Democracy corps survey in Macomb County: http://www.democracycorps.com/attach...2017_FINAL.pdf

Did this get posted yet?

Just divide the country now and get it over with. You can't (and shouldn't) reason with people like this.

We need to get this guy on it.

There are scandals where no laws were broken, a scandal does require a crime, but yeah, I think Occam's razor cuts AGAINST the Democratic hysteria machine here.

Putin knew Trump was both incompetent and going to be more favorable to him than Clinton, and all the ties and **** were just natural consequences of those facts. Any ethnonationalist would be be inclined to like both Trump and Putin, so a lot of people in Trump's orbit would be Russia doves, not as part of a FSB plot but because the Trump campaign was who was hiring.

facepalm

damned liberal media

On the other hand, Trump's State department is helping the FSB get away with murder? Or something?

Yeah this is critical. Putin and Trump (and guys like Farage, or ladies like Le Pen) are all mutual admirers and potentially implicitly if not explicitly coordinating in entirely legal ways because they are all alike: authoritarian ethnonationalists set against the global liberal order.

Like we should all be frightened and terrified of these kinds of people having extreme and vast powers but on some level their coordination and admiration is legal and above-board. The Administration is allowed to set policy and make new friends, basically.

These are the costs of electing frightful, horrible people. But that's not quite a scandal.

The other scandal that the press has actually covered very well is Trump breaking the Emoluments Clause. He's been doing it since day one, but no consequences.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politi...nts/index.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-wreck/513446/
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...-quicktake-q-a

I mean huge elements of the right have been gazing wistfully at Putin putting the boot to religious and ethnic minorities and wondering aloud for a decade why America can't have such wonderful men in charge. The whole right-wing fascist movement is rife with Putin admirers. Putin understandably wants a fellow-traveler ideologue/moron in charge of the US to allow him to act with impunity in the Ukraine or whatever other things Russia wants.

Some element of the 'scandal' here is seems to be shock and surprise at these terrible people being aware of each others' existence and acting accordingly.

How much of an effect does that fact that it is called the emoluments clause deter this from getting traction?

Like if it was just called the foreign bribery clause, i bet general public would care more.

I wasn't specifically referring to Trump's lies as much as Flynn's and Page's and Sessions' lies. But fair enough. Forget the lies for a moment. Why were Manfort, Flynn and Page let go if they did nothing wrong? Optics? Maybe, but since when has Trump been shown to give a single **** about optics other than Pussygrabbergate? I can't recall a single time.

Trump spent the better part of his entire campaign calling the official jobs numbers bullshit.

Probably true, nonetheless the Trump admin can still do stupid things, lie about it under oath and get prosecuted. Also, regardless of what Putin was ever going to do Trump was going to be a kleptocrat and the small chance something comes of the graft involving Russian oligarchs is (hopefully) higher for having this in the public eye.

Actually that was basically the reason he gave for not releasing his tax returns pre-election so that's two times I know of.

Dudes, its pretty simple. Wikileaks is a known tool of the Russian government to distribute stolen information to undermine liberal politicians and Western democracy generally. In example 343249834 of Trump's connection, Nigel Farage, who pales around with Trump and Bannon, just met a couple of days ago with Assange while he is pulling the exact same **** he did to Hillary today in elections all across Europe.

Conspiring with hostile foreign powers to undermine liberal democracy, which they are doing in PLAIN SIGHT, is HUGELY SCANDALOUS. Again, the problem is Trump voters are pulling jury nullification on this scandal of the century because they hate liberal democracy and love fascism.

Trump has to pull their green MAGA hats, designed to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, down from website.

Put simply, here's what we know about quid pro quo...

Trump Gets:
Help from Russian Hackers to Become President

Putin Gets:
GOP Platform Change on Ukraine
Trump's platform on NATO
Trump somewhat normalizing Putin in the USA
Trump soft stance on him being a killer

Trump May Get:
Boatloads of Money

Putin May Get:
Easing of Sanctions


Those are the topline points. We know the first two lists, and they're brief - other stuff could arguably be added... The last two, we aren't sure of yet. Meanwhile there are tons of contacts swirling around between Russia and Trump's people, and tons of lies being told. Some of them are glaring and odd - denying any contact with Kislyak and we later found out there was a meeting at Trump Tower with Kushner and Flynn. That means, at minimum, they were clueless and Kushner kept his mouth shut after the denial.

Now some of this may be coincidence. Maybe Sessions truly took the meetings out of stupidity and actually did get confused in his testimony, then got swept up in all of it. Maybe this computer DNS stuff is a coincidence. Etc, etc... But each one of these instances seems more likely to NOT be a coincidence even though one or two of them probably are, just due to the sheer magnitude of it.

Now, none of this proves it reaches Trump, he could just be the guy being played by his people... It's possible Putin/Russia identified him as a political candidate who would be friendly to them and whose circle they could potentially infiltrate due to incompetence, went for it, and succeeded.

It's also possible Trump wasn't involved, found out about it, and tried to cover it up.

So there are plenty of possibilities, but certainly the media asking why is fair, and I don't think the Democrats or media are hyping it up more than they should be. It's a big effing deal and as a country we MUST get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.

The other thing I'll say is that if I was POTUS, and I knew I was innocent, I'd call up Comey and say, "What do you need from me to investigate me fully? If I give you my full cooperation, what does it entail?"

I'd then hold a press conference and announce that I was turning over my phones/emails/records/whatever and answering all questions to prove my innocence... I'd say if someone in my campaign or administration is guilty of this, I want to find out, I want to fire them, and I want them prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Trump is a showman so this would be right up his alley, no?

I can only think of three reasons not to do this: You're guilty of what you're accused of (or a cover up), you're guilty of something else and afraid they'll find it, or you think Comey is out to get you.

If Trump did this, and they couldn't get him on anything, he'd be absolute TEFLON for four years. No attack, no accusation would stick unless they had video. "Oh, he got bribed by 500 people from some country staying in his hotel? Yeah, sure, and he's still working with Putin too, right?"

But, he's not... He's flailing around on Twitter like a wounded animal... There's a there here somewhere.

Unfortunately, because this was out before the election it's too politically expedient for Republicans to say, "The voters knew about this and didn't mind."

This is why the first actual qualifier for impeachment is an approval rating at least down to the low 30s/high 20s. There are already impeachable offenses, there just isn't a broad enough appetite for it among the electorate.

I think that the only real Russia/Trump "conspiracy" (in the sense that there is a single, coherent plot) is the obvious: Trump and/or the people around him had some amount of complicity in the Russian intervention in our election. That's probably true, and it's a powerful narrative IMO.

But the reason that Democrats have failed to lay out any narrative beyond that is because the actual story does just as much damage to the neoliberal Dems' view of the world as it does to the Republicans. Putin has engaged in maybe the greatest campaign of wealth extraction in human history, and the result is that him and his cronies are quite possibly the richest people on the planet. Various Americans have noticed this and they want in.

Democratic talking heads are hinting vaguely at the word treason while knowing that Trump & Co. have no real interest in subverting American interests to the benefit of Russia per se. The reality is not that Trump's people care about Russia, it's that they don't care about the United States. They care about capital, and there's capital in Russia. Democrats can't really hit this point too hard, because they are susceptible to the same line of attack. They can't openly condemn the willingness of Trump's people to do business with the Russians who are openly looting their country, because a cursory examination would reveal that they do the same.

I feel like the left's eye-rolling directed toward this "scandal" is a missed opportunity. The Greenwalds of the world are focusing on the fact that Dems are overreaching, but ignoring the chance to provide the leftist/Marxist explanation of all this: this is what capitalism looks like. There is no loyalty among capitalist elites to country, because to capitalist elites there are no countries. Country is for the rest of us. The oligarchs in America aren't cooperating with the oligarchs in Russia to help Russia -- neither party even cares about "Russia" in and of itself. They all pledge allegiance to the same flag.

Chris Steele's report said Trump's attorney Cohen arranged to pay the DNC hackers, which is definitely criminal

I know I am an extreme outlier in terms of the history of Wikileaks as I had a problem with their actions and motives from the beginning. While we certainly learned important stuff from the early days/Snowden era, it is painfully obvious in hindsight that Russia has benefited tremendously from Wikileaks from the very beginning. I have no doubt they have played a role in Wikileaks since Wikileaks came into existence. Russia benefited a great deal when the western world security organizations were mired in scandal and loss of credibility.

Russia benefited directly from everything Wikileaks has done. I don't know what other way to frame Wikileaks and Assange than having been a tool of the Russians from its very inception.

It's a mistake to think that Greenwald stands for anything.

He definitely stands for something, I'm just not sure what exactly. Definitely not straight journalism, love him or hate him you can't seriously deny this.

Yeah this can't be ignored as people bandy about if there is anything there. And it's not just lying by one person but many person. And on top of that the sheer volume of people associated with Trump who have met with Russians and have Russian ties go way beyond statistical insignificance.

So we have a rate of contact and association with Russian actors which is 1000% PLUS greater than you would find in any normal, innocent set of circumstances and you have people lying about these connections over and over again.

If we can get hard proof of this that would be an extremely strong line of attack for the 2018 midterms.

Yeah except trump also met with the ambassador and seemed to have forgotten about it and denied it.

Not where this new found desire has come from to minimize the Russian stuff. Are people thinking because stuff have not exploded in 40 days that there might not be anything there? This stuff takes time and I think people are bailing early for no visible good reason.

Real reporting is not blogging where you get a thought and tweet it out ten seconds later.