the portion of his base that would attend one of his rallies will never turn on him. they will pack the rallies, just like during his campaign, and trump will tell them exactly what they came to hear.

he will blame the 'fake' news media and leakers for the flynn resignation and will blame his executive order failures on the judiciary. he'll also find a way to turn both hillary clinton and the intelligence community into scapegoats, and the crowd will love it.

I'm perpetually torn between "holy **** everyone in the Trump orbit is a bizarrely linked to Russia!!!, you guys seeing this ****?!" from Page to Manafort to Flynn to Tillerson -- versus the health of the American deep-state becoming the leading agent of the resistance to government. All of that just feels like we're on a terrible, terrible path.

But this one story seems like nothing. If I read it correctly. George Conway is a litigator for a firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions. The story here is that one of their clients (HP) -- a giant multinational IT company -- one of its subsidiaries (HP Russia) was accusing of bribing Russian officials.

Here's the thing:

1. literally any lawyer for a shop that works for big multi-nationals is going to be representing these kinds of clients that have tentacles everywhere. What this story is -- is actually proof that the Trumpian-type alt-right propaganda that the US can close shop and keep the forces of globalization at bay and isolate ourselves economically is such hilarious fiction, but that's tangential.

2. doing business in Russia with bribes to local officials is like a handshake and paying taxes, it's just the business culture.

I guess the long and short of it is basically any lawyer who works for a firm that does any business in Russia is guilty of this: they will represent a multinational client who has some agent or some subsidiary offshoot engaged in the Russian government-controlled gray market of bribes and scams.

Well at least we know if things go south for the Trump Administration and indictments start raining down, we know what Page's legal defense will be: he's a political prisoner, targeted for his heroic and patriotic stance against Hillary Clinton.

Almost blew up the World with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Vietnam.

Maybe we're starting a new Camelot.

The "we choose to go to the moon" speech combined with the fact that the USA beat the USSR to get there probably plays a large part in his popularity.

Guys, guys. We used to have these kinds of debates pre-Trump. I hope that the rising of Trump demonstrates to everyone what I'm about to say is relatively uncontroversial:

Kennedy was the last Democratic President that consciously played coy on civil rights and flattered white working class and southern notions of the proper racial ordering of the world. I think his history on civil rights is complicated but he definitely stayed quiet and largely ignored the sit-ins and boycotts and turmoil in the South, particularly in 1960. He did later have a privately offer support to MLK, he did later issue a relatively strong address in favor of civil rights but his rise to political power in the Democratic Party was that he was considered relatively moderate and *not* interested in activism and disturbing the south.

*This* is why is remained popular with white baby boomers. Obviously he was assassinated and that was traumatic and also serves to erase a lot of political divisions. But he was in many ways the old, white, right-wingerish, Fox News ideal of a Democrat: he has elite sensibilities that ultimately tended toward *not* disrupting their white nationalist ideals. He continues to serve as their wink-wink-nod-nod to that kind of political aesthetic -- there remains TONS of old whites who portray themselves as moderates, even Democrats, but then when pressed about the last Democrat they voted for -- it's Kennedy. And then you poke around as to why and you get all of the old white people talk about uppity liberals and activism and saggy pants and rap music and all these problems they think started right about in 1964 by some magical coincidence, and the tell is clear. The hand is face up. Just listen to what these people say.

He wasn't that popular. He barely beat Nixon, everybody that now votes Trump and their fathers voted against him. To top it off, someone shot him.

A certain part of the mainstream self-appointed progressive democratic world celebrates him in a greatly disproportionate way, because they liked his patrician Ivy league style and they envied his monied ****ing Marilyn Monroe ways.

It's not so much getting rid of him, which is up to the Americans, but limiting the harm he can do. European intelligence services provided the original leads and are still on the case. Trump may bluster about 'fixing' US intelligence, but he'll have trouble doing anything about the British and the Germans, never mind the Baltics.

http://europe.newsweek.com/allies-in...s-557283?rm=eu

Disagree.



Trump voters, their pappies and grandpappies were like the backbone of the Kennedy coalition. Kennedy won with working class and suburban whites, southern whites (although you can see the fracturing away from the Democrats appearing here, even in 1960) and patrician New Englanders.

If anything Trump rebuilt a lot of the Kennedy coalition minus the elite sensibilities -- working class and southern whites and rich people largely favored Trump -- although that Kennedy's Catholicism disqualified him with southerners is almost quaint now, considering Trump's daughter/son-in-law/grankids are Jewish and Trump has to be a only a small favorite to have ever even opened a Bible before. The things that have changed ARE the bipartisan consensus on civil rights in which Kennedy operated, e.g., the role of whites vis a vis blacks and other minorities -- that consensus has eroded. Almost all of our other identity markers (e.g., religion) have faded but race endures.

Another excellent post by DVaut1, this time shooting down a false narrative and a history re-write.

LBJ was a racist but took on the task of leading the way in getting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills enacted in 64 and 65. I think it is fair to state that his Great Society initiatives were controversial, unpopular, and arguably not that successful. Again, forced integration policies probably were the most unpopular.

Many in this forum might be familiar with Geert Wilders but not with Frauke Petry. She is the chairwoman of the far-right party AfD which has some pretty predictable views: anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-muslim etc.
She takes it one step further though. A few months ago she said in an interview that the word "völkisch" should lose its negative connotation.
That this German word has an article on the English language wikipedia and that this article is part of the a series on Nazism should give you a clue about her ideology. She isn't your run-of-the-mill racist.

lololol



Somehow I don't think the NYTimes will be apologizing to Trump any time soon.




He sure is trying hard to shift the blame and focus to the leakers.

So now the leakers who are protecting the country are low life's?!?!

Having actually read the article now it looks like it was a family court proceeding, not a criminal one (although I don't know much about how it works down in Texas, not my state). Any prosecutor in any state can endorse what is known as a "U-Visa," I've done it many times, it grants a crime witness or victim legal status so they don't get deported (which would tank a criminal case.)

I wouldn't call them low-lifes. And Trump is awful and terrible but the underlying point a more coherent, substantive President or commentator might make is that government by intelligence community fiat is like also deeply unhealthy and dangerous and none of this is a good look.

Like, this isn't heros versus bad guys imo. This feels entirely like a civil war inside the Hall of Doom. No one should be cheered by a torrent of unsourced leaks of SIGINT captured conversations crushing a democratically elected government although obviously we have a very clear boundary case here. This whole thing is dangerous in the extreme and the only justification here is that Trump is maniacal and incompetent. I take that one seriously though so I suppose we have no easy answers.

The leakers are bad people, the GOP Congress that ultimately genuflects to Trump at every cross-road are very bad people, incompetent and feeble Democrats are bad people, Trump is maybe worse than them all, but none of this should be celebrated at all. This is just chaotic and unseemly top to bottom imo.

Somehow the world still spins and the economy hasn't cratered and the world is in no more wars than it was before Trump so I suppose we are showing a surprisingly amount of systemic reliance to historic, holistic incompetence and unprincipled governance. Still early though.

I can't imagine they aren't loving this. I can't imagine anyone in the world that wants to see the US fail isn't loving this.

This is like a sports team you despise signing the most overrated player in the league to a lucrative 4-8 year contract. Very satisfying feeling.

Leakers are to chemo as Trump is to cancer.

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump
Stock market hits new high with longest winning streak in decades. Great level of confidence and optimism - even before tax plan rollout!


So much for "big nasty bubble"

This is getting scary quick. So is the plan now to dismantle the intelligence community? Seems to play into the narrative that Trump would want a not-so-intelligent community that tows the orange line.

The whole article is actually kind of amazing to read. All the Republicans, from the White House to Congress, are just standing around with their d*cks in their hands.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/1...&_r=0&referer=

One week ago: Trump agrees to abide by the One China policy with China.
Now:

This is ****ing great news. Congress standing around with their dicks in their hands is like the best case scenario we could have imagined. I'll snap take 4 more years of that.

Agreed, this is why I'm starting to lean towards Trump>Pence. With Trump you have the risk of him doing something really dumb on a whim, but his clown show makes it harder to Rs to get anything lasting done and it makes it more likely that Ds do better in future elections.

Add in the quotes from Trump after the Taiwan call about using One China as a bargaining chip, and its clear Trump doesn't give a single **** about optics or bothering to hide his scams.

And why would he, so far he's gotten away with everything.