American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[FlameOn]

Trump triggers a renegotiation with NAFTA today. I really hope him getting investigated right now doesn't send him into a panic of distracting actions that mess up our economy.

[photon]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

You'd think that the Republicans would rather have Pence in the big seat right now he seems to be more of a rank and file controllable republican.

Oh for sure, but impeachment is hard and disruptive, and if I recall the Republicans ended up LESS popular after the whole Bill Clinton thing. They'll only do it if it's clearly the least bad of all possible options.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Regarding President Pence, I read on another forum an intriguing proposal:

1) The GOP convinces Pence to resign;

2) The GOP then gets Romney to take the open VP spot;

3) Congress confirms the choice;

4) Trump then resigns;

5) Romney becomes President;

6) Romney either picks Mattis (for his defense experience) or Halley (because she's a woman and is generally likable) as VP.

7) The nation exhales, and the 2020 election is won by the Democrats, but just barely.

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

Regarding President Pence, I read on another forum an intriguing proposal:

1) The GOP convinces Pence to resign;

2) The GOP then gets Romney to take the open VP spot;

3) Congress confirms the choice;

4) Trump then resigns;

5) Romney becomes President;

6) Romney either picks Mattis (for his defense experience) or Halley (because she's a woman and she's on page 312 on his binders full of women is generally likable) as VP.

7) The nation exhales, and the 2020 election is won by the Democrats, but just barely.

fyp

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

Regarding President Pence, I read on another forum an intriguing proposal:

1) The GOP convinces Pence to resign;

2) The GOP then gets Romney to take the open VP spot;

3) Congress confirms the choice;

4) Trump then resigns;

5) Romney becomes President;

6) Romney either picks Mattis (for his defense experience) or Halley (because she's a woman and is generally likable) as VP.

7) The nation exhales, and the 2020 election is won by the Democrats, but just barely.

This sounds like a very good sequence of events. How the hell did that happen?

Few people liked Mitt Romney when he was actually running, but now he seems like a dream candidate compared the circus in town.

[DuffMan]

I wonder if Putin has an Assistant Captain spot open, that needs filling?
Oh what the Vladdy/Donny couple could achieve together.

[troutman]

https://beyer.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ostp.pdf

Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology just sent a letter to the President, asking him to support staffing of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and to make use of the office for reliable evidence-based decision making.

[FlameOn]

So apparently US intelligence sources knew that a Russian intelligence operation against the US election was incoming back in early as May 2016, but had no idea what was coming. Apparently the Russian GRU officer involved was bragging to one of his colleges about revenge for Hillary Clinton's State department actions pushing protests against the Kremlin.

Intelligence officials didn't know what to make of the comments at the time but now it's become clear.

Like many a good spy tale, the story of how the U.S. learned its democracy could be hacked started with loose lips. In May 2016, a Russian military intelligence officer bragged to a colleague that his organization, known as the GRU, was getting ready to pay Clinton back for what President Vladimir Putin believed was an influence operation she had run against him five years earlier as Secretary of State. The GRU, he said, was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election.

What the officer didn’t know, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, was that U.S. spies were listening. They wrote up the conversation and sent it back to analysts at headquarters, who turned it from raw intelligence into an official report and circulated it. But if the officer’s boast seems like a red flag now, at the time U.S. officials didn’t know what to make of it. “We didn’t really understand the context of it until much later,” says the senior intelligence official. Investigators now realize that the officer’s boast was the first indication U.S. spies had from their sources that Russia wasn’t just hacking email accounts to collect intelligence but was also considering interfering in the vote. Like much of America, many in the U.S. government hadn’t imagined the kind of influence operation that Russia was preparing to unleash on the 2016 election. Fewer still realized it had been five years in the making.

In 2011, protests in more than 70 cities across Russia had threatened Putin’s control of the Kremlin. The uprising was organized on social media by a popular blogger named Alexei Navalny, who used his blog as well as Twitter and Facebook to get crowds in the streets. Putin’s forces broke out their own social media technique to strike back. When bloggers tried to organize nationwide protests on Twitter using #Triumfalnaya, pro-Kremlin botnets bombarded the hashtag with anti-protester messages and nonsense tweets, making it impossible for Putin’s opponents to coalesce.

http://time.com/magazine/?utm_source...letter_axiosam

[Minnie]

Lee Zeldin (R), Foreign Affairs Committee, is bleating away on CNN building on the whole "poor Mr Trump, witch hunt, whaaa whaaa whaa" narrative.

[Biff]

He's also playing the "but the legislative agenda is so much more important" card. First, there IS no cohesive legislative agenda. Second, why would anyone want a corrupt administration led by an ignorant buffoon actually make substantive changes to bedrocks of american society and function? Thank goodness that an utterly inept administration is being hobbled by the natural consequences of their own blind arrogance. Just desserts are tasty.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

So apparently US intelligence sources knew that a Russian intelligence operation against the US election was incoming back in early as May 2016, but had no idea what was coming. Apparently the Russian GRU officer involved was bragging to one of his colleges about revenge for Hillary Clinton's State department actions pushing protests against the Kremlin.

Intelligence officials didn't know what to make of the comments at the time but now it's become clear.


http://time.com/magazine/?utm_source...letter_axiosam

Thanks Hillary!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Trump triggers a renegotiation with NAFTA today. I really hope him getting investigated right now doesn't send him into a panic of distracting actions that mess up our economy.

Canada and Mexico should refuse to negotiate on grounds that Trump is an illegitimate president installed by the Russians.

I can do international diplomacy too.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Lee Zeldin (R), Foreign Affairs Committee, is bleating away on CNN building on the whole "poor Mr Trump, witch hunt, whaaa whaaa whaa" narrative.

Expect more of this. Republicans will be rallying around the administration for as long as they can to try and push their agenda through. If Trump can't assist any longer, and becomes too much a drag on their agenda, at that point they will flee and jettison Trump. Trump is still a useful idiot to them. Once the FBI investigation really starts to go sideways, that's when you'll see them turn on the White House.

Don't be surprised if things get really ugly and both houses end up in disarray. Ryan and McConnell supposedly have some knowledge of the shenanigans that were going on in the GOP as far as fund raising and money laundering. Could lead to criminal charges for those two. Chaffetz and Nunes could also be in deep ####. Both could be caught in the FBI net just cast looking at obstruction charges. Chaffetz already looks guilty and trying to save himself by jumping ship early. Might be a guy who cuts a deal to save himself.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Buzzfeed is that fly looking to get swatted.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-...-tweets-238561

[ernie]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

Regarding President Pence, I read on another forum an intriguing proposal:

1) The GOP convinces Pence to resign;

2) The GOP then gets Romney to take the open VP spot;

3) Congress confirms the choice;

4) Trump then resigns;

5) Romney becomes President;

6) Romney either picks Mattis (for his defense experience) or Halley (because she's a woman and is generally likable) as VP.

7) The nation exhales, and the 2020 election is won by the Democrats, but just barely.

That requires the center republicans to be in control of the party. The influx of Tea Party and Trump cult suggests that isn't the case.

And honestly now that there is evidence of conversations of among other republicans about the Putin payroll (joking or not) I'm not sure the GOp can actually make any sort of moves until everything is brought to light. They will need to know and the public will need to know exactly who all of this touched.

[photon]

The whole "Comey broke the law by not immediately reporting Trump's obstruction attempt" narrative that conservatives are frothing over discussed:


Fox News personality Gregg Jarrett is making some waves with a short piece making the remarkable claim that Jim Comey may have himself have broken the law with respect to his now-famous memo recording President Trump's request that he find a way to end the investigation of Mike Flynn. The piece appeared on Fox News Opinion yesterday, and this morning the folks at Fox & Friends gave it a hearty endorsement.

So what exactly are these people claiming? Here are Jarrett's words:

Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law.

This is nonsense. Let me explain.

https://lawfareblog.com/no-jim-comey-not-legal-jeopardy

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by New Era

Buzzfeed is that fly looking to get swatted.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-...-tweets-238561

It's funny that the trash clickbait list articles that they publish are actually funding real investigative journalism.

"49 GOP members who are having a really rough day. Click through each page to find out who!"

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Thanks Hillary!

In hindsight from reading the article, the US would have sidestepped the biggest parts of Russia hack and election influence campaign had the Democrats nominated somebody else other than Hillary as she was their intended target. For Putin, this was personal. Russians seem like they were geared towards leaks of DNC emails and Clinton impropriety in the hack. Sanders would not have the dirt for the Russians to target.

[troutman]

Senate Moves Forward with Bipartisan Bill to Rein in Jeff Sessions

Co-sponsors Rand Paul and Patrick Leahy call out the Attorney General's backwards approach to criminal justice, the drug war and mandatory minimums

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ssions-w482927

[FlameOn]

The FCC has voted to dismantle net neutrality. The panel has had two seats vacant since the resignation of Tom Wheeler after Trump pressure. This left the GOP control two seats of the five seats at the FCC with Trump having neglected to do any nominations for replacements. FCC voted 2-1 along party lines to repeal net neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to start the process of eliminating net neutrality rules and the classification of home and mobile Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes eliminating the Title II classification and seeks comment on what, if anything, should replace the current net neutrality rules. But Chairman Ajit Pai is making no promises about reinstating the two-year-old net neutrality rules that forbid ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful Internet content, or prioritizing content in exchange for payment. Pai's proposal argues that throttling websites and applications might somehow help Internet users.

The FCC plans to take comments on its plan until August 16 (the docket is available here) and then make a final decision sometime after that.

The net neutrality rules were approved in February 2015 when Republicans were in the commission's minority. Today, Pai and fellow Republican Michael O'Rielly voted in favor of the plan to eliminate the rules while Democrat Mignon Clyburn voted to preserve them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...itle-ii-rules/

Democrats are threatening all out war for this

Rep. Frank Pallone is like many Democrats in the U.S. Congress: He’s itching for a fight over net neutrality.

To the New Jersey congressman, the Obama administration “did its job” when it acted in 2015 to stop internet providers from meddling with the way that consumers use the web. The telecom industry didn’t like the rules, of course, but Pallone saw them as the only way to prevent AT&T, Charter, Comcast* and Verizon from blocking or slowing down online content.

So when the Trump administration begins its work Thursday to kill the open-internet protections currently on the government’s books, Pallone and his allies intend to return fire. They’re already pledging to embark on a take-no-prisoners political crusade — one that also threatens to make the internet’s most intractable debate even louder and harder to solve.

“Nobody believes the Republicans [who] are saying they want strong net neutrality, [or] they’re going to come up with a better way,” said Pallone, the top Democrat on the House committee overseeing the FCC, during an interview with Recode. “I’m not interested in this nonsense.”

“It’ll be a campaign issue if they repeal it,” he added. “Our focus now is to say to the FCC, please don’t do this.”

In many ways, net neutrality is the internet’s longest war: So far, it has spanned two decades, four presidents, scores of court challenges and multiple, wonky rulemaking proceedings at the nation’s telecom regulator, the FCC. It has pitted the country’s cable and broadband giants, which abhor regulation, against the likes of Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter and a host of startups that firmly believe net neutrality rules are critical to their existence.

https://www.recode.net/2017/5/18/156...utrality-rules