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US Politics: Lock Him Up!


Fragile Bird

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4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So it's been confirmed that one of Sessions meetings with the Russian Ambassador took place at the Republican National Convention. It's one thing to try and spin a meeting in Sessions' office as not having anything to do with the campaign, but this is pretty damning and it creates a direct link between Russia and Trump's campaign. 

 

 

Yeah, that's bad.  If the links to the money are also there, as has been reported, it's gonna get ugly.

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2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

 

Kinda what I wanted to drive at though.  If he's the preferred person, at this point, with the mounting Russian issues for Trump and his cronies, isn't it time to begin finding that wedge to separate themselves from the current administration?  The rising noise makes things harder and harder for them as Congress keeps getting asked about that instead of working towards what they want. 

Can you clarify who would be separating themselves from the current Administration? If you're talking about Pence, I think there's already enough examples/information to suggest he's not part of Trump's inner circle, and thus, probably wouldn't be in on anything that could lead to Trump's potential impeachment. 

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Mind you, if this email thin goes anywhere, what are the odds Pence goes away before Trump...?

Zero. It's a bad look politically, but at the end of the day he was just caught being a hypocrite, which is par for the course in Washington.

24 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Yeah, that's bad.  If the links to the money are also there, as has been reported, it's gonna get ugly.

I haven't read or heard anything about money being involved, but if there's anything that he even suggests some type of collusion and/or coordination then Sessions is toast and the Trump Administration will be severely wounded.

What I find interesting is what happens if it's proven that Sessions did something bad, but not blatant enough where Republicans en mass start calling for his head. Can the Trump Administration survive two high profile resignations of senior cabinet members in their first two months in office, or are they better served keeping Sessions as AG and just eating the flack they'll get for doing so? If Sessions is canned there will be a lot of blood in the water for Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans.

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13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Can you clarify who would be separating themselves from the current Administration? If you're talking about Pence, I think there's already enough examples/information to suggest he's not part of Trump's inner circle, and thus, probably wouldn't be in on anything that could lead to Trump's potential impeachment. 

What I find interesting is what happens if it's proven that Sessions did something bad, but not blatant enough where Republicans en mass start calling for his head. Can the Trump Administration survive two high profile resignations of senior cabinet members in their first two months in office, or are they better served keeping Sessions as AG and just eating the flack they'll get for doing so? If Sessions is canned there will be a lot of blood in the water for Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans.

You allude to what I was intending in the second part of your response.  The anti-Trump Republicans should be sensing the growing blood in the water here.  Are any of them devious enough to help churn it up?  

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22 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

You allude to what I was intending in the second part of your response.  The anti-Trump Republicans should be sensing the growing blood in the water here.  Are any of them devious enough to help churn it up?  

Those that aren't currently elected officials?  Absolutely.

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4 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

Interesting times.  The Great Lake States get might protective of them.  I am curious as to what affect this might also have in Wisconsin.  I mean, that really messes with the fresh water fishing industry too.

Actually, it will be interesting to see if coalitions of State Governments attempt to act in concert over issues like keeping the Great Lakes clean if the Feds walk away from that duty.  

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3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Actually, it will be interesting to see if coalitions of State Governments attempt to act in concert over issues like keeping the Great Lakes clean if the Feds walk away from that duty.  

There's the Great Lakes Protection Fund, which was created in 1989 by the governors of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Can you clarify who would be separating themselves from the current Administration? If you're talking about Pence, I think there's already enough examples/information to suggest he's not part of Trump's inner circle, and thus, probably wouldn't be in on anything that could lead to Trump's potential impeachment. 

Zero. It's a bad look politically, but at the end of the day he was just caught being a hypocrite, which is par for the course in Washington.

I haven't read or heard anything about money being involved, but if there's anything that he even suggests some type of collusion and/or coordination then Sessions is toast and the Trump Administration will be severely wounded.

What I find interesting is what happens if it's proven that Sessions did something bad, but not blatant enough where Republicans en mass start calling for his head. Can the Trump Administration survive two high profile resignations of senior cabinet members in their first two months in office, or are they better served keeping Sessions as AG and just eating the flack they'll get for doing so? If Sessions is canned there will be a lot of blood in the water for Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans.

He was paid to fly and meet with the Russian ambassador with campaign funds.

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15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Actually, it will be interesting to see if coalitions of State Governments attempt to act in concert over issues like keeping the Great Lakes clean if the Feds walk away from that duty.  

Not to mention Canada has a huge stake in keeping the Great Lakes environmentally, recreationally, and economically healthy.  So the Great Lakes are an international concern all the way from Duluth in the western end to the St Lawrence Seaway in the east.

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1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

You allude to what I was intending in the second part of your response.  The anti-Trump Republicans should be sensing the growing blood in the water here.  Are any of them devious enough to help churn it up?  

At the moment, only a handful would willing and it would be on specific issues. For more general open opposition of Trump, you'd have to see a number of failures and/or scandals combined with falling numbers of support/approval with self-identified Republican voters, which will take some time.

47 minutes ago, Zorral said:

He was paid to fly and meet with the Russian ambassador with campaign funds.

Interesting. I guess that makes it official that he was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign.

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12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

At the moment, only a handful would willing and it would be on specific issues. For more general open opposition of Trump, you'd have to see a number of failures and/or scandals combined with falling numbers of support/approval with self-identified Republican voters, which will take some time.

Interesting. I guess that makes it official that he was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign.

Assuming it's true.  Not much info out there on it yet.

 

Assuming it is, I wonder what spin they will put on it.  I think the only thing they are left with in that scenerio is to play dumb and throw him under the bus.

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30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

At the moment, only a handful would willing and it would be on specific issues. For more general open opposition of Trump, you'd have to see a number of failures and/or scandals combined with falling numbers of support/approval with self-identified Republican voters, which will take some time.

I agree with this, and that's what worries me.

My fear is that the political environment is now so polarized and based on antagonism that the idea of public outcry over scandals on either side of the aisle may be thing of the past. For example, Trump is now calling for investigations of Schumer and Pelosi because of photos of them with the same Russian envoy. He's gone on the offensive, firing up the base, and it doesn't seem to matter that neither Schumer or Pelosi are under suspicion of ties to Russians or have lied under oath.

We know that Trump is hugely popular with Republican voters, much more so than Congress. There may simply not be anyone left to join the outcry and make Trump's poll numbers go low enough. Who is to say that Trump can't get through Russiagate without dipping below the ~40% approval rating, simply because his base will never turn from him, in which case Congress will have absolutely no motivation for pursuing the issue?

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I think we need to make a distinction when we say Sessions paid for the RNC trip using campaign funds. Sessions paid for his trip to the RNC out of his own re-election campaign funds, not Donald Trump campaign funds. We know this is true because he filed these transactions as a part of a disclosure to the FEC. We also know that he spoke about Trump at the RNC which leads people to say he was there on behalf of Trump campaign. The thing I want to be careful with is that the Trump campaign didn't pay for his trip.

Why this matters is because Sessions has claimed he spoke to the Russian Ambassador as a member of the Armed Services Committee in routine senatorial business, not as a representative of Trump's campaign. The Armed Services Committee has their own budget and Sessions has access to it when he's on Armed Services Committee business. He didn't use that budget.

Anyway, we'll see where this goes. I don't have my hopes up.

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The part where I find myself inviting the Republican Party to have a nice tall warm glass of shut the hell up.

Just about had it with the Republican Party’s nonsense edition.

Just juxtapose:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2017/03/book2.html

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Americans tend to assume that history marches forward and that their children will do better than they did. This is a fundamental tenet of the American Dream and a core deliverable of the economy over most of the course of the 20th century.

Sometimes, though, there are detours.

Even though over the past 40 years, the United States grew ever richer, the gains from this growth have not been shared. The US economy produced $18 trillion worth of goods and services in 2016, more than any other country that year—or any year on record. Data show that between 1980 and 2014 pretax income grew, on average, by 61 percent, yet most of these gains went to those at the very top. For the bottom 50 percent of the US population incomes grew only 1 percent; those in the top 1 percent snagged 205 percent income growth.

This is not the way the American Dream was expected to play out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/02/the-gop-poverty-agenda-decoded/

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President Trump, in a recent address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, said it was time for Americans to “get off welfare and get back to work.” Ben Carson, whom the Senate confirmed Thursday as Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, speaks about poverty as a trap.

And Republicans in Congress, notably House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, have been pushing a poverty agenda that includes giving states more “flexibility,” “streamlining” federal assistance programs and “leveraging private sector dollars.”

You would think after getting on rooftops and shouting,”How about that ‘Bush Boom” from about 2000-2007, which were not that great, then followed by a financial collapse, the Republican Party would take a bit of stock and revise some it’s priors.

Instead, what we got was 8 years of Republican Party frickin nonsense that most likely did long term damage to the economy through hysteresis effects.

Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican mantra has been let us bust your unions and implement tax cuts and the growth will be so awesome you’ll your surely be pleased.

Except it never fuckin happened.

And what we got is growing wealth inequality and wage stagnation, which conservatives have basically treated like they have Global Warming – by pure fucking denial, except for maybe recently.

And now the Republican Party sees fit to lecture the rest of us about the social safety nets, using one conservative cliché after another to justify their bullshit.

Making it things worse is that frauds like Paul Ryan go around misrepresenting others people’s research to push his little Ayn Rand view of the world.

Yes there is some theoretical evidence and empirical evidence that increased welfare spending can have some negative labor supply effects. But, there is a lot of evidence, that in many context, welfare benefits do not have a significant negative impact on labor supply.

Nobody has any business taking the Republican Party remotely seriously on this. The Republican Party showing, once, again why it needs to be set on fire.

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5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I think we need to make a distinction when we say Sessions paid for the RNC trip using campaign funds. Sessions paid for his trip to the RNC out of his own re-election campaign funds, not Donald Trump campaign funds. We know this is true because he filed these transactions as a part of a disclosure to the FEC. We also know that he spoke about Trump at the RNC which leads people to say he was there on behalf of Trump campaign. The thing I want to be careful with is that the Trump campaign didn't pay for his trip.

Why this matters is because Sessions has claimed he spoke to the Russian Ambassador as a member of the Armed Services Committee in routine senatorial business, not as a representative of Trump's campaign. The Armed Services Committee has their own budget and Sessions has access to it when he's on Armed Services Committee business. He didn't use that budget.

Anyway, we'll see where this goes. I don't have my hopes up.

Wait, is the 'campaign funds' thing about the meeting at the convention?  

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4 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Wait, is the 'campaign funds' thing about the meeting at the convention?  

Yes. The other meeting between Sessions and Kislyak was in Sessions' office so it couldn't be then.

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9 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I think we need to make a distinction when we say Sessions paid for the RNC trip using campaign funds. Sessions paid for his trip to the RNC out of his own re-election campaign funds, not Donald Trump campaign funds. We know this is true because he filed these transactions as a part of a disclosure to the FEC. We also know that he spoke about Trump at the RNC which leads people to say he was there on behalf of Trump campaign. The thing I want to be careful with is that the Trump campaign didn't pay for his trip.

Why this matters is because Sessions has claimed he spoke to the Russian Ambassador as a member of the Armed Services Committee in routine senatorial business, not as a representative of Trump's campaign. The Armed Services Committee has their own budget and Sessions has access to it when he's on Armed Services Committee business. He didn't use that budget.

Anyway, we'll see where this goes. I don't have my hopes up.

Whether or no, the questions remain as to why the Russian ambassador was in Cleveland in the first place and why Sessions was flying there, during the campaign con to meet with him?  When there were all those other D.C. channels open for them to meet?

 

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Just now, Mexal said:

Yes. The other meeting between Sessions and Kislyak was in Sessions' office so it couldn't be then.

That's less of a smoking gun.  it's not like he went there specifically to meet with the Russians.

Business insider calls it like this:

 

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A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation told Business Insider in an email that Sessions provided a keynote address at a defense and national-security luncheon attended by roughly 100 individuals. The spokesperson said, "I believe he was speaking as a senator on Armed Services" during his address, not as a Trump campaign surrogate.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, a spokesperson for Sessions said the appearance was in his capacity as a senator and not as a campaign official. The spokesperson added that Sessions was approached following the speech by several ambassadors, including Kislyak, with whom he held a "short and informal" conversation.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-jeff-sessions-spoke-to-russian-ambassador-rnc-2017-3

Ignoring the nonsensical parts about what capacity he was speaking in, this does not sound particularly damning, unless that isn't the way it happened.

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7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Whether or no, the questions remain as to why the Russian ambassador was in Cleveland in the first place and why Sessions was flying there, during the campaign con to meet with him?  When there were all those other D.C. channels open for them to meet?

 

My understanding is that it is not uncommon for ambassadors to be invited to these conventions, and there were many other ambassadors in attendance as well.

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3 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

That's less of a smoking gun.  it's not like he went there specifically to meet with the Russians.

Business insider calls it like this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-jeff-sessions-spoke-to-russian-ambassador-rnc-2017-3

Ignoring the nonsensical parts about what capacity he was speaking in, this does not sound particularly damning, unless that isn't the way it happened.

I thought I read that Sessions was pulled aside by Kislyak for a private conversation. This happened a few days before the first batch of DNC emails got leaked. Then there was the meeting with Kislyak in September when Kislyak sought him out which coincided with Trump/Pence praising Putin's leadership and was right in the middle of the Podesta/Russian hack conversation. We'd have to be really naive to believe in those two meetings, Kislyak never mentioned the Trump since as an ambassador in the middle of all that news, it's the very information he would be seeking out. I doubt he just went to talk to Sessions to chat about a church trip from the early 90s.

Ultimately, the only reason this is a big deal is because Sessions lied about it at the confirmation meeting and even after the Flynn debacle, didn't think it was necessary to mention it to anyone. That's why this blew up, not because he met with the Russian Ambassador.

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