Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

Corkblowin

How does the arrest of a Trump supporting Congressman affect the numbers in the house? Can he still vote on bills or against impeachment once he's been arrested? I assume he'll get bail - can he retain his seat while awaiting trial or is he suspended?

Sorry for all the questions, I've no idea how the system works.

spacecoyote

amandstu wrote: »

Will Trump's trade war be affected if the Dems gain control of Congress in the Midterms?

I don't believe so, he didn't need GOP support to initiate them in the first place.

Pretty sure he's using a loophole in relatiom to national security, or something like that to implement them without support from congress

StringerBell

spacecoyote wrote: »

I don't believe so, he didn't need GOP support to initiate them in the first place.

Pretty sure he's using a loophole in relatiom to national security, or something like that to implement them without support from congress

Yes because he is unable to actually work with people to get things done he finds a work around to play king.

StringerBell

Looking more like Trump's guy is gonna defeat the incumbent also. Though the lead is something like 190 votes with 99% returned. I'm assuming a recount will have to happen there?

The establishment Republicans are in real danger in these primaries when Trump weighs in but I do wonder whether it makes more of the actual seasts more winnable for Democrats when it comes to the actual election...

everlast75

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1027188149292871683?s=19





Quite the list!

Charges imminent apparently for Cohen too. Very very similar to those against Manafort too

Penn

Trumps lawyers have responded to Mueller request for an interview. Haven't said what their terms are though, likely that there's no questions regarding obstruction during the interview, but rather answers to those are submitted in writing.

Christy42

Penn wrote: »

Trumps lawyers have responded to Mueller request for an interview. Haven't said what their terms are though, likely that there's no questions regarding obstruction during the interview, but rather answers to those are submitted in writing.

A.K.A. Trump won't even see those questions. They know he is a massive risk to say something he shouldn't admit to.

The lawyers will write those answers.

StringerBell

Latest was they failed again to agree terms, this is nothing Earth shattering. Giuliani is negotiating with himself basically. Muellers team is letting them draw this out, the reason is still open to debate.

We will know soon enough though as I expect him to follow the 60 day DOJ guideline when it comes to elections and not to do much between September and November.

robindch

Manic Moran wrote: »

If the Russians are ballsy enough to say "Hi, we're the Russians, and we're going to help you win the election" to the candidate that they would prefer win (without a quid-pro-quo) is it legal? It's foreign involvement, sure, but illegal?

Yes, collusion with a foreign government or its agents in order to overturn US law is illegal under the Logan Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

Manic Moran wrote: »

How about if the Russians didn't say it was the Russians, and pretended to be some concerned citizen in Tennessee, which is where I was going with the hypothetical, is it the same level of foreign involvement? Arguably, yes, because the effect is the same. Then we get into the whole 'troll factory', 'fake ID' business that Facebook is currently trying to fight. But is it as illegal?

It's both trivially unethical (since the "concerned citizens" are dishonest) and illegal (since it constitutes foreign interference mentioned above).

In the case of the 2016 presidential election, the Russians were helping upfront by providing the Trump campaign with damaging information on its opponents (constituting foreign interference) and where also helping around the back (by astroturfing or funding a range of other issues or issue groups including - if memory serves - groups which were anti-Hillary, pro-Sanders, pro-Stein, pro-Black Lives Matter, anti-GMO, pro-Texas secession, pro-California secession and a range of weapons-rights groups, including the NRA and other neo-fascist organizations.

Manic Moran wrote: »

I think we are missing the forest for the trees. Accepting Russian help (even if known) to get elected and neither promising or doing anything different in return is arguably better than accepting American help to get elected and actually promising or doing something which would not otherwise have been done as a result.

You are deliberately planting trees in the hope that people might see a forest.

Foreign interference is illegal under US law for reasons which are not hard to understand and which are widely accepted, at least amongst people who accept the broad precepts of the representative democracy which constitutes the US polity.

everlast75

Having worked hard to drum up anger against illegal immigrants, now the move begins for legal immigrants to be targeted.

First Miller floats the idea. Then Fox takes the ball and runs with it.

If you now say you don't think that the US administration is racist, then i don't believe you.

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1027380439420420101?s=19

Christy42

everlast75 wrote: »

Having worked hard to drum up anger against illegal immigrants, now the move begins for legal immigrants to be targeted.

First Miller floats the idea. Then Fox takes the ball and runs with it.

If you now say you don't think that the US administration is racist, then i don't believe you.

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1027380439420420101?s=19

It is kind of hilarious that that described the entirety of US history. It has constantly been changing based on immigration.

amandstu

Christy42 wrote: »

It is kind of hilarious that that described the entirety of US history. It has constantly been changing based on immigration.

Do immigrants tend to be more racist than "settled" communities?

I remember being told that the Irish abroad (eg SA) were amongst the worst ,though I have no direct experience ,except for my Irish boss in Boston who physically threatened me with a bed in the river)

Edit: that's interesting
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45119326

In vino veritas?

Pa8301

everlast75 wrote: »

Having worked hard to drum up anger against illegal immigrants, now the move begins for legal immigrants to be targeted.

First Miller floats the idea. Then Fox takes the ball and runs with it.

If you now say you don't think that the US administration is racist, then i don't believe you.

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1027380439420420101?s=19

Are the Republican party taking their cues from the Know Nothing movement of the mid 19th century?!

everlast75

I'm looking forward to hearing from the Trump supporters on here, who were extremely anxious ito insist that Trump was not racist, that he "didn't mean" legal immigrants when he made certain remarks.


Anyway, i was expecting the NBC tapes of the apprentice in the Summer Zervos matter to be quite the gut punch to the presidency. I wasn't expecting it to come from a different angle


https://twitter.com/FrankConniff/status/1027306017195999237?s=19

breatheme

Meh. I keep hearing about things his presidency "won't survive". We shall see. At this point I reckon the man could shoot a baby and still remain in the White House.

Pelvis

People knew he was a racist, sexist, and molester of women before he became president. They still voted for him.

everlast75

breatheme wrote: »

Meh. I keep hearing about things his presidency "won't survive". We shall see. At this point I reckon the man could shoot a baby and still remain in the White House.

I should have put in the disclaimer along those lines. I don't believe that they will and I hate hyperbole as a rule. Notwithstanding that, its another straw to the camel's back and whilst it isn't breaking yet.....

oscarBravo

breatheme wrote: »

Meh. I keep hearing about things his presidency "won't survive". We shall see. At this point I reckon the man could shoot a baby and still remain in the White House.

Yup. His supporters are amoral, and the GOP are spineless. Remember one of his supporters on here saying that a racist tirade would elevate his opinion of him?

pixelburp

ProPublica published a very interesting, and potentially damning, insight into the state of the VA: in essence, the article charges that Trump has allowed 3 buddies from Mar-a-Lago (including recently blackballed Marvel supremo Ike Perlmutter) to run the VA without any oversight or official due process. It's all very 'wink and a nod', and when ProPublica reached out for comment, the trio communicated through a "crisis-communications consultant", which always paints a great picture.

But hundreds of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former administration officials tell a different story — of a previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd spoke with VA officials daily, the documents show, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. They prodded the VA to start new programs, and officials travelled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views. “Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said.

Now, I'm not savvy enough to predict how this article might go down - if at all - with the Veterans of the US and beyond, and we really have no strong equivalent in Ireland, bar the HSE itself, but at first blush it feels like standard Trump administration practice in operating outside of functional norms. This swamp draining continues to be fantastic, doesn't it?

https://www.propublica.org/article/ike-perlmutter-bruce-moskowitz-marc-sherman-shadow-rulers-of-the-va

Quin_Dub

This is truly scary , regardless of what your political views are..

Many Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media outlets

No less than 26 percent of Americans say they agree that "the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior."

To shut them down. To put them out of business. Just like in a totalitarian society.

How much do you have to despise the media to believe that a president should have the dictatorial power to disband a company?

Fifty-three percent disagreed, and here's the partisan breakdown:

Some 43 percent of Republicans say yeah, let the president shut down media operations he doesn't like.

And 12 percent of Democrats agree, along with 21 percent of independents.

The article above is from Fox News , even they think this is scary...

I would ask the 43 percent of Republicans: How would you feel if Barack Obama was still president and wanted to shut down media outlets he didn't like? Wouldn't you be screaming bloody murder?

So is this just your way of affirming that you love Trump, detest the media and just wish some of these outlets could be made to disappear?

And, uh, whatever happened to conservative passion for the free market?

A caveat about the poll: The Ipsos methodology, involving online panels and statistical adjustments, is not as reliable as a random telephone survey. But even if the numbers are somewhat off, they are still troubling.

Years and years of utterly spiteful partisan , divisive behaviour , accelerated since 2016 has led to this...

Frightening and depressing in equal measure.

Gbear

Quin_Dub wrote: »

This is truly scary , regardless of what your political views are..

Many Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media outlets



The article above is from Fox News , even they think this is scary...



Years and years of utterly spiteful partisan , divisive behaviour , accelerated since 2016 has led to this...

Frightening and depressing in equal measure.

While it's alarming on the face of it, you'd probably need to see a figure for what it was like in the past to put it in any kind of context.

I think quite a lot of people anywhere you'd care to measure would prefer to have an autocratic, totalitarian state, so long as they weren't one of the undesirables being persecuted. The huge numbers of Russians and Turks that support Putin and Erdogan aren't mutants or aliens.

StringerBell

What's funny about it is how these people will go to war over some parts of the constitution while showing such disregard for other parts.

Gbear

StringerBell wrote: »

What's funny about it is how these people will go to war over some parts of the constitution while showing such disregard for other parts.

They don't think systematically. Most people don't.

They don't understand the importance of the constitution as a concept. They engage with it on a purely selfish level.

Manic Moran

Foreign interference is illegal under US law for reasons which are not hard to understand and which are widely accepted, at least amongst people who accept the broad precepts of the representative democracy which constitutes the US polity.

This is why I specifically prefaced the entire post with "The rules must be enforceable, and they must be equally applied"

A foreign power isn't always going to announce its interference with "Hi! We're the Russians!" They were casual about it because they didn't need to be otherwise on this cycle. Do you really think that an organisation such as the FSB can't in 2020 create routings which appear to be domestic US (Or use ones which actually are domestic US, better yet) in order to advance their policies? We may as well accept open foreign involvement, because at least this way we can see it. Hiding it under the rug doesn't make the problem any better.

As long as we continue to allow 'sources' to be used, we have a problem. As long as we continue to allow 'quid pro quo' to be used, we have a problem. This Russia investigation will fix nothing, especially if it is found that there was no quid-pro-quo involved. If Russian DNC hacking led to the fall of Clinton, then the solution is not to try prevent open Russian involvement, it's to not do anything wrong in the first place which could be a problem if released. That way, if the information comes in an envelope stamped Moscow, an envelope with Moscow crossed out and New York City in its place, or just from Denver, there is no effect. If an American did the hacking, equally illegal, that does not make the whole situation any better for anyone.

If, however, the position is "quid-pro-quo is fine if the quidding is apparently (Note "apparently") from a domestic US source, then I have a problem with that anyway. I don't like to give it a pass just because it's an American. There is a difference from supporting a preferred candidate unconditionally. The NRA supporting a naturally pro-gun candidate isn't buying the politician. The NRA supporting a naturally non-pro-gun politician on condition that he/she not take actions against guns is buying him. If Trump did not do a deal (And I have absolutely no idea if he did or not), then there is no moral issue.


On other matters, a couple of articles on CNN about the various folks doing well in elections. One article notes a continued trend of people voting for folks who do not like the current leadership.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/rashida-tlaib-will-not-vote-for-nancy-pelosi-cnntv/index.html
A Michigan Democrat who is poised to be elected to Congress said Thursday she would be unlikely to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats retake the House, adding her name to progressive and swing-state Democrats who won't back the current minority leader.

Also, on the significant rise of military veterans running, on both sides, but more notably the Democratic side: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/female-veterans-run-for-congress/index.html
The candidates who are advancing and who we find are most successful this year, the quality they share is that they're authentic," Barcott says. "They haven't been overly coached by the DC political establishment because they're outside of it. There's a hunger for outsiders by voters. Candidates who are true to themselves, speak truth to power and can serve with civility, courage, integrity."

The Democratic leadership have about two years to come to this new reality that the guys being voted for are not them. It will be a significant hamstring to their chances if they don't.

Leroy42

So your answer is to simply do nothing?

We can't stop everyone drink driving so why bother?

All the outrage about possible influence over HC, and here we have a pretty definitive case of it with Trump and yet all of a sudden its the system to blame and 'what can we do?'

Don't you think that laying down a marker, saying that enough is enough and a line has been crossed is worthwhile?

Christy42

I would also point out he argued repeatedly that Russia had nothing to do with the election. He even went as far as claiming he would have proof.

He has also repeatedly slandered the people working on the investigation and shouted that it was a witch hunt.

If he has done all that while knowing Russia was offering to meddle in the election and avoided saying any of it to the FBI (either before or after the investigation started).

He even fired someone over this investigation.

I would argue even if he did not take the deal (and judging by how far he has defended Russia in this I doubt he turned it down) then he still would have done a lot wrong in all this.

Leroy42

All of this does make you wonder how on earth did Nunes investigation return a finding that there was no collusion with Russia and whether that now needs to be reopened given Trumps admission.

The Nunes tapes, as reported on by Maddow on Wednesday, show that the GOP (and Trump and Pence had already alluded to this) fear losing control of ht house and senate as this would most likely lead to impeachment. The thinking seems to be that the DNC would simply make up anything to impeach POTUS. There is no history whatsoever, no evidence from the DNC, that they would make up stories simply to impeach a POTUS.

MadYaker

I doubt they need to make up anything, they just need to wait for mueller to finish his investigation

Captain Obvious

Manic Moran wrote: »

This is why I specifically prefaced the entire post with "The rules must be enforceable, and they must be equally applied"

A foreign power isn't always going to announce its interference with "Hi! We're the Russians!" They were casual about it because they didn't need to be otherwise on this cycle. Do you really think that an organisation such as the FSB can't in 2020 create routings which appear to be domestic US (Or use ones which actually are domestic US, better yet) in order to advance their policies? We may as well accept open foreign involvement, because at least this way we can see it. Hiding it under the rug doesn't make the problem any better.

As long as we continue to allow 'sources' to be used, we have a problem. As long as we continue to allow 'quid pro quo' to be used, we have a problem. This Russia investigation will fix nothing, especially if it is found that there was no quid-pro-quo involved. If Russian DNC hacking led to the fall of Clinton, then the solution is not to try prevent open Russian involvement, it's to not do anything wrong in the first place which could be a problem if released. That way, if the information comes in an envelope stamped Moscow, an envelope with Moscow crossed out and New York City in its place, or just from Denver, there is no effect. If an American did the hacking, equally illegal, that does not make the whole situation any better for anyone.

If, however, the position is "quid-pro-quo is fine if the quidding is apparently (Note "apparently") from a domestic US source, then I have a problem with that anyway. I don't like to give it a pass just because it's an American. There is a difference from supporting a preferred candidate unconditionally. The NRA supporting a naturally pro-gun candidate isn't buying the politician. The NRA supporting a naturally non-pro-gun politician on condition that he/she not take actions against guns is buying him. If Trump did not do a deal (And I have absolutely no idea if he did or not), then there is no moral issue.


On other matters, a couple of articles on CNN about the various folks doing well in elections. One article notes a continued trend of people voting for folks who do not like the current leadership.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/rashida-tlaib-will-not-vote-for-nancy-pelosi-cnntv/index.html
A Michigan Democrat who is poised to be elected to Congress said Thursday she would be unlikely to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats retake the House, adding her name to progressive and swing-state Democrats who won't back the current minority leader.

Also, on the significant rise of military veterans running, on both sides, but more notably the Democratic side: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/female-veterans-run-for-congress/index.html
The candidates who are advancing and who we find are most successful this year, the quality they share is that they're authentic," Barcott says. "They haven't been overly coached by the DC political establishment because they're outside of it. There's a hunger for outsiders by voters. Candidates who are true to themselves, speak truth to power and can serve with civility, courage, integrity."

The Democratic leadership have about two years to come to this new reality that the guys being voted for are not them. It will be a significant hamstring to their chances if they don't.

You are determined to downplay Russia involvement. If Putin directed a Russian soldier stationed in the US to walk up to a US soldier and shoot him in the head do you think that would be different to an American doing the same act of his own accord? Can you not see the difference between an act directed by a hostile foreign power and a crime committed by a citizen?

Manic Moran

Notice how you refer to one as “an act of a hostile power” and the other as “a crime”.

There are rules which cover the first one. We in the US do a lot of telling of our troops to shoot people in other countries, after all.

However, I am not saying that we should gleefully invite Russia to influence the US system. I am saying that the Russian influence is inevitable unless steps are taken which nobody seems willing to talk about, such as making the use of hacked information, or unattributable sources, etc, illegal, which comes with its own kettle of fish. Given the Russians will do what they do regardless, we have to focus on what we can control: What do -we- do as a result of such influence. Do we change our behavior? Do we change our policies to suit Russia in exchange? If yes, problem. If not, no problem.