
I don't really have a "narrative", I have a metric.
If I were to construct a narrative around it, it would be:
So far Mueller is doing a better job of impugning Trump that Team Trump is doing of impugning Mueller and his fellow tormentors.This is not unexpected. Team Trump started second and is moving slower. Over time this may change, as events accelerate. But so far Mueller appears to have a significant advantage in getting actual indictments, and guilty pleas.
Currently we are in a stagnant period of both investigations, at least as made visible by indictments.
Now, in your criticism of me you cite the litany of things that you say I am ignoring:
...such as Trump has no arrest or prosecutorial powers outside the DOJ. Trump must wait for process. Mueller ignores the regulations of the DOJ and bulls his way through. . . to get bogus guilty pleas on process crimes after bankrupting defendants.. . .OK, yes, I am ignoring some of those things.Or indicting foreign nationals for alleged international actions taken (posting ads on a Facebook, an international business from a location outside the US) outside his jurisdiction which no one can credibly point to a statute prohibiting them doing.
Not because they don't agree with my narrative, but because they are not the metrics I have chosen. I did not choose the metrics I did: public firings, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions - because they support a narrative, I chose them because they are the least ambiguous things I could come up with.
And, by the way, I did try to take into consideration a couple things that piss you off about Mueller. I do not provide any points for the indictment of foreigners who are unlikely every to appear in US courts. ZERO points. That is an adjustment, an attempt to address that ridiculous behavior of Mueller.
I also have given the "lying to the FBI" charge a lower score to address your "process crimes" criticism of Mueller. So, the points scale does attempt to weight the facts in the best way I can, and the weighting actually favors Trump, or at least treats some of Mueller's more extravagant proprietorial behavior with a lot of skepticism as to it's value.
It's like a sporting event. The fans of both teams may know in advance that there are all sorts of reasons why it's going to be very hard for the Lions to beat Green Bay.
They have lost their quarterback, they have lost their best receiver, 1/2 of their offensive line are out with injuries, they have the worst kicker in the NFL, their head coach just had a heart attack and the defensive coordinator has been arrested, so the entire game much be carried on the back of the offensive coordinator, who was a college coach until a month ago.
Then you have the game. It stands outside all the pre-existing conditions, the unfairness of circumstance, and the only thing that matters in the end is the number of points scored. Maybe the Lions overcome their disadvantages, maybe they don't. Someone wins, someone looses.
It is my contention that, eventually, Trump must strike back, and that anything less than indictments, guilty please and convictions is insufficient to establish Trump's narrative (shared by most people here, including me) that the Deep State is trying to remove Trump with a soft coup.
It is my contention that to survive he must deconstruct Mueller (who is surely going to eventually try to deliver the coup-d'grace to Trump via either direct indictment or a report suggesting impeachment) with unambiguous facts. Not rumors, not long articles in obscure web publications, not cryptic postings in haiku by a claimed secret agent. But simple hard facts that can not be denied.
The same kind Mueller is trying to collect.
Trump's best (and perhaps only) defense at that point will be a long string of indictments, guilty pleas, firings-for-cause, and convictions of those around Mueller, those in the FBI and DOJ, and both Clinton and Obama teams.
I think these events are vital, I think they are unambiguous, and so I continue to think it's worthwhile to track them.
Of course you are free to disagree, but I think you are accusing me of doing exactly what I say I am doing, but maybe haven't explained very well. So, I've tried here to do a better job.
Verifiable Event Based
Scoring of Mueller vs. Team Trump
| JB EVENT-POINT SYSTEM | |
| EVENT | POINTS |
|---|---|
| Public Firing for Cause | 1 |
| Indictmnet for Lying | 2 |
| Indictment for Actual Crime | 3 |
| Guilty Plea or Conviction, Lying | 3 |
| Conviction for Actual Crime | 5 |
| Indictment of Russians in Russia | zero |
| TEAM | EVENT | RESULT | SCORE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mueller | Flynn | Guilty Plea | 3 |
| Mueller | Papadapolis | Guilty Plea | 3 |
| Mueller | Gates | Guilty Pleas | 3 |
| Mueller | Evgeny Freidman | Guilty Plea | 3 |
| Mueller | Alex Van Der Zwaan | Guilty Plea | 3 |
| Mueller | Manaforte | Indicted for Actual Crime | 2 |
| Mueller | Pichard Pinedo, | Guilty Plea, forgery | 5 |
| Mueller | 13 Russians | Indicted, in Russia | 0 |
| Mueller | 2 Russian Companies | Indicted, in Russia | 0 |
| Mueller | Concorde Consulting | Indicted, in USA | 3 |
| Trump | McCabe | Publie Firing | 1 |
| Trump | James A Wolfe | Indicted for Lying to FBI | 2 |
| Score | |
| Team Tump | 3 |
| Team Mueller | 25 |
Jaques, no worries. Everyone has a different perspective. I would like to think there is no Kool-aide drinking going on here.
perhaps your graphic could include a timeline as to point out the decades long headstart the deepstate had?