As far as the ACA, reports out there that Koch and their organizations are turning up heat for outright repeal right now & getting impatient. GOP could be a bit stuck here but we'll see, I suspect more loud nonsense might quiet a lot of the "but we want Obamacare" feedback. Not all, but given the nonstop apologism for Trump by his camp I think they're probably repealing it and then selling it as a victory

I don't know if that happened, but I'm fairly sure it's what Trump is afraid may have happened. Not Russia or the embassy necessarily, but... Russian individuals.

At what point are the chickens going to come home to roost with all the lying, the alternative facts, the craziness, the right wingers who live in another universe ("overwhelming evidence for wiretaps!"), etc. etc.?

This is how great empires fall. If we seriously don't get some responsible leaders running the country and have a rational, educated citizenry then it's over for this country.

It's virtually impossible that the ACA is repealed and replaced with anything real by 2018, so hopefully the GOP is ****ed. OTOH, they could repeal and replace with something phony and still get Trumpkins to support it.

at least the narrative that comey was on team trump is dead now. He was on team FBI not politics. Yeah we'll have to get why the hell that e-mail happened in his book after he's gone but for now move on.

So he's losing Drudge?

Hopeful thinking, but isn't there a thing where a group can function in opposition, but then it falls apart due to internal conflict when it gets in power? Maybe the death of the GOP is coming?

What I was trying to imply but didn't really do is that the tappppps may very well have been on the other end, not in Trump Tower. I wonder if part of the reason all these details are emerging so slowly is that the IC needs to blow some of their best sources to bring it to the light of day.

Primarily it's due to the crippling leadership vacuum in the White House. The President serves an important coordinating role, but the one we have is utterly ignorant about policy and has failed even to adequately staff his own shop, let alone lead Congress.

This is just as unsubstantiated as the post you complained about. REPORTED.

This wiretap story seems so stupid to me. Of course Trump was wiretapped. So is literally everyone else. A recording of me ordering a pizza last night is on file in some massive data center somewhere. If Trump doesn't like it, maybe he should start dismantling the surveillance state instead of bitching and moaning about it.

People don't just assume that the bulk of all communications are being spied on to some degree?

I mean, the Obama administration was spying on Angela Merkel's communications and the rest of her government.

And yeah, so it wasn't "ordered" by Obama, but he was well aware of it and the practice continued after he was aware as CIC. There is little difference.

Errybody gettin spied on, way of the world.

The 1/2 Franc coin is tiny because the mint wanted to **** with the bankers. It's the only illogical thing in Switzerland.

Lol at awval complaining about a story sourced from someone who knows Trump and then countering it with a tale of how he once saw Melania smile on TV.

That Melania was furious about pussygate is a pretty fair assumption even absent any stories.

Can be discussed but doesn't change that the President of the United States is less credible than a random person pulled out of a hat, including some dude on an internet message board. Perhaps you should reflect on voting to do that to your country rather than (incorrectly) nitting about rules on a message board.

Exactly so. If you speak to a tapped person -- well, you're on a tapped line, so...

(Some people do have trouble with the notion. The father of Italian murder suspect Raffaele Sollecito was talking on the phone to Raffaele's sister Vanessa, then a lieutenant in the Carabinieri -- she was later dismissed for taking part in this and other corrupt conversations -- and Vanessa mentioned the father's plans to get a couple of detectives moved off the case, and the father, who by then knew he was under surveillance, warned her to be careful what she said. And Vanessa, who, like Raffaele, is not the sharpest tool in the box and would not be the sharpest tool in the box even if the only other tools were a week-old banana and a badly-darned sock, said, 'But Papa, it's not my phone they're tapping!')

There's also a known thing with US intercept warrants -- they are sometimes taken out against foreigners when the real targets are US contacts of those foreigners, against whom it would be harder to get a warrant. Though I'm not suggesting that that happened here, as I wouldn't know.

I don't think he was on team trump, but he preferred Trump. That's at least the choice he made. He might regret this, but he made his bed.

So then I assume you're furious about Trump using an unsecured android phone and mar a lago not having any protections on their wifi?

I think we're talking two different things. Espionage and surveillance in general is a thing that we and all modern countries do to some extent. That's a given.

At the same time, active wiretapping of phones of US citizens is supposed to require a little process and justification, even if it's just getting a judge to sign off on it. There are obvious concerns with political parties doing it unchecked to other political parties. It might seem like an arbitrary distinction but it's not at all.

This is Trump leveling a very impactful charge, and one he has to support. To me it just smells like either paranoid ignorance, deflection--or if he's telling the truth, then we need to find out why. He can declassify things as he likes but something tells me he doesn't want to do that.

I think it's plausible that the Trump team told Comey they were going to tell the press he was SITTING ON THIS INFORMATION TO HELP HILLARY ZOMG and so Comey took what he thought was the least damaging path for the FBI's credibility. Because Comey knew what they were putting together against Trump, and knew that if Trump got elected, they needed that credibility to avert disaster.

I mean, yeah? Though that has nothing to do whatsoever with the point I was making? One is morons in the government using lax technological security and allowing those with ill intent easier access towards infiltration.

The other is state sponsored surveillance of a head of state of an ally and their government with our President condoning such actions.

Do you not understand the difference between the two? And why I might think your reply quoted above is not germane to the post in which you were replying to?

Is there any journalist that uses the phrase "imagine if this happened to xxx" who is worth anything? It is ridiculous how often I hear those types of comparisons in American politics.

Nope, this is bull**** handwaving away an untrue statement. The statement wasn't Trump got caught up in the US Government's domestic spying, the statement was Obama ordered Trump Tower to be wire tapped. Trump needs to produce some evidence of this claim.

Is it not just getting in a pre smear against Obama, to remove his power as a political asset.

Lots of Trump voters allegedly liked Obama, so he may have voice with them. Given Trump spent most of his campaign attacking Hillary, is this just not a pivot on to Obama so as to reduce the extent his voice carries with Trump supporters. So much nonsense rando **** was made to stick to Hillary, seems a no brainer to use the same tactics on Obama.

The problem is we're never going to know the exact information they had against Trump at the time they released the Hillary information. I feel pretty confident that everything about Hillary is now out. It is very, very tough to uncover the web that Trump/Russia. There is just so, so much. It would make a fantastic book one day, I hope it gets written.