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He should have appointed Flynn as his plumber. He's vindictive and he knows his way around the IC.

are you talking about by Republicans in office (not just verbally, but by actions) or his base in the bolded? If so can you give us some examples of what kinds of things might trigger this?

If Trump gets impeached it will be because he's a terrible president. You can argue about whether or not he will be the WOAT from a moral or policy perspective, but there's little doubt that he will be the most inept at the job of president. In our system, the president has to actually do things like manage a sprawling opaque bureaucracy and provide policy leadership and coordination to political allies on the Hill. Trump just does not know how to do that. It's one thing to bungle the drafting of an executive order, but the presidency is a really important job. What's going to happen when there's a foreign policy crisis and Tillerson can't provide options because he's not allowed to hire people and all his long-serving underlings resigned? What's going to happen if Obamacare collapses and no one can get a majority behind legislation to put together a fix?

Acosta is nominated for Labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta

Maybe. Not sure that's how it's supposed to work though. There's a whole web of oversight over the Intelligence Community -- including Congress, including the Inspector General:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...nity_Oversight

...much of it instituted in response to incidents like Vietnam and Watergate where the intelligence officials in the US became concerned the American President might not operate in America's best interests with respect to intelligence if acting caused them political embarrassment.

So it still feels like to me if the IC is forced to circumvent all of the normal channels due to concern Russian co-option has extended to places like *Congress* then WAAF. If instead they think Congress and all the normal channels might not be effectual in embarrassing a politician they way they want -- wait, that's the system working. Like we consciously have this web of oversight to prevent rogue intelligence officials from needing to use the press.

I have made this point before but these sort of theories that the IC is forced to work the press due to concerns about the executive branch's malfeasance or corruption have other avenues besides those which cause maximum political embarrassment to the administration in power and have little avenues for vetting. At some point to believe the very preposterous, maybe even true conspiracies about how co-opted Trump is by Russia -- you have to believe Senators like McCain and Susan Collins and Mark Warner and Rubio and Ron Wyden -- none of them could be trusted, either? The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence exists for just this reason.

I am loathe to be in a position to apologize for Trump but these stories are basically anonymous IC leaks versus Trump. How is the public supposed to adjudicate this information?

To say nothing of the fact that some of what you're describing is precisely the problem. Some set of people in the IC are, under your formulation, assuming they have damaging information that can embarrass the President, they've went through the proper channels but that didn't cause enough embarrassment or make its way to the public. Is it possible the information wasn't deemed credible? Or that the information was crafted in such a way to cause political harm and weren't a matter of protecting American interests aside from that?

So they leaked. That's a pretty horrid usurpation of political authority not accorded to IC officials. Put yourself in the Veil of Ignorance here in assume any situation other than one involving Trump; what authority do intelligence community officials have to make a call like that? To pass information up, not get the outcome they want, then leak? Consider how much de facto political authority that cedes to random bureaucrats.

Who knows if he will eventually go too far and get impeached. But he's definitely an habitual line stepper, like the Rick James of politics.

Agree with all of this, but simply being a dangerously incompetent president isn't really going to be an impeachable offense for this Congress. There's gonna have to blatantly illegal hand caught in the cookie jar for impeachment to happen. Basically WAAF

Here's even the CNN calling Elizabeth Warren out as a fraud regarding the Pocahontas incident

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2JwE-euOgA

But don't you say it here or you will get banned.

Did you guys see the full Netenyahu/Trump press conference? Holy crap, Trump is ****ing insane. Netenyahu looked as if if he couldn't believe he was standing next to this yahoo. Like he wanted out of there immediately.

Everything Trump said was nonsense...almost gibberish.

The One China thing is another good example of Trump stepping over that line and then stepping back. Dangerous and unprecedented, but he reeled it in before **** got completely bananas.

Alright, let's play "who will Trump call on at the press conference:"

1. The New Klanpublic
2. Super Duper Christian Science Monitor
3. The White Nationals Review

I don't know what the best sports metaphor is but it's not a good idea to embarrass an opponent you have to face again. In 2011 I watched the USC-UCLA game with a friend who was a USC grad. USC, coached by Lane Kiffin, crushed and humiliated UCLA, running up the score to 50-0. (The UCLA coach was fired a couple of days later.) My friend was supremely happy. But UCLA won the next 3 years.

Russian satisfaction may not last.

What surprises me about the reaction to all the Russia stories - basically since they became involved in Syria - is the speed of the American left to accept at face value everything the military and intelligence services say and leak when it agrees with their world view and agenda.

This isn't to say I think or know it's all BS, it would take a fool to not believe Trump et al have links with Russian interests that they are trying to conceal, or that Russia are anything other than a force generally contrary to American interests in the world.

So, obviously use the information - anything that gets rid of Trump, or at least weakens him, is easily worthwhile. However I'd guess it's worth keeping in mind that it's the same services who've sold various murky propositions in the past, serving agendas that were in no way open or progressive, that would appear to be behind these leaks.

Right, but the last bastion of oversight is still the press.


Yeah well part of the issue was whether this was done to embarrass Trump, or to actually protect the country from a compromised person working at literally the highest level of the NSC. That remains to be seen.

And for sure there remains the question of at what point are things so royally fu*ked that the IC has no choice but to go to the press, and whether this is a situation where the line had actually been crossed, but I would argue that the entire point of guaranteeing a free press right in the first amendment of the COTUS was for a situation just like this one. They're literally the last line of defense.

He got something out of the deal, that's why he submitted on the One China policy.

He seems amazing

What's the catch

Solid new troll account opening.

IKR? Probably doesn't have a commercial feature big titties you can see how he became the second choice.

Looks like the Greenwald fans might get what they want wrt scaling back the surveillance state. Not because they're spying on us, but because the are spying o the political leadership to the point that McConnell gets afraid of them and starts cutting their budget.

idk if Petry's a closet Nazi or not but it seems obvious to me that whoever gave her that haircut used a 7 iron

Here is the thing. They might assuredly have a smoking gun, but by going to the press they are pushing congress to act. Did you notice after that meeting they had with congress how some individuals came out of that situation extremely angry? They haven't actually leaked classified documents yet and really all they have done is come out as unnamed sources. Also notice that more senate republicans seem to be getting more and more on board with investigating Russia-Trump links. When classified docs start dropping from the sky, that is when you will know that they have failed. Didn't they swear and oath to the defend the constitution of enemies both foreign and domestic? They obviously believe Trump is an enemy and that scares me, it also should scare you too. Here is what is even scarier, veteran members of congress are also turning on him. Why would they do that?

Every Congress member also swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Every Republican in Congress is ****ting all over that oath right now and somebody has to be a check on those fools.

Not to engage a troll here, but this is a fun example of the post-policy nature of conservative politics. Warren is a high-visibility, far-left commie villain for the GOP. BitchiBee here should be able to rattle off all kinds of irresponsible liberal positions Warren has taken or things she's done during her tenure that destroyed jobs and threatened the nation, but instead he's reduced to reheating these warmed-over fake Injun grievances. If you asked him what other things he hates Warren without allowing him to consult Google, he'd be speechless.

I don't get it though:

If they have proof a compromised person is now the President, why not tell Congress? Why didn't that line of defense work? The ramifications seem pretty far-reaching if we're arguing they had literally NO CHOICE here.