Post inauguration Trump:

[pietillidie]

The report is extremely damning, detailing how the Trump family welcomed Russian electoral interference with open arms. It is also at pains to not rule out obstruction, but, well, presidents and national face and all that.

No Trump-approved meme can distract from this.

[David]

^ That last one (Yemen) is a real disgrace, and deserves way more focus than it is currently getting. Sanctioned mass murder.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... crats-duty

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ler-report

'Elizabeth Warren on Friday became the most senior Democrat, and the first 2020 presidential candidate, to call for the start of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump following the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the Trump campaign.

“To ignore a president’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways,” the Democratic senator from Massachusetts said in a statement Friday, one day after the release of a redacted version of a 448-page summary of Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation.

“The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States,” Warren said.'

[Jezza]

LOL Elizabeth Warren is trying to deflect from her failing poll numbers.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/46220/el ... nk-berrien

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... e2791b0541

"In their totality, these statements gave a warped view of the Mueller report. The attorney general strayed far enough from the facts to merit Three Pinocchios."

[Pies4shaw]

Republican Senator Romney said the conduct by Trump and his campaign outlined in the report left him "sickened" and "appalled" -- marking one of the first prominent Republicans to make such critical comments of the president in the aftermath of the blockbuster investigation.

Romney offered his reaction on Twitter after reading the full 448-page report, writing that the level of lies and dishonesty outlined in the report left him with the realisation of "how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles out the founders."

"I am sickened and the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President," wrote Romney, a one-time presidential nominee who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over the years.

"I am also appalled that, among other things," fellow citizens working in a campaign for the president welcomed help from Russia -- including information that had been illegally obtained."

https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-a ... 51ft9.html

[Pies4shaw]

This update contains some interesting opinion poll data:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... mpeachment

The best bit of it is this:

"USA Today’s Brad Heath pulled out an interesting tidbit from the details of that poll: nearly half of Republicans agree with the statement, “Nobody on President Trump’s campaign committed any crimes”, despite the fact that many people on Trump’s campaign have pleaded guilty to committing crimes. These include: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former personal attorney Michael Cohen, and campaign advisers Rick Gates, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulous."

[Wokko]

None of those crimes had anything to do with Trump's campaign. Dig deep enough into anyone and you're likely to find something dodgy. Having 3 years and millions of dollars to drag every skeleton out of every closet and the best they do is find dodgy dealings from fringe elements of a campaign team. Even with this leverage and these guys flipping for plea deals they got nothing on Trump and Russians which was the whole point of the investigation.

Keep quoting Never Trumpers and Democrats though and desperately searching left wing news sources for a gotcha moment, you don't look crazy at all.

5.5 more years.

[Pies4shaw]

So you don't think they're criminals, either, then - even though they've pleaded guilty and been sent to prison. I'm glad we've clarified that. They must all be just misunderstood and pleading their guilt for attention.

[David]

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/judge-a ... ct-justice

[roar]

Once again, Chomsky nails it.

Trump was right all along about the Russian issue: it's a big nothing burger. Yet the incompetent Democrats can't let it go. Way it looks now, there is nothing that will stop Trump winning again, next year.

[pietillidie]

[David]

If, say, Indonesia did this to Australia, people would be carrying on like demented bush turkeys.

So, pretty much like American liberals are now, then.

I think people do very much question how "serious" the Russian interference was. I don’t deny that the intent was there, but from what I can see the actual execution was mostly pretty inept and/or insubstantial.

As for tactics, polling has shown repeatedly that Russia sits a long way down the list of voters’ concerns, despite the establishment media’s best attempts to beat it up. I’m not saying you’re wrong about racism being a hard electoral strategy to beat, but I’m curious as to why you’d suggest social programs are a comparably ineffective alternative to invoking foreign boogiemen. Let’s not forget that Trump didn’t just win the 2016 election; Clinton lost it, big time, and a big part of that failure was allowing her campaign to appear elitist and out of touch.

[pietillidie]

^Again, you're minimising targeted election interference in a nation popularly obsessed with these things. Read all the way through the below; we're not talking the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we are talking about a serious effort to interfere in the election:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian ... _elections

As for tactics, polling has shown repeatedly that Russia sits a long way down the list of voters’ concerns, despite the establishment media’s best attempts to beat it up. I’m not saying you’re wrong about racism being a hard electoral strategy to beat, but I’m curious as to why you’d suggest social programs are a comparably ineffective alternative to invoking foreign boogiemen.

I thought I'd explained why above and elsewhere. First, the Russia business is much more about corruption, trust and stability than the foreign bogeyman (does the far left keep missing this because it doesn't value stable governance and understand the centrists who do?). Second, we're dealing with a marginal numbers game in a binary political system. You can scream social programs all you like, but in the end will that get you more Trump votes than a strategy targeting centrists tired of scandal, corruption and chaos?

As I say, I don't know which strategy would be more effective, or why you can't run both at once; but the far left most certainly doesn't know, either. (To be sure, I would prefer to focus on building sensible platforms that outlive single elections, even if that means short-term electoral defeat).

One aside I have for you is this: after decades of questioning the validity of elections due to interference, propaganda, gerrymandering, corporate money, etc., why is the far left now scared to death of questioning election victories? Its response to Brexit and Trump, which has been surprisingly uniform, suggests it is much more beholden to naked populism than to fairness and governance. Did Brexit and Trump achieve what the far left wants to achieve in a manner similar to the way it imagines achieving it?