DogofWar1

Yup. This mostly holds for all necessities, if we assume that a society *should* have a safety net for necessities. And our social contract mostly does that (we keep trying to avoid writing it entirely into the social contract but we keep avoiding striking it out of there too, so it's in there but unofficially). "It takes a village" is a statement about resource allocation and non-profitability.

I think adding Trump to the equation of what happened yesterday is making this overly complicated. Dirty little secret is this: the GOP is fine letting Obamacare sit, and NOT fail. I think the smart ones in the GOP have figured something very important out; conservative principles cannot improve healthcare solutions in the United States. Can't do it. Good healthcare is about providing care. Good business is about making profit. Can't do both. They know this. It's why they can't actually make a damn bill after all these years. So the GOP has 2 goals on healthcare: 1. Get credit 2. Don't let Dems get credit They've spent a lot of time on #2, but now they have a chance to try on #1, but they know anything they pass will ultimately get worse results if they try to incorporate conservative principles into it. So the moderates flee the conservative bill, as they did yesterday. Conservatives will flee a moderate bill with some non-conservative ideas that actually could improve results. And nothing will get done. And the GOPers who know that #1 is impossible with conservative ideas incorporated will be fine with that. It gives them political cover, so that they don't have to face down angry family of dead people 4 years after TrumpRyanGOPcare passes, who would have lived under Obamacare. Looks bad. Is bad. They don't want it.

Why do I get the feeling that these guys are going to perjure themselves to Congress but that they will try to get off freely via Nunes refusing to yield to a special prosecutor? This is a dog and pony show, and they're hoping their plausible deniability holds up long enough for them to dismantle the investigation and then basically be immune from all legal consequences for all time.

I wonder if now that repeal/replace is tabled for the foreseeable future, GOP controlled states who haven't expanded medicaid will do so. Lots of the poorer ACA results stem from states who didn't take expanded medicaid, so one might expect holdout states to improve results if they take the expansion. This would be helpful for state GOPers, since they can get better healthcare results during their terms while conveniently not telling people it is happening through the ACA.

Oh well then it's a good thing that the Congress just allowed ISPs to sell browsing information to the highest bidder. Someone buy those phones' info and hand it straight to Schiff.

I suspect the line of succession would still be in place, but with perhaps some added scrutiny at each rung. Of course, once it hits Ryan, odds are it would stop there, which is a benefit of the line of succession having two Congressmen in it at 3 and 4; no need to scrap everything if the Administration is compromised, Ryan could, hypothetically, be clean enough to take the office and could clean house. This is also assuming any collaborators in Trump's admin are also indicted and outed, making Ryan's job somwhat easier.

How many dead Russian nationals are we up to now? At least 10 I think. Probably more. Was at 6 or 7 before recent deaths/killings, and I think there are at least 3 of those.

Nunes outed himself as a mole and traitor in the stupidest possible way. He very publicly ran to tell the Donald about all the info FBI had on him and his associates so they could hide whatever bodies are left to hide while undoubtedly bracing for indictment impacts. Nunes is basically Peter Pettigrew but, like, a much ****tier person.

So we were at and frankly beyond NEXT LEVEL stupid before, but this is EVEN BEYOND! Trump is Mr. Brexit, right? He loves to claim that. He's got a government in Britain that is tailor made to his crazy ideology. And he is actively pissing them off. Trump has been previously compared to a 5 year old. That's a huge insult to 5 year olds. 5 year olds are obnoxious little ****s 99% of the time, but they at least have the good sense to be tribal and stick with their allies and friends. Trump can't even do that. He's willfully self destructive to the point of absurdity. I mean, jeebus, you're trying to establish a white nationalist western order stretching from Alaska to Kamchatka, the long way, and you keep. Actively. Pissing. Off. The. Brits! They are the first east-of-the-Atlantic link in the chain you moron! It makes NO sense unless you are actively trying to destabilize your own little new world order alliance. Graaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

YEAH OKAY! This isn't concerning, he's definitely not advocating anything nefarious.

This strikes me as a vicious cycle. Step 1: Get profiled because of name and detained. Step 2: Testify about profiling. Step 3: Get profiled AGAIN on the way home from testifying. Step 4: Need to testify AGAIN Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until America is great again.

I will urge everyone to be skeptical of the Khizr Khan story. This is not to say it isn't real, but my understanding is that from an evidentiary standpoint it has only a single source and no comment from the Khans themselves. The statement allegedly from the Khans came 2nd hand from the event organizers. If the story is true, it is terrible, but let's be cautious until we have multiple source confirmation.

Investigations take time. If/when something drops officially, it will be thorough, not tidbits. Same thing with Clinton emails, when Comey finally commented officially last year, it was based on the investigation being basically done. Not to mention, since this is coming from a foreign government handing things over to the US, leaks could come from anywhere along that line, may not be IC dropping tidbits, but foreign IC that's handing it off.

Defending and upholding the Constitution.

To expand on above, Roger Stone is having a very frustrating day. I'm spoilering it because of language. He was not happy.

Most. People. Aren't. Saying. That. Because. That's. Not. The. Allegation. We've been over this. The allegation is not that Trump and the Russians colluded to rig the election.* The allegation is that Trump is in debt up to his eyeballs to Russian oligarchs backed by Putin and as such he basically will do what they ask of him so that his business empire doesn't get toppled by Putin ordering his people to divest from Trump. Putin is attempting to dictate US policy through a blackmailed Trump, which requires lots of back-channels and shady contacts via surrogates with Russians. Either you've totally failed to keep up in this matter and are stuck on "fringe left allegations from November 9" or you're purposefully still trying to get people to allege rigging so you can say that alleging rigging is ridiculous as a deflection from the actual allegations. *The Russians certainly pushed pro-Trump propaganda, but propaganda is only as effective on elections as the people allow it to be. It was very effective in this case, but that doesn't quite hit "rigging."

Rig, no. The Russians pushed for Trump but our own populace stupidly fell for it. If successfully running propaganda is rigging, then yes, Russia rigged it, but I suspect there'd be pushback in using that definition. But the "are you gonna allege they rigged" thing is either old news or a strawman, new info came to light months ago that leads to new allegations. What's left to prove is that Trump owes a lot of Russian oligarchs a lot of money, and that he is actively promoting pro-Kremlin policies here at home at their behest (which ultimately is at Putin's behest). We went from "Democrats aren't tough enough on Russia" in 2012 to "Yeah, sure, they can have that chunk of Ukraine, it's fiiiiiiiine" in 2016. All the while, it turns out all these Trump staffers and surrogates are meeting with the Russian ambassador, and that's to say nothing of the overseas meetings with oligarchs that a bunch of people 1 degree of separation from Trump (Kushner, his sons, etc.) had. Oh and when asked about it no one can get their story straight. Flynn couldn't, Sessions can't, and now everyone is tripping over themselves as to whether Trump directly ordered the softening of the Russian-Ukraine piece of the GOP platform or not. That's kind of an important thing to get straightened out, y'know. Oh, and Trump is violating the emoluments clause all over the place 24/7. Not just Russian stuff, but from everywhere.

I mean, I'm down with a Schumer and Pelosi investigation if Trump is cool with an investigation into him and his people. The first two will take all of 20 minutes, pulling logs of the meetings from records. The last one might be a doozy tho.

Oh come on, first Trump basically quotes Russian propaganda and now Russia is quoting Trump propaganda. Kremlin is having wayyyyyyyyyy too much fun with this.

Yeah...screw these guys. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger Cute little film. Too bad profits uber alles.

I'm thinking Ivanka or Eric or Donald Jr. They're all very smart, the smartest, and very independent. Totally independent. Ivanka started her own business at 13, totally separate from Trump, that's how independent she is.

Yes. Next question.

That has definitely been alleged, and there's enough smoke to at least warrant a basic investigation (hence why FBI apparently has 3 of them). This guy: https://twitter.com/Khanoisseur has been looking into connections of Trump and people close to Trump with Russians/others. The short summation? It is likely that Trump, Kushner, and a variety of others owe Russian oligarchs (that is, people Putin allows to be rich because they help him) and other foreign individuals tons and tons of money. The hypothetical tie in? The whole Russia situation, Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, etc., is Trump and Co's creditors figuring out ways to collect.

They should form a Triumvirate. But no big war over control of Rome this time.

This ****ing guy. FBI won't bow to Trump on killing stories on Russian connection, so Trump immediately attacks them. Seriously. This. Guy.