The Republicans will fixate on Comey's leak because it's about the only leverage they have over the story. They can't really say "Nothing to see here anymore!" as Comey has outright stated both in writing and in person that Trump deliberately and inappropriately demanded both "loyalty" (and all that inferred) and asked him to drop the Flynn investigation. It sure looks like obstruction of justice to me, but even some of the folks who know about these things aren't even sure you can actually charge a sitting President with obstruction of justice, so what it comes down now is just how much the Republicans in Congress are willing to tolerate before they finally pull the plug. Maybe they can tolerate anything Trump has done or will do, in which case I guess this whole shit show goes on until at least 2020.
A lot of this is going to hinge on how the fallout from SCOTUS's gerrymandering ruling. The GOP has been using gerrymandering for a while now to cover up the demographic black holes in a number of states that could flip them blue in the years ahead. That may not make a difference in 2018, but the 2016 election aside, the US is growing bluer, and if Republican state governments can't use redistricting to paper that hole over in the future, that spells a long term problem for them.
There's nothing in the public testimony likely strong enough to urge the Republicans in the direction of impeachment. Even for the Dems, only a couple of no-name firebrands in the House think impeachment is even remotely possible at this point. Some Dems would in fact argue the very best thing for them going into the 2018 mid-terms is to keep Trump in the White House, where he seems to have made a high art of shooting himself and his party in the foot.
So far as I can tell, the "experts" (whomever they may be) seem to be leaning away from Comey's evidence being strong enough to bring an obstruction of justice charge, and further, a good many seem to think it probably isn't even constitutional to bring such a charge against a sitting President. But really, this is all academic, since I doubt very much there is any such indictment in the works.
As to the question of impeachment, well, if it happens, it is still a long ways off. First and foremost, investigations are ongoing, and Comey can only speak to those investigations up to the point he was fired. What the attempt to strongarm Comey into "loyalty" and the attempt, no matter how weakly, to get Comey to drop the Flynn investigation do indicate is a man who, possibly out of ignorance, but maybe some malice as well, either doesn't know or doesn't care about the necessary limitations of his office or of the at-arms length nature of the FBI. It suggests Trump is a pretty piss poor president, at the very least, but whether it rises to the level of impeachment will take a lot more time, and really, the final calculus will be as much about whether the GOP thinks Trump remaining president as the mid-terms approach will threaten the party's political fortunes.
Impeachment is a quasi-judicial, perhaps if pseudo-judicial process. What constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors", as Gerald Ford so bluntly put it, "is whatever Congress says it is".
Whether you're just some Putinbot or just a pathetic alt-right basement dweller, the time has come, whether or not any of this rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to label Trump what he is; corrupt and careless, and pretty fucking stupid as well.
One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"
Technology has to go through stages. First you have the early adopters, who will buy the initial market offerings, which are inevitably too large, too expensive, and too inadequate, but they get to go around and say things "Have you seen my awesome cellular phone? And it only ways 10 lbs!"
Then you get the hipsters. They're the ones that buy the next generation of a technology, which has been greatly improved, but it still very damned expensive, but they're proud to announce over a cafe latte "I can buy my Pendleton scarves on Ebay with this!"
Then you get the executives. They want rugged and yet screams "I'm outrageously wealthy with a wife, a mistress and $200,000 sports car!" Again, the tech is still expensive, but at least it's now within the realm of an ordinary middle class grunt getting one.
The final stage is basically here everyone from a 12 year old to your gramma can get one. That's pretty much peak evolution for a technology. After that it's just steady refinement until one day, a successor product, after having gone through the early adopter, hipster and executive stages knocks it off its mantle and it ends up in a box somewhere and when you finally kick the bucket, your kids can go "Oh yeah, remember when we used to play Candy Crush and look up porn on that?"
100% of Saturday Night Live writers want Trump to increase the number of late night tweets, and would prefer it if he tweeted every waking moment of his presidency.
It must be tough to navigate network tv with your latent homosexual urges. It disgusts and titillates you in equal measure, and so you must lash out and attack any homosexuals who gave the temerity to be comfortable in their skin.
And so he will remain. Congress and the courts will do the job they were designed to do, keep a moron from destroying the US. In the end if he becomes too unpopular there's always impeachment.
The point I'm making is that Trump is secure so long as the Republican base is onside. The same situation, for the most part, existed during Watergate. While the Dems controlled Congress at the time, an actual conviction would have required enough Republican Senators to side with the Democratic majority, and what made Nixon finally abandon the presidency was the knowledge that not only was the House going to vote for impeachment, but the loss of support for him among the Republican base meant that there wasn't going to be a Hail Mary pass in the Senate like the one that saved Andrew Johnson (who avoided conviction by one vote).
Trump's approval ratings are sliding again, and sooner or later that's going to start eroding the base. Whether it erodes it enough to convince enough GOP senators to jump ship is impossible to say, but one thing is clear, every day he seems to provide them with the necessary political cover should the time come when Republican lawmakers begin to see Trump as an anchor to their 2018 fortunes.
Oh for fuck's sakes, have you ever heard of Five Eyes? Britain in the US in particular have many points of contact, which is why Britain was so pissed off about pictures of evidence from the Manchester suicide attack ending up splashed on the cover of US newspapers.
These spurious objections could snapshotted and used as an illustration of proverbial ostriches with their heads in the sand.
Slashdot isn't (yet) an Alt-right safe space. Head on over to Breitbart if that's what you're looking for.
Congress still holds the cards, and you can be sure the moment the GOP begins to legitimately fear loss of one or both houses of Congress due to Trump, they'll give him the toss. Every day, every outburst, demonstrates, apart from any potential collusion with Russia, his complete unsuitability for the position, but the Republicans have to be sure that impeachment and removal won't do them more harm than good. But really, when you look at what is actually happening in Congress, you can see pretty clearly that the Republicans are being obstructionist, in the nicest possible way. Ryan and McConnell act like they're bestest pals of the White House, and yet there's not much happening at all. Oh sure, it will always be blamed on the Freedom Caucus, or the Democrats, or parliamentary procedures, or any ol' convenient excuse, but Trump has few real fans in Congress. They realize they have an infantile halfwit surrounded by some pretty damned questionable people, so they'll obstruct him, but for their own political fortunes, they have to make it look like it's opposition and process, and not them deliberately sabotaging him.
It seems unlikely the replacement health care will be passed, and really Ryan threw it to the Senate with a big pile of money hoping the Senate can turn this shit sandwich into something palatable. It's even possible it will never get to the Senate floor. Then there's tax reform, good luck with that. Let's talk about all that spending Trump committed to, there isn't going to be a wall, and I doubt there'll be any more infrastructure spending.
Trump can cause a lot more trouble on the foreign stage, but thus far other than insulting foreign leaders, about his biggest impact is pulling of the Paris agreement, which probably the majority of Republicans were in favor of anyways. As to Executive Orders, well, we'll see what the Supreme Court says, but the fact that he and his mouthpieces were so dimwitted as to tell the entire world they were going to seek a Muslim ban will likely compromise the whole damned ban a non-starter due to the First Amendment.
I can't imagine Trump will even want the job in a year or so, even if they decide not to remove him.
It's probable the Russians would have tried to muck things up without any collusion. Certainly they were doing the same thing in recent European elections, and so far as I know, there's no real evidence in those elections that the Kremlin Approved Party was in any kind of contact. The problem with the Trump campaign is that there are some serious smoking guns here, and whether or not Trump himself has been implicated, he seems to have gone out of his way to surround himself with some people with some pretty troubling ties to the Russians.
A good deal of the monitoring of Russia extends beyond the United States, and certainly the British intelligence community has its own suspicions about Trump.
There's going to come a point when just shouting "the Washington Post are poo-poo heads!" won't cut it. The only thing keep the Trump Presidency in place right now is uncertainty among Republicans about the effects on the mid-terms, but with his approval ratings back in decline and growing numbers of Americans clearly no longer buying into the Cult of Personality that people like you so desperately want to propagate, that "guarantee", if you will, won't last that much longer. Pence, if he isn't taken down by all of this (he has his own Russian problem) can do everything the GOP-dominated Congress wants, and what they want more than anything is to keep it GOP-dominated after mid-terms.
I think AC posts should be automatically moderated at -1. Actually I think if you can't even bother creating a Slashdot account, you shouldn't be able to post at all.
Slashdot Mirror
The Republicans will fixate on Comey's leak because it's about the only leverage they have over the story. They can't really say "Nothing to see here anymore!" as Comey has outright stated both in writing and in person that Trump deliberately and inappropriately demanded both "loyalty" (and all that inferred) and asked him to drop the Flynn investigation. It sure looks like obstruction of justice to me, but even some of the folks who know about these things aren't even sure you can actually charge a sitting President with obstruction of justice, so what it comes down now is just how much the Republicans in Congress are willing to tolerate before they finally pull the plug. Maybe they can tolerate anything Trump has done or will do, in which case I guess this whole shit show goes on until at least 2020.
A lot of this is going to hinge on how the fallout from SCOTUS's gerrymandering ruling. The GOP has been using gerrymandering for a while now to cover up the demographic black holes in a number of states that could flip them blue in the years ahead. That may not make a difference in 2018, but the 2016 election aside, the US is growing bluer, and if Republican state governments can't use redistricting to paper that hole over in the future, that spells a long term problem for them.
There's nothing in the public testimony likely strong enough to urge the Republicans in the direction of impeachment. Even for the Dems, only a couple of no-name firebrands in the House think impeachment is even remotely possible at this point. Some Dems would in fact argue the very best thing for them going into the 2018 mid-terms is to keep Trump in the White House, where he seems to have made a high art of shooting himself and his party in the foot.
So far as I can tell, the "experts" (whomever they may be) seem to be leaning away from Comey's evidence being strong enough to bring an obstruction of justice charge, and further, a good many seem to think it probably isn't even constitutional to bring such a charge against a sitting President. But really, this is all academic, since I doubt very much there is any such indictment in the works.
As to the question of impeachment, well, if it happens, it is still a long ways off. First and foremost, investigations are ongoing, and Comey can only speak to those investigations up to the point he was fired. What the attempt to strongarm Comey into "loyalty" and the attempt, no matter how weakly, to get Comey to drop the Flynn investigation do indicate is a man who, possibly out of ignorance, but maybe some malice as well, either doesn't know or doesn't care about the necessary limitations of his office or of the at-arms length nature of the FBI. It suggests Trump is a pretty piss poor president, at the very least, but whether it rises to the level of impeachment will take a lot more time, and really, the final calculus will be as much about whether the GOP thinks Trump remaining president as the mid-terms approach will threaten the party's political fortunes.
Impeachment is a quasi-judicial, perhaps if pseudo-judicial process. What constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors", as Gerald Ford so bluntly put it, "is whatever Congress says it is".
The only snowflakes I see are the pathetic alt right trolls
It wasn't and I don't.
Whether you're just some Putinbot or just a pathetic alt-right basement dweller, the time has come, whether or not any of this rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" to label Trump what he is; corrupt and careless, and pretty fucking stupid as well.
There are nine million horses in the United States. There are 260 million automobiles.
Missed your cognitive therapy class again, I see.
One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"
In 1900, there 8,000 cars in the US. By 1910 there were over 458,000.
Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...
And that's why we joke about buggy whip manufacturers.
Technology has to go through stages. First you have the early adopters, who will buy the initial market offerings, which are inevitably too large, too expensive, and too inadequate, but they get to go around and say things "Have you seen my awesome cellular phone? And it only ways 10 lbs!"
Then you get the hipsters. They're the ones that buy the next generation of a technology, which has been greatly improved, but it still very damned expensive, but they're proud to announce over a cafe latte "I can buy my Pendleton scarves on Ebay with this!"
Then you get the executives. They want rugged and yet screams "I'm outrageously wealthy with a wife, a mistress and $200,000 sports car!" Again, the tech is still expensive, but at least it's now within the realm of an ordinary middle class grunt getting one.
The final stage is basically here everyone from a 12 year old to your gramma can get one. That's pretty much peak evolution for a technology. After that it's just steady refinement until one day, a successor product, after having gone through the early adopter, hipster and executive stages knocks it off its mantle and it ends up in a box somewhere and when you finally kick the bucket, your kids can go "Oh yeah, remember when we used to play Candy Crush and look up porn on that?"
100% of Saturday Night Live writers want Trump to increase the number of late night tweets, and would prefer it if he tweeted every waking moment of his presidency.
And apparently for men with poor impulse control.
Yes, it's so refreshing to see a sociopath drop the facade and reveal his fundamentally evil and callous nature.
Perhaps we should stick Mr. Coury's head in a beehive for a few minutes and then see if he can masturbate. Totally for science, of course!
It must be tough to navigate network tv with your latent homosexual urges. It disgusts and titillates you in equal measure, and so you must lash out and attack any homosexuals who gave the temerity to be comfortable in their skin.
I really do feel sorry for you
And so he will remain. Congress and the courts will do the job they were designed to do, keep a moron from destroying the US. In the end if he becomes too unpopular there's always impeachment.
There are plenty of putinbots out there, but also plenty of alt-right types who pretty much openly admire autocrats like Putin
Oh Christ, spare us the chest thumping AC.
The point I'm making is that Trump is secure so long as the Republican base is onside. The same situation, for the most part, existed during Watergate. While the Dems controlled Congress at the time, an actual conviction would have required enough Republican Senators to side with the Democratic majority, and what made Nixon finally abandon the presidency was the knowledge that not only was the House going to vote for impeachment, but the loss of support for him among the Republican base meant that there wasn't going to be a Hail Mary pass in the Senate like the one that saved Andrew Johnson (who avoided conviction by one vote).
Trump's approval ratings are sliding again, and sooner or later that's going to start eroding the base. Whether it erodes it enough to convince enough GOP senators to jump ship is impossible to say, but one thing is clear, every day he seems to provide them with the necessary political cover should the time come when Republican lawmakers begin to see Trump as an anchor to their 2018 fortunes.
Oh for fuck's sakes, have you ever heard of Five Eyes? Britain in the US in particular have many points of contact, which is why Britain was so pissed off about pictures of evidence from the Manchester suicide attack ending up splashed on the cover of US newspapers.
These spurious objections could snapshotted and used as an illustration of proverbial ostriches with their heads in the sand.
Slashdot isn't (yet) an Alt-right safe space. Head on over to Breitbart if that's what you're looking for.
Congress still holds the cards, and you can be sure the moment the GOP begins to legitimately fear loss of one or both houses of Congress due to Trump, they'll give him the toss. Every day, every outburst, demonstrates, apart from any potential collusion with Russia, his complete unsuitability for the position, but the Republicans have to be sure that impeachment and removal won't do them more harm than good. But really, when you look at what is actually happening in Congress, you can see pretty clearly that the Republicans are being obstructionist, in the nicest possible way. Ryan and McConnell act like they're bestest pals of the White House, and yet there's not much happening at all. Oh sure, it will always be blamed on the Freedom Caucus, or the Democrats, or parliamentary procedures, or any ol' convenient excuse, but Trump has few real fans in Congress. They realize they have an infantile halfwit surrounded by some pretty damned questionable people, so they'll obstruct him, but for their own political fortunes, they have to make it look like it's opposition and process, and not them deliberately sabotaging him.
It seems unlikely the replacement health care will be passed, and really Ryan threw it to the Senate with a big pile of money hoping the Senate can turn this shit sandwich into something palatable. It's even possible it will never get to the Senate floor. Then there's tax reform, good luck with that. Let's talk about all that spending Trump committed to, there isn't going to be a wall, and I doubt there'll be any more infrastructure spending.
Trump can cause a lot more trouble on the foreign stage, but thus far other than insulting foreign leaders, about his biggest impact is pulling of the Paris agreement, which probably the majority of Republicans were in favor of anyways. As to Executive Orders, well, we'll see what the Supreme Court says, but the fact that he and his mouthpieces were so dimwitted as to tell the entire world they were going to seek a Muslim ban will likely compromise the whole damned ban a non-starter due to the First Amendment.
I can't imagine Trump will even want the job in a year or so, even if they decide not to remove him.
It's probable the Russians would have tried to muck things up without any collusion. Certainly they were doing the same thing in recent European elections, and so far as I know, there's no real evidence in those elections that the Kremlin Approved Party was in any kind of contact. The problem with the Trump campaign is that there are some serious smoking guns here, and whether or not Trump himself has been implicated, he seems to have gone out of his way to surround himself with some people with some pretty troubling ties to the Russians.
A good deal of the monitoring of Russia extends beyond the United States, and certainly the British intelligence community has its own suspicions about Trump.
There's going to come a point when just shouting "the Washington Post are poo-poo heads!" won't cut it. The only thing keep the Trump Presidency in place right now is uncertainty among Republicans about the effects on the mid-terms, but with his approval ratings back in decline and growing numbers of Americans clearly no longer buying into the Cult of Personality that people like you so desperately want to propagate, that "guarantee", if you will, won't last that much longer. Pence, if he isn't taken down by all of this (he has his own Russian problem) can do everything the GOP-dominated Congress wants, and what they want more than anything is to keep it GOP-dominated after mid-terms.
So go on, keep spouting the denials.
There's a best possible moment to drop your tablet in the toilet?
I think AC posts should be automatically moderated at -1. Actually I think if you can't even bother creating a Slashdot account, you shouldn't be able to post at all.