You fling the word "traitor" around quite freely, and yet even if I buy into McCain being a warmonger (I don't, BTW) that doesn't make him a traitor. Maybe the problem here is your histrionics. You're acting like a ten year old .
If there's a failure at the political level, it's in leaders at the state and national level not sitting down and explaining to these people that manufacturing as a major provider of low-skill high-paid jobs is done. Even if manufacturing does return in any significant amount it will employ only a fraction of the people it once did. So the politicians should have sat down, explained the realities, and then help through cheap student loans and other mechanisms to get these people retrained. Once happening now is a snake oil dealer is promising rust belt inhabitants that somehow the 1950s are coming back, and they're going to find out that it isn't so, meanwhile getting the US embroiled in trade wars that will cost even more jobs and make all those economic statements you seem to revile turn downward, thus harming even more people and reducing the resources available to help the people that the moronic campaign promises were allegedly supposed to assist.
I don't know about that. I'm thinking of interviews with him from the 80s and 90s, and while he's obviously got a pretty healthy ego, I don't recall him ever behaving erratically like this. I seriously wonder if he's got some old person's disease. He's at the age where various forms of dementia start kicking in. And that's not always a bad thing, the latter days of the Wilson Administration lumbered on because of a decent cabinet, in particular the VP, and of course there's Reagan, who no one will ever admit was already suffering Alzheimers, the signs were there (the disarray of his last year or two, falling asleep at cabinet meetings and the like). The problem with Trump is that unlike Wilson and Reagan, he has an astonishingly terrible inner circle, although Pence probably does have some ability, even if he's hardly the nicest of people around. And seeing as Pence is the one who seems to have finally given Flynn the boot, I wonder if we're seeing this first shambolic weeks finally seeing the VP maneuver into a position of supremacy. I can well imagine within a year that Pence and the Kushners will effectively be in charge, that the likes of Bannon will be a distant memory, and they'll limp through a term with Trump playing the President for the cameras.
Well, we're already seeing the "quick repeal of Obamacare" fading as the Republicans struggle to come up with a replacement. This is the greatest irony of the Trump victory, that the Republicans never actually expected him to win, and never expected to actually have to repeal Obamacare. Nearly seven years of pounding their fists, and no one in the Republican camp ever put any serious effort into a replacement.
You just keep telling yourself that. This looks more like the "death of a thousand cuts" that took Nixon down. At every turn the Nixon Administration's spin, from Agnew's downfall onward, was that they were cleaning the bad lot out, but the painful reality was that Nixon's Administration was bad to its very core. Well, that's what is happening here. Flynn isn't the only member of Trump's Administration with close ties to Moscow, he was the most incautious, but if you don't think Tillerson isn't just as chummy, then you're daft. The only thing that is going to save Trump for now is that the Republicans don't want to take out a sitting president just weeks into his presidency.
There are two ways this can play. The one way, which would apply with almost every other person who has occupied the Presidency, is to learn on the job, pick better people and try to make a go of it. But this is Trump, possibly the worst President since Andrew Johnson, and I have a feeling it's going to end much the same way, not necessarily with impeachment, but certainly in ignominy, failure and impotence.
I honestly think Bannon's days are numbered. He's making enemies out of the Kushners, and by all accounts, it was Ivanka who personally intervened to prevent an EO going out that would revoked Obama's LGBT protections. At some point Bannon is going to go too far, he's clearly giddy with the powers he has, and then he'll be thrown under the bus.
I don't think Congress is disinterested. I think they're trying to sort out a way to bring the situation under control that minimizes potential political fallout. The Senate, in particular, is inhabited by people in both parties who have a longstanding and deep distrust of Russia, but there's simply no way that the Republicans in Congress are going to try to take Trump out at this point.
There's a significant difference between Congressmen going on foreign trips. That's not unusual, and has gone on for almost the entirety of the US history. As Congress in general does not play a direct foreign policy role, it isn't the same as an incoming member of a new cabinet interfering directly with Executive powers being used by the outgoing president. When you add in the already troubling links between the Trump Administration and Russia, I'd say what Flynn did represents a pretty flagrant breach. And obviously Flynn thought so too, which is why he lied to Pence.
They have a huge army and not a lot of money. They can afford lightning strike invasions like South Ossetia and Crimea, and airstrikes in Syria. Russia most certainly could not long sustain a prolonged military campaign. But there are other ways to fight wars these days, and Obama tried to convince the US's European partners to put forth stronger sanctions, but at the time Germany in particular blinked. The Russian economy may have improved somewhat since the sanctions began, but it is not a financially-healthy country, which is why the oligarchs have kicked up the pace of burying their money in foreign assets.
The only reason asses got kicked is because the US played relatively nice, and in particular didn't overtly invade Pakistan. The niceties of the relationship with Islamabad are the reason the Taliban couldn't be dealt with properly.
Oh for fucks sake, the seizure of Mexican territory happened in the 19th century. A helluva lot has changed in the last 160 years, including the adoption of an entirely different notion as to how nations play together. By your twisted attempt to defend Russia, Greece could demand Sicily back, because after all, it was a Greek colony 2500 years ago.
There are several nations along Russia' periphery, in particular the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia who are reasonably paranoid about Russia, and for good reasons, both historical and current. The US isn't the only country Russia has been practicing its dark arts on. Russia may be paranoid, but it all too often brings the conditions of its paranoia on itself, and I don't think just letting Russia get away with cyberwarfare and the cutting up of sovereign states, because we want to "move on" is a sensible thing.
They're a regional power. Syria is just about as far as Russia can meaningfully project force these days. Like it as not, it's not in anybody's interest to go after Russia militarily over Georgia or Crimea, anymore than it would have been sane to go after Russia when it marched troops into Czechoslovakia and put down the Prague Spring.
And that's where Flynn comes in handy. The Administration will use him as the patsy. "Oh, the Russians knew that? Well, that dirty rotten scoundrel Michael Flynn must have done it!"
Well yes, at that point impeachment and removal from office would become inevitable, unless Trump resigned. And I'm not sure that a blanket pardon would be forthcoming at that point either. Whatever Nixon's crimes were, they didn't involve what amounts to treason.
But I don't think it would happen. It's obvious Congress knows more than they're saying, and they'll use that as leverage. Trump may be off his nut, but those around him certainly aren't, and if he goes down some of them will too.
I think that ability on their part is fading fast. The polls showing Trump's precipitous fall in popularity tell the story of a presidency in the kind of crisis that hasn't been seen since Iran-Contra or the Lewinsky affair, and, as with Watergate before it, those scandals didn't hit until second terms. The fact that one of Trump's longest supporters has been outed being chatty with the Russian Ambassador just weeks into the Presidency just blows me away. This is like a presidency on amphetamines.
I think it's pretty obvious that McCain knows the answer as well. And remember here that scandals are often as much about confirming peoples' views on the subject of the scandal as on any actual incriminating information. The fact is that Trump has been dogged by strong suggestions that the Russians were more involved in his campaign than just using Assange to fuck over Clinton, and now you have Flynn, who has been with Trump since the beginning of the campaign, basically caught red handed playing handsy with the Russian. The alt-right and Trump crowds will do their best to try to minimize this is a Flynn mucking up reporting details to Pence, but this, along with partial confirmation on at least some details of the dossier on Trump's activities in Moscow, are likely going to stick to Trump. As it is, his popularity is plunging to levels that most presidents take years to drop to, and he's been in office just three weeks. Trump's presidency is some sort of political progeria.
Well, to a point it's better for Putin, but if Trump finally does force Congress's hand, and Pence ends up in charge, that very moment everything shifts back to the Truman Doctrine. Frankly, I think Putin overplayed his hand. He should have found a friendly candidate who wasn't a complete idiot, or worse, senile.
There is no need to placate the Russians. They have a GDP lower than Italy and their military power is a shadow of what it used to be. Yes, they have nukes, but they, like all the other nuclear powers, have no intention to use them other than to maintain territorial integrity. So the real issue here is why Trump seems so keen to placate Russia, when the US's military and economic might literally dwarfs Russia's abilities.
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It was about containing Russia. Communism was simply the state ideology of Russia. Distrust of Russia in the West goes back a lot further than that.
Clinton was sane peoples' preferred choice, and I think the last three weeks have proven that view correct.
The Truman Doctrine has been in effect since the end of the Second World War. McCain was a wee babe when containing Russia became US foreign policy.
You fling the word "traitor" around quite freely, and yet even if I buy into McCain being a warmonger (I don't, BTW) that doesn't make him a traitor. Maybe the problem here is your histrionics. You're acting like a ten year old .
If there's a failure at the political level, it's in leaders at the state and national level not sitting down and explaining to these people that manufacturing as a major provider of low-skill high-paid jobs is done. Even if manufacturing does return in any significant amount it will employ only a fraction of the people it once did. So the politicians should have sat down, explained the realities, and then help through cheap student loans and other mechanisms to get these people retrained. Once happening now is a snake oil dealer is promising rust belt inhabitants that somehow the 1950s are coming back, and they're going to find out that it isn't so, meanwhile getting the US embroiled in trade wars that will cost even more jobs and make all those economic statements you seem to revile turn downward, thus harming even more people and reducing the resources available to help the people that the moronic campaign promises were allegedly supposed to assist.
I don't know about that. I'm thinking of interviews with him from the 80s and 90s, and while he's obviously got a pretty healthy ego, I don't recall him ever behaving erratically like this. I seriously wonder if he's got some old person's disease. He's at the age where various forms of dementia start kicking in. And that's not always a bad thing, the latter days of the Wilson Administration lumbered on because of a decent cabinet, in particular the VP, and of course there's Reagan, who no one will ever admit was already suffering Alzheimers, the signs were there (the disarray of his last year or two, falling asleep at cabinet meetings and the like). The problem with Trump is that unlike Wilson and Reagan, he has an astonishingly terrible inner circle, although Pence probably does have some ability, even if he's hardly the nicest of people around. And seeing as Pence is the one who seems to have finally given Flynn the boot, I wonder if we're seeing this first shambolic weeks finally seeing the VP maneuver into a position of supremacy. I can well imagine within a year that Pence and the Kushners will effectively be in charge, that the likes of Bannon will be a distant memory, and they'll limp through a term with Trump playing the President for the cameras.
Well, we're already seeing the "quick repeal of Obamacare" fading as the Republicans struggle to come up with a replacement. This is the greatest irony of the Trump victory, that the Republicans never actually expected him to win, and never expected to actually have to repeal Obamacare. Nearly seven years of pounding their fists, and no one in the Republican camp ever put any serious effort into a replacement.
You just keep telling yourself that. This looks more like the "death of a thousand cuts" that took Nixon down. At every turn the Nixon Administration's spin, from Agnew's downfall onward, was that they were cleaning the bad lot out, but the painful reality was that Nixon's Administration was bad to its very core. Well, that's what is happening here. Flynn isn't the only member of Trump's Administration with close ties to Moscow, he was the most incautious, but if you don't think Tillerson isn't just as chummy, then you're daft. The only thing that is going to save Trump for now is that the Republicans don't want to take out a sitting president just weeks into his presidency.
By all accounts Trump had nothing to do with this. It was Pence that threw Flynn out the proverbial window.
There are two ways this can play. The one way, which would apply with almost every other person who has occupied the Presidency, is to learn on the job, pick better people and try to make a go of it. But this is Trump, possibly the worst President since Andrew Johnson, and I have a feeling it's going to end much the same way, not necessarily with impeachment, but certainly in ignominy, failure and impotence.
I honestly think Bannon's days are numbered. He's making enemies out of the Kushners, and by all accounts, it was Ivanka who personally intervened to prevent an EO going out that would revoked Obama's LGBT protections. At some point Bannon is going to go too far, he's clearly giddy with the powers he has, and then he'll be thrown under the bus.
I don't think Congress is disinterested. I think they're trying to sort out a way to bring the situation under control that minimizes potential political fallout. The Senate, in particular, is inhabited by people in both parties who have a longstanding and deep distrust of Russia, but there's simply no way that the Republicans in Congress are going to try to take Trump out at this point.
There's a significant difference between Congressmen going on foreign trips. That's not unusual, and has gone on for almost the entirety of the US history. As Congress in general does not play a direct foreign policy role, it isn't the same as an incoming member of a new cabinet interfering directly with Executive powers being used by the outgoing president. When you add in the already troubling links between the Trump Administration and Russia, I'd say what Flynn did represents a pretty flagrant breach. And obviously Flynn thought so too, which is why he lied to Pence.
They have a huge army and not a lot of money. They can afford lightning strike invasions like South Ossetia and Crimea, and airstrikes in Syria. Russia most certainly could not long sustain a prolonged military campaign. But there are other ways to fight wars these days, and Obama tried to convince the US's European partners to put forth stronger sanctions, but at the time Germany in particular blinked. The Russian economy may have improved somewhat since the sanctions began, but it is not a financially-healthy country, which is why the oligarchs have kicked up the pace of burying their money in foreign assets.
The only reason asses got kicked is because the US played relatively nice, and in particular didn't overtly invade Pakistan. The niceties of the relationship with Islamabad are the reason the Taliban couldn't be dealt with properly.
Oh for fucks sake, the seizure of Mexican territory happened in the 19th century. A helluva lot has changed in the last 160 years, including the adoption of an entirely different notion as to how nations play together. By your twisted attempt to defend Russia, Greece could demand Sicily back, because after all, it was a Greek colony 2500 years ago.
There are several nations along Russia' periphery, in particular the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia who are reasonably paranoid about Russia, and for good reasons, both historical and current. The US isn't the only country Russia has been practicing its dark arts on. Russia may be paranoid, but it all too often brings the conditions of its paranoia on itself, and I don't think just letting Russia get away with cyberwarfare and the cutting up of sovereign states, because we want to "move on" is a sensible thing.
They're a regional power. Syria is just about as far as Russia can meaningfully project force these days. Like it as not, it's not in anybody's interest to go after Russia militarily over Georgia or Crimea, anymore than it would have been sane to go after Russia when it marched troops into Czechoslovakia and put down the Prague Spring.
And that's where Flynn comes in handy. The Administration will use him as the patsy. "Oh, the Russians knew that? Well, that dirty rotten scoundrel Michael Flynn must have done it!"
Well yes, at that point impeachment and removal from office would become inevitable, unless Trump resigned. And I'm not sure that a blanket pardon would be forthcoming at that point either. Whatever Nixon's crimes were, they didn't involve what amounts to treason.
But I don't think it would happen. It's obvious Congress knows more than they're saying, and they'll use that as leverage. Trump may be off his nut, but those around him certainly aren't, and if he goes down some of them will too.
I think that ability on their part is fading fast. The polls showing Trump's precipitous fall in popularity tell the story of a presidency in the kind of crisis that hasn't been seen since Iran-Contra or the Lewinsky affair, and, as with Watergate before it, those scandals didn't hit until second terms. The fact that one of Trump's longest supporters has been outed being chatty with the Russian Ambassador just weeks into the Presidency just blows me away. This is like a presidency on amphetamines.
Probably because Putin has preserved the urine-soaked sheets.
I think it's pretty obvious that McCain knows the answer as well. And remember here that scandals are often as much about confirming peoples' views on the subject of the scandal as on any actual incriminating information. The fact is that Trump has been dogged by strong suggestions that the Russians were more involved in his campaign than just using Assange to fuck over Clinton, and now you have Flynn, who has been with Trump since the beginning of the campaign, basically caught red handed playing handsy with the Russian. The alt-right and Trump crowds will do their best to try to minimize this is a Flynn mucking up reporting details to Pence, but this, along with partial confirmation on at least some details of the dossier on Trump's activities in Moscow, are likely going to stick to Trump. As it is, his popularity is plunging to levels that most presidents take years to drop to, and he's been in office just three weeks. Trump's presidency is some sort of political progeria.
Well, to a point it's better for Putin, but if Trump finally does force Congress's hand, and Pence ends up in charge, that very moment everything shifts back to the Truman Doctrine. Frankly, I think Putin overplayed his hand. He should have found a friendly candidate who wasn't a complete idiot, or worse, senile.
There is no need to placate the Russians. They have a GDP lower than Italy and their military power is a shadow of what it used to be. Yes, they have nukes, but they, like all the other nuclear powers, have no intention to use them other than to maintain territorial integrity. So the real issue here is why Trump seems so keen to placate Russia, when the US's military and economic might literally dwarfs Russia's abilities.