The Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller Wednesday as a special counsel to oversee the federal investigation into allegations that Russia and Donald Trump's campaign collaborated to influence the 2016 presidential election, giving Mueller sweeping powers and the authority to prosecute any crimes uncovered in the probe.Less than 120 days into the Trump Administration and a special prosecutor has been appointed to do an investigation.
That has to be some sort of land speed record. Nixon was about 120 days into his second term when Archibald Cox was appointed. Bill Clinton had been in about 19 months when Kenn Starr was appointed.
So Trump is pretty damn precocious.
Somebody ought to call the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records.
There has never been this psychotic level of hate before, nor have the Dems been so rules by Alinsky. Prior to this, they did what the rest of us did during Obama's term. dealt with it, kept his greater excesses contained and waited for a new election to change things. Not so much this time.
ReplyDeletePlus, of course the Media hates him too, and they trumpet the DNC message loudly, repeating the MemeoftheDay over and over.
I think this would happen to anyone who wasn't the chosen of the DNC and the Media, really.
B: Gingrich, Newton Leroy, Gopac. DeMint James, Caucus Room conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteThey are so far being very polite to president four-year-old compared to the previous two Democratic presidents, who didn't just have people saying mean things about the stupid things they did, but had actual conspiracies of Republicans in government actively trying to take down their presidencies. Openly. Admitted to in the media.
The obsessive, hysterical hate shown by the Republicans toward both Bill Clinton and especially Barack Obama, continues to this very day, and over here in reality land, neither of those presidents did anything like the utter lame dysfunction president four-year-old displays now on a daily basis. Depending, of course, upon whether or not you are inclined to believe the mountain of slander and lies thrown at them by Republicans who were in open admission of their desire to destroy their presidencies the whole time.
I admit that I don't like the guy. That in no way changes the utterly incompetent behavior of president four-year-old.
I am not happy that he is this lame, as it is damaging the country, and I still kinda like the country.
Even though I disagree with what he is trying to do, I would rather see him sane and competent (or even relatively so, like say, George W. Bush was) than the bumbling, dangerous, trainwreck he actually is. That is our system of government, you win sometimes and you lose sometimes, but whichever happens someone has to govern all of the time, and he's not doing that.
-Doug in Oakland
See, but with the collusion of the media, they are crippling him, but yet they can't prove anything, so they are damaging the country, really. I'm all for the opposition party trying to find some way to take down their enemy. It's all good. *IF THEY HAVE ANYTHING*. But they don't, haven't and apparently can't find anything that is real.
ReplyDeleteTHis endless stream of lies, innuendo unproven accusations and and childish stuff that they know won't get him gone is irritating and wasteful and harmful to the country. Even if they DID find something, this endless stream of bullshit that they hvae been tossing out since November might well make the rest of us disbelieve 'em because they "cried wolf" too many times.
And, BTW, if they WERE to get him gone, Remember: Hillary still won't be president. Instead, you'll have Pence.
OK, so having lived the Clinton Years, I can promise you that the media was chasing William Jefferson with as much, if not more, relish than is currently shown toward Donnie. So add that lie to the one Donnie likes to trumpet about being attacked more than any other President or how much they are getting done, and you have CM's remarkable achievement. The precociousness of the Don is clear when you realize he's doing this with a friendly Congress.
ReplyDeleteNow, the they don't have anything real argument is about to get test driven. I expect that, unfortunately for the Republic, grounds for impeachment will be rather easily found. The coronation of President Pence, a fever dream of the right, is not likely to be the assured thing that they envision. Pence's behavior in this fiasco isn't likely to impress Congress and the investigators, which will lead to some interesting calculus. If a shellacking at the polls looks in the works for 2018, the Republican "brain trust" would have to consider moving rapidly to install McConnell or Ryan, or run the risk of having to vote to acquit Pence in order to maintain the Presidency.
The afore mentioned ideas are all speculative, based upon my opinions, and constitute a possible example of future events. You can whistle past the graveyard all you want, but sometching is sure as hell burning behind that fence.
B, I gather that you hae forgotten that, on the evening of January 20, 2009, the GOP congressional leadership decided on total obstruction as their policy. McConnell declared, in the depths of the worst recession in seventy years, that their number-one priority was to make Obama a one-term president.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you've forgotten the utter level of hatred, contempt, racism, xenophobia and baseless conspiracy theories that the right-wing media directed at Obama.
You think that my side of the aisle is engaging in psychotic hatred? I think your side is engaging in willful blindness.
B, the True Believer. Excellent piece in the Times about how the GOP TB is more ardent and zealous than the Dem TB:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/opinion/republicans-trump-midterms-tea-party-edsall.html
See also this:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/republicans-really-really-hate-it-when-democrat-white-house
I have long said that reason is but the window dressing for what's actually in the store. In almost all case, it is used more to reinforce bias than to challenge it.
I wonder if, having pretty much lost the battle for What is Right. Proper, Righteous and Perfect (in the country's tolerance of the LGBTQ community, support for the poor and handicapped, laws against child labor/for the 40 hour work week and other such bed-wetting pinko perversions), the Right hasn't also decided that facts and reality are BS too, thus the advent of their assertions of Fake News.
Sorry B, you're a dinosaur...and dreadfully unhappy as well. Why not join us in enjoying the diversity of the world?
Yellow Card, Stewart. You could easily have made the same points without personal slurs.
ReplyDeleteStewart: Perhaps I am a dinosaur. But the things I believe in made the US the greatest country in the world, one that people tried their best to get to for the opportunity and freedoms it offered.
ReplyDeleteBy some folks views, Venezuela was the progressive paradise....what all the cool, smart kids thought was a good idea. Now the country is shit and they can't even feed themselves. Yet it is what the "Progressives" thought was right.
The farther this country gets from what it was, the lesser we become.
Diversity? Yeah, how's that working in Germany and Sweden and Denmark? France? They "embraced diversity". Soon the French and the Germans will have to either give up their country or toss the invaders out.
Insult me all you care to. Doesn't change the fact that your kind weakens the country rather than make it better. No one objects to the laws you posted, except in your own mind. ("in the country's tolerance of the LGBTQ community, support for the poor and handicapped, laws against child labor/for the 40 hour work week and other such bed-wetting pinko perversions". What we object to is SPECIAL priviledges for LBGTQ, freebies for the "poor" when they refuse top try to work or learn a trade....Not sure where you are coming from with the laws for cild labor, that's been over for a hundred years or so......
I don't object to honest debate, but it has to be based in reality and with decency. You seem to be lacking...
Be nice, I'll gladly debate. Be nasty like above and I'll ignore you....Why are so many progressives lacing in manners?
B: Perhaps it has something to do with being reviled as traitors and America hating surrender monkeys by the right for the last quarter century as they built a party full of bigots against our loudest advice and predictions that this would happen some day.
ReplyDeleteNow it has happened, just like we said it would, and many of us, especially the ones looking down the barrel of losing our health insurance (and our children's health insurance) and public education, and what weak-tea regulations we managed to get in place after the financial disaster of 2008 destroyed the finances of millions of citizens, and the regulations that make the air and water what they are now instead of what they were in the seventies, and on and on have had just about enough of trying to be polite to those who are actively trying to kill us.
That could be why.
-Doug in Oakland
Nah, B., the Republican Party is just fine with child labor. We have politicians suggesting poor kids should sweep the cafeteria in exchange for their lunch, for God's sake. As it currently stands, each week 25% of children go hungry at some point due to food insecurity. The summer is the worst, those kids know there's no school meals all summer and dread it. Some of our local food banks and pantries work a program to get lunches to food insecure kids out of school. But remember those food assistance cuts that the Republicans pushed through? They said the private secotor would "make it up". The problem is the private sector charity segment in total is about the amount they cut the food programs. Some schools are now making breakfast and lunch free for all kids, and the results are looking good, but you can bet your bottom dollar that McConnell and Ryan oppose such programs!
ReplyDeleteThe biggest difference in world views is I expose a society that attempts to maintain a certain minimum amount of care for the less fortunate, where your side appears to support the Darwinian approach of if the kids chose the wrong parents, so be it. Remember, that great America you talk about was founded on the New Deal, which saved the country from the excesses of unfettered capitalism and the Great Depression. Plus, of course, a nice big war to pump up demand as the recovery rambled on...is that why Donnie is egging on the North Koreans, a war to boost the economy (and incidentally destroy a large swath of foreign production capacity)?
I call bullshit on the 25% of kids are starving in the summer. And, again, we disagree that Healthcare for free is a right and a priviledge.
ReplyDeleteAnd I sincerely doubt that anyone wants the air and water to go to the levels of pollution that were in the 70's. But at some point one has to accept that people pollute. Ferinstance, sewer plants are cleaner discharge water than the rivers they put that water into.
You use a lot of hyperbole, and claim that my kind want to kill all the poor and poison the earth (but you, at leat, generally are polit). But really, you hyperbole is incorrect. We just don't want to give more and more and more to people for free. We want to have out industry and still be able to make things, and mot alwyss be thwarted by the EPA. We want to be able to build things without having to prove that some worm won't lose his home.
ANd no, we don't want child labor. And no, the "New deal" wasn;t what made America great, but the industrious people who worked and built their lives with labor and education. 'Twasnt the folks who refused to work and simply absorbed the labor of the workers in benefits.
B., saying the results of multiple studies is "bullshit", just because you don't like it, isn't an answer. Show me some factual counter data on hunger. Sorry if some facts bother your, inconvenience your position or appear alien to your world, but "dat's da facts, jack!".
ReplyDeleteAs for the Ayn Rand maker crap, the "EPA is strangling business" lines, the "endangered species act" is ruining the US lies and such, well that's one way to the 1890"s robber baron era again.
The "America" that the doddering MAGA crowd wants back is the 1950's-1960's America with a vibrant (and white) middle class, driven by the "GI Bill" (socialism, right?), the "New Deal" (Liberal wealth redistribution), strong Unions (perennial Republican boogieman) and built on the backs of Blacks and Hispanics. When the Blacks and Hispanics started moving free of the ghettos and into the middle class, St. Richard and St. Ronnie tried to put the genie back in the bottle with the "War on Drugs", which was just an expansion of the "War on Weed/Reefer (or, in reality, the Bllack man) from the 20's to the 40's..
Why are so many progressives lacing in manners?
ReplyDeleteYeah, because conservatives are so nice and kind and polite in their debates with liberals. {/sarcasm}
The "America" that the doddering MAGA crowd wants back is the 1950's-1960's America with a vibrant (and white) middle class, driven by the "GI Bill" (socialism, right?), the "New Deal" (Liberal wealth redistribution), strong Unions (perennial Republican boogieman) and built on the backs of Blacks and Hispanics.
ReplyDeleteAnd when the top tax bracket was 90%.
B: 45,000 citizens used to die each year because they lacked health insurance before the ACA. That's not hyperbole, that's a Vietnam war every 15 months. That's what they are currently trying to do again. I probably won't be one of the 45,000 for a while, but I am disabled and get my health insurance from Medicare and MediCal, both programs Paul Ryan has been dreaming of eliminating since he was in college.
ReplyDeleteYes, whether they will admit it or not, what they are trying to do is kill me. I am fully sick of being nice to them, or anyone defending them.
And go ahead and tell the folks who live downstream from a newly deregulated coal mine that the water is better now than in the seventies. My dad worked for the Forest Service for thirty years, and I saw first hand what your "industry" did to the Six Rivers and Trinity National Forests. I remember the year they declared the Trinity river "dead" because the fish couldn't spawn in it any more, and how the salmon fleet out of Humboldt Bay collapsed as a result. There's an industry that hated the EPA and died because doing so was dumb. Except for some of the older guys, who recognized that there were cycles over time that were being affected by the stream destruction of the timber industry, they always said that hard times were coming over it.
You seem to see regulations as nothing more than useless ideological impediments to the working of commerce, but I have seen how dumb that commerce can be when left to its own devices and would like to do something a little smarter, so maybe it might last a little longer.
-Doug in Oakland