I'm very happy to work at a job where expressing any political opinions at work would be considered very rude, and where I'm expected not to express any political opinions publicly through social media. It's just so nice not to have that division with anyone in my life. I mean, I'd never express a political opinion on facebook anyway, but this way I have an official reason why I actually can't.

John McCain is going to say something scathing about how awful all of this is before falling in line with everyone else and doing absolutely nothing. What a maverick!

Or in Twitterese:

#NeverTrump #WithFewExceptions

Guaranteed!

PredictIt


Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2017?
.68 cents

Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2018?
.55

Michael Moore has promised his new film will end the Trump Presidency:

Michael Moore: Fahrenheit 11/9 to dissolve Trump presidency

I think he's doing a good job of it all by himself Michael.

I'm finishing up a book on the end of the Roman Republic, and it's amazing how many parallels my mind keeps forming between what's going on in the US right now and what happened in Rome in the last century of the BCs. The amount of 'formerly unthinkable acts' that are committed by people in power that then go on to become the norm...

I think Trump is a life-long buffoon who, judging him solely on what he says and is quoted as saying since becoming president, appears to be mentally infirm if nothing else. The real danger is the precedents being set here in his presidency, IMO.

Trump has to be Sulla - or maybe Crassus.

McCain, at IRI dinner panel being moderated by Schiefer, said the Trump scandals have become nearly "Watergate-size," per attendee.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 17, 2017

Also said he was against a special prosecutor, per the attendee.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 17, 2017

+1 I just finished the historical fiction book Roma and kept bothering my wife with comparisons

I think Crassus is a really good comparison. 2017 Trump aligns pretty well with Crassus around the time he got Syria and looked towards Parthia...

Twitter bots out in full force right now. #ComeyMemo

This gem from Rush Limbaugh is getting a ton of play on my FB feed:


So...it's the reporting of vague secret information handed off to a potential adversary in the region that is the threat to Americans, not the actual secret information that might get Americans or allied assets killed.

It's shit like this that got covert death squads dispatched to end Tom Clancy. That's the real crime here.

Straight talk express is coming!

I'm not a gambler at all, so can you explain this?

I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

He tweeted this yesterday, then never finished his thought.

Also, why do the Russians have a transcript of his meeting with Lavrov in the oval office, but we don't?

PredictIt works like a stock market with Yes or No shares for each question. The prices I posted are for the yes shares. So it costs .68 cents for each share of "Will Donald Trump be president at year-end 2017?". If 2017 passes and Trump is still president, then every share you own is now worth $1. If he resigns before then, then all shares you own are worth 0$.

In effect, it works like a percentage. PredictIt users are predicting that there's only a 68% chance Trump is still President by the end of the year.

I think that the most revealing thing about the Comey memos about his meetings with Trump will be how many times he scrawled "Holy Shit, this fucking guy" in the margins.

dola:

And I am still in the Trump isn't going anywhere camp. But I have started to notice some folks in the right wing and mainstream media start the preliminary stages of distancing Pence from the administration. I don't think that these folks have any inside information. But I do think that it shows that they are at least starting to consider Trump leaving as a possibility.

So the walk back this morning is that this is just the way Trump talks. He wasn't seriously asking for the investigation to be dropped. That's fine and all, but I'm getting so confused about when I'm supposed to take him seriously and when I'm supposed to take him literally. And now when I'm not supposed to do either.

maybe he should stop joking around and actually be a President

As implausible as this is, it would at least be an answer to the one memo they know exists.

But Comey clearly kept lots and lots of notes. The WH needs to shut up because their ad hoc defenses will end up contradicting whatever other evidence is out there. They need to wait and see what else is there before formulating a response.

Saying only what he means would help.

Thanks - so basically wager $.68 to win $1. I couldn't tell if it was that or wager $1 to win $.68.

How easy is it to hack into Mar-a-Lago? SUPER EASY.

We went there and tested it.

Our story, with @gizmodo.

https://t.co/UWGKY6XhQs pic.twitter.com/nm0820wB2G

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 17, 2017

He would have to figure that out first, though. He doesn't have time for that, that's Pence's job. :banghead:

Kind of. It's kind of like craps tables that say 6 to 1 vs ones that say 6 for 1.

You are wagering $0.68 to get $1 if he resigns/impeached. So you are winning $0.32.

I had an interesting conversation last night with a friend who I consider a conservative Republican. He was saying at this point it might be better for the party to get Trump out and move on quickly to Pence to get something done before 2018 and get this behind them. I found that an interesting idea although we both knew it would never happen.

The opposite. You're wagering .68 to get $1 if he is still President at the beginning of 2018.

If Pence is your guy, I'm not sure whether you just try to survive midterms and then move on trump so Pence can serve 2 years and 2 full terms. Or if you just move on Trump immediately-ish and hope that the voters are angry about something else in a year and a half when you gotta face them.

Yes. I'm sure that Mike Pence can win 2 presidential elections.

The joking would be more believable if Trump hadn't first asked Pence and Sessions to leave the room.

Deputy AG appoints Robert Mueller to lead Special Counsel of Russia investigation.

I've absolutely had the same thought, from the other side. There's no point in the impeachment process that takes the presidency out of Republican hands, and getting rid of Trump would give the GOP a fine excuse to throw away all of Trump's baggage and re-start passing all the same legislation again, with a new face, and a refined chance of connecting to their base. At this point the best thing that could happen from a liberal standpoint is keeping the most incompetent and ineffective option in power for as long as possible.

So even after all this, team politics is still the most important thing? Is there any line that Trump could cross that would change that?

I know I've had this argument a million times here, pre-trump, where Dems got giddy when the worst Republicans won elections. I don't get it. This isn't a text sim, real lives are as stake. Have we learned nothing? Maybe Dems can double down and we can get an even crazier Republican elected in 2020.

Edit: And I think we've learned that having a bad and/or unpopular president or other elected official doesn't necessarily mean smooth sailing for the other side forever. If you're a liberal, far-right politicians doing crazy shit should no bet a good thing. If you're a liberal or a conservative, a reckless incompetent president should not be a good thing. Any Dems or further-left liberals who are giddy about the Trump administration (and I've heard very little of that sentiment until this post) are as big a danger as Trump going forward.

Dems need to run on something instead of "We're not as awful as them."

While maybe true, it doesn't get people energized.

I don't particularly think of that as team politics (especially since I don't vote Dem), as I imagine that anyone-but-Trump would actually be better at effective legislation at this point, whereas Trump is seemingly building up resentment and resistance that is starting to cross party lines. The Russia stuff certainly crosses my line of acceptable presidential behavior, but it's not going to affect my daily life relative to shit like Iowa's GOP douchebags reducing wages by 30%.

I completely disagree. Trump is a threat to the entire world in this position. Yes, with Pence (or Hatch or wherever your currently conspiracy theory may have us ending up) perhaps the right pushes through some things from an agenda that the left dislikes, probably even some social shit that I'd find reprehensible. But no way am I willing to risk the damage that can come from Trump staying in office for a full 4 years against that.

Fair enough. Personally, I feel like Trump is much more likely to pass something progressive, either accidentally or out of spite, than anybody else wearing an R. Regarding the idea of world conflict I feel like Trump has shown plenty of evidence that he's a bully, and while I don't particularly like that personality trait, I do think that even the stupidest bully has an almost preternatural ability to know who and when he should be bullying, and as such he will always pick fights that he can win decisively, and will kiss up to anyone that poses any kind of threat, and he's not as entirely loose a cannon as folks (or even himself) would have us believe.

Trump, like the tea party before him, create the momentum that far-right conservatives use to roll into power at the state and local level. And from your perspective, isn't that a good thing, under this theory that the worst the right gets, the better? Why aren't these Iowa GOP douchebags a part of that same grand plan?

Or would it be better for everyone to have reasonable, intelligent, responsible conservatives in power, who, even if you disagreed with them, were capable of grown-up discourse and compromise in matters of governance, and who gave more voters real choices come election day?

Trump would have to have someone in the Executive Branch that knows how to write and push a bill to accidentally pass anything. He doesn't. Remember his first budget that cut everything except military and border control? They passed the stopgap thing because they didn't have time to rewrite his fantasies.

The problem Pence would have is that the GOP agenda is terrifically unpopular. The ACHA isn't as extreme as many of them would like and it's polling around 30%. If Trump weren't so damned incompetent and dangerous he'd probably be more likely to win reelection than would Pence. Trump figured out that a whole lot of GOP voters want government benefits, as long as they don't go to THOSE people.

My feelings aren't based any kind of grand plan or consistent theory, they're very particular to Trump, and in your analysis of my assumed plan you've substituted 'worst' for 'ineffective and incompetent', which is the exact opposite of what I expressed. For whatever it's worth, I think you're filtering my words through assumptions that I'm a Dem who is just waiting for his team to get their next shot (which is an easy assumption to make these days), whereas I identify more as a disenfranchised liberal whose team doesn't even exist and will never get its shot. At this point my political choice always comes down to the person least likely to fuck me & my concerns, which seems to be entirely based on the individual in question, rather than the two major party lines.


Sure? I honestly feel like I've been waiting my entire life for a real liberal political choice, so discussing offering GoP constituents better options to push the long-established conservative agenda feels completely ridiculous to me, but I can totally understand how even career politicians could seem preferable to this kind of chaos.

...and with that said, I maintain my personal feelings, but have now made far too many posts verging on defending Trump than I am comfortable with. I don't think I've got it all figured out, or that anybody else should share my feelings, I'm just more frightened of the alternative unknown at this moment.

WH counsel was notified as soon as order naming Mueller was signed I'm told. Not sooner. Less than one hour notice, official estimates

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 17, 2017

It's almost more interesting that Sessions was informed after Rosenstein signed Mueller order.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 17, 2017

Someone doesn't seem to be happy about being used as the justification for Comey's firing.

From last summer, the GOP Majority leader on tape saying he believes the Russians pay Trump:


Clearly someone needs to ask if he stills believes that.

He said it was just a joke.

You know, the kind of joke a family member tells before you warn everyone present that it doesn't leave this room.

Based on what I have read recently from the fans of both teams ...


Yes.


No, there is not


Finally, no.

Which part? The paying or the family?

Actually they said it never happened. Then they said it was a joke after the Post said they had it on tape.

I'd maybe buy the joke excuse if they didn't mention Rohrabacher who I think everyone knows has been getting paid by Russians for some time.