StrangeSox

WSJ: Russian State-Run Bank Financed Deal Involving Trump Hotel Partner No Russians! (with few exceptions)

Stephen Miller is the main guy drafting Trump's speech on Islam he intends to give in Saudi Arabia. Yikes.

OTOH, a whole heck of a lot of people approaching or at retirement age right now have no pensions and little or no retirement savings at all. It'll help the heirs of people who had enough extra cash to save substantially for retirement, which are fewer and fewer people these days. Lots of pensions have survivor benefits, too, which would pass benefits on to minor children and surviving spouses or other designated beneficiaries.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ May 17, 2017 -> 11:33 AM) Well, technically it IS hearsay (an out of court statement being used to prove the matter asserted), but it would still be allowed as it falls under at least one of the exceptions to admitting hearsay evidence - party admissions. It's a note about what Trump said directly to Comey. edit: "it" being Trump's statement that Comey noted in his memo. Okay, I'll trust the lawyers to know the actual technical definition. Either way, detailed contemporaneous notes by a law enforcement officer on a conversation they had being dismissed as "heresay [sic]" is just ridiculous.

more cowardice

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 17, 2017 -> 10:49 AM) Yeah, he had Pence and Sessions leave the room to joke with Comey about getting the investigation off Flynn. The real jokes are the people who come up with these excuses. A memo from the FBI director detailing the conversation he had isn't "hearsay," either. These guys are just really dumb or think their constituents are.

QUOTE (bmags @ May 17, 2017 -> 10:47 AM) Yeah I am with you, I don't think 25th amend is responsible. I'm saying protecting him from an investigation in this likely impeachable offense is only allowing a man who is dangerously incompetent at the wheel. Nixon, while an author to many deplorable foreign policy tactics, had shown he could at least hold the levers of the government in a manner within the realms of what we expect from presidents. Nixon was completely off the rails and usually heavily drunk by the end, and the never-100%-confirmed-but-likely-true story is that the SecDef made sure everyone knew that any nuclear launch order had to come directly from him. Nixon was a whole hell of a lot smarter than Trump until Watergate snapped him, though.

"Joke" seems pretty unlikely since he asked everyone else to leave the room before making this "joke"

Ultimately, though, speculations about impeachment or 25th amendment are extremely premature because many Republicans are already falling inline behind Trump.

The qualifier for impeachment isn't committing an illegal act, though. It's "high crimes and misdemeanors," and it's entirely up to the House and Senate to determine what that exactly means. Bill Clinton was never convicted of a crime and the House still impeached him. It also didn't kick off a succession of serious attempts at impeachment of the next Presidents. The 25th Amendment would also give Pence and his cabinet more than enough room to remove Trump from office for being "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." Gross incompetence that seriously undermines the country's national security seems like an acceptable standard to hold the President to. The country is at risk not only from executive incompetence but from a general inability to be governed right now.

Democrats coming out swinging in this morning's briefing about Congressional Republicans running cover for Trump.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ May 17, 2017 -> 09:34 AM) I bet that's the truth. He's a bulls***ter. He doesn't care about details. He doesn't understand the ramifications of his actions. He's totally in over his head. All of these mistakes are chalked up to "moron that doesn't understand what he's doing and why it can be perceived as unethical/illegal." Take the Comey firing - he was shocked it got a negative reaction. He clearly didn't think it through. Same with the Russian leak stuff. He just started bulls***ting in his meeting, completely oblivious to the fact that he was going to get a spy killed. Oh absolutely. It's just a really, really bad quality to have in the President of the United States. His staff pretty clearly has zero respect for him.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ May 17, 2017 -> 09:31 AM) Honestly though, that's the smart play on his/their part. They get nothing from going after Trump. They lose some of their base if they do that. They can sit back, be quiet, and let the Trump hang himself. That only works to the point where Trump stalls their entire legislative agenda and causes Dem wave in 2018, though. Paul Ryan is one of if not the most unpopular politicians in the country right now. They're not in a great place either way, imo. Either piss off their base and fracture the party by going after Trump/working with Democrats, or piss everyone else off and energize Democrats by carrying water for what's quickly become the most incompetent and likely most corrupt administration in history in a little over 100 days.

"Listen, the President is a dumb child, you can't take him at his word!" is an interesting spin they're trying to put on both the Russia intel and Comey stories.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trum...p-idUSKCN18D0C7

Trump's camp doesn't have recordings or detailed notes of his meetings with Comey. "Take good notes and send out emails documenting who said what and when" is something I learned like 2 years into my career after getting burned once by an asshole project manager. How does nobody in the White House know this? Comey also has a history of doing this, and he used to to burn the W. Bush White House twice when they were trying to lie about things.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 17, 2017 -> 12:37 AM) Because the left wing outlets had no incentive to speak on the reports from Rich's family's private investigator that Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks. Stop following conspiratorial right wing media. His family didn't hire anyone, conservative media did. And that person didn't actually do any investigating but just relied on Fox news claims that he was in contact with WikiLeaks. The family is disgusted with this and has asked the right wing media to stop exploiting their son's death. I posted a link to their statement several hours before you made your first post. this is just Phase 3 & 4 of this: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/how-...DjEj#.iuOP96EVE

Right wing media has been exploiting the death of a DNC staffer last year with insane conspiracy theories to distract from Trump's s*** show, family calling in them to stop. https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/864470917816213504

Subpoena for manafort, former Trump campaign manager and Kremlin stooge. .

Trump transition team mishandled classified information. https://twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/864648912375881729

https://mobile.twitter.com/saba_h/status/864637574203289600

Sally Yates said Russians had "real leverage" over Flynn. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sally-yates...ory?id=47442212

https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/864...9068032/photo/1