https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/864337180231168000

Literally every actual policy that Trump has tried or legislation that he's pushed has been supported by Ted Cruz, we'd be in the same place except the court case against the Muslim ban would've been harder to prove since Cruz wasn't stupid enough to blab about it all campaign long.

Citation needed.

Israeli news published this back in January

Think this take is wrong. Sessions is abominable, but there's a lot of ability to undo his policies (and to some extent the damage they did while in effect) when a Democratic administration comes in. The Comey firing and the general atmosphere of pathological dishonesty and unaccountability that the administration exudes are worse and harder to repair, but it can maybe be done. On the foreign policy front, Trump is irreparably destroying the country's credibility and it will never be restored. Read this Jeet Heer article which makes the argument, although he unaccountably thinks it's a good thing because lefties don't like saying things that make America sound nice. Notice how terribly lame his last two paragraphs are, though. That's where the action is.

Heard former Australian ambassador to US and former leader of the major center-left party here on the radio today. I dont think he has detailed knowledge of what happened but he was saying that when these classified information ****ups happen they are usually cleaned up and hushed up by intelligence agencies. And that that isnt happening in this instance because the intel agencies hate Trump. Worth bearing in mind the factor of hostile agencies when evaluating these stories.

This is a good post and I think what you indicate here would be highly effective. Since TRUMP being the dufus that he is, the Dems are sure to have a better message and ideas. Where should they start? The TRUMP is an incompetent boob message (unqualified in more polite terms) was the HRC message. The Bernie message of a much more progressive tax system coupled with single payer health care coverage, more protectionist trade policies, free college tuition for all, etc. seemed to play pretty well with a lot of people.

I don't see how this addresses the fact that Bush did things that were arguably worse than what Trump has done so far (at least in terms of destroying America's credibility and world standing), and Obama repaired a lot of it. I'm not saying Trump can't get there and be even worse than Bush, but to act like he's done irreparable harm to our standing around the world already seems a bit much.

adios:

We aren't gonna take advice from known fascists on how to advance the progressive movement. You really think we're stupid, don't you?

There's a long deposition you can find on YouTube. Basically he didn't give up anything because he didn't know anything. It was about leases and he said he signs a lot of them, but doesn't read them. He left that to his kids.

The mere fact that this post exists after 4 months of Trump (compared to 8 years of Bush) is solid evidence against it.

As an aside, I was unaware of how much good Obama did until Trump started undoing his policies.

Me too. The fate of the democratic confederation of northern Syria may depend on this meeting. Fate of Turkey too probably because if Trump OKs a Turkish invasion it will go badly for everyone Turkey included.

Ha, I called that while I was still reading the headline of the WP article.

Almost guarantees some sort of attack or suicide bombing in Jordan as a result too.

There's a critical difference between standing and credibility. It's one thing to invade a dictatorship in the Middle East on false pretenses and get lots of people killed while accomplishing nothing. It won't make people like you and it will make your standing go down (and it's bad!), but it doesn't necessarily affect your credibility. I mean, maybe misrepresenting intel upsets people, but it's not really that bad. In particular, it doesn't give your allies reasons to doubt you about things that are truly important to their security. Handing over restricted intel to the Russians and appointing a known foreign agent to be the National Security Advisor may be less bad in an absolute sense, but things like that give other countries a huge reason to question whether they can trust the U.S. about the things that really matter to them. When Japan is trying to decide whether it needs an independent military to confront China (or even if it needs nuclear weapons), you would like them to believe the answer is "No, the U.S. would always defend Japan with its military." But know the line of thinking has to take into account "What if the U.S. President is bribed by our enemies? What if leaving us in the lurch provides a domestic political benefit?"

Before all this came about I had been reading that Trump was not really happy with McMasters. I suspect it is because he wanted to try and do his job and would not pledge his undying loyalty to Trump.

If that was the case I certainly see trunp using this scenario to push mcmasters out on a ledge to make him look bad. For some reason trump loves doing that, completely unaware that to sane people it makes him be seen as a horrendous leader. This stuff he regularly did in his business life as well.

Honestly we have to assume anyone who works for him now has a major personality disorder/defect. The fact not one person has resigned because of this **** show is pretty telling, in my opinion. The Whitehouse is like the Anti-USA Network , Character(s) not welcome.

Just the fact that Trump would tell the Russians classified information that he wouldn't and won't tell American citizens should be a little disconcerting to Trumpsters...shouldn't it?

The fact that he'd let Russian ****ing State ****ing Media into the goddamn room while keeping US media out should be a "little disconcerting."

THIS **** should be that-sounds-like-the-tsunami-warning-siren-get-to-higher-ground disconcerting.

what are you trying to say big boi?

Lolooooololollol

wowzies. I see PPP is a Dem polling company... are they credible?

The Seth Rich thing is actually a pretty good example of how the reason "the mainstream media" is full of liberals is because conservatives get so excited about bull**** they don't do the basic parts of their job.

So, broad strokes, I read the infowars so you don't have to:

1) Some wingnut "private investigator" says that he works for the Rich family and he has sources that say Rich had contacts with Wikileaks and the DC police shut down the investigation. The implication is that Hillary had him killed.

2) He tells a reporter this

3) The reporter writes a story based on that

THEN

4) The Rich family says they didn't hire the guy

5) The DC police say the guy is wrong


Why didn't the original story contact those people? Because the reporter is a right winger and the story was bad for Clinton at a time when Trump was in real hot water, and for the GOP the 2016 general election will never end.

someone needs to start asking Republicans, "If it were Hillary in the oval office, do you think your reaction would be the same?"... that should be good for giggles.

B+ according to Nate

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

Gallup got a B- for comparison's sake

Congratulations Mr. H.R. McMaster, you're the next contestant on "Under the Bus!"