Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[broncofan]

The relevant stuff is at the 7 minute mark.

[Stavros]

In spite of the audience applause I don't see Republicans agreeing to a special prosecutor, they are more likely to back Trump if he decides to arrest the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post and shut down those newspapers, given that they are the 'enemy of the American people'. Having already refused those papers entry to an informal briefing with Calamity Sean, President Trump has said papers should 'name their sources' on the same day Reince Prebus refused to name a source concerning allegations of the Trump team's talks with Russian government officials. Journalists in the past have gone to prison to protect their sources, so it would not be the first time. To what extent the Second Amendment has been violated I do not know, presumably the Trump team will issue legal requirements that the Media provide sources for all its stories, though surely this would also mean the phoney claims reported by Trump and Breitbart would also be subject to that law, so it could all just be the usual rhetorical crap that flows from the White House these days.

[broncofan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/u...democrats.html

At his confirmation hearing Sessions said he did not have contact with the Russians. He apparently did talk to Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in September. It's not clear in what capacity he spoke to Kislyak or what they spoke about. I think given the context of his comments it might not be perjury if he was not speaking to him as a Trump surrogate but rather as a member of senate armed services committee, although strictly speaking, what he said was false.

Anyhow, right now there is pressure on him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. The leverage of him potentially perjuring himself might lead to a compromise position; appointment of a special prosecutor and mute the calls for him to resign as attorney general altogether.

[Stavros]

At his confirmation hearing Sessions said he did not have contact with the Russians. He apparently did talk to Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in September. It's not clear in what capacity he spoke to Kislyak or what they spoke about. I think given the context of his comments it might not be perjury if he was not speaking to him as a Trump surrogate but rather as a member of senate armed services committee, although strictly speaking, what he said was false.
Anyhow, right now there is pressure on him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. The leverage of him potentially perjuring himself might lead to a compromise position; appointment of a special prosecutor and mute the calls for him to resign as attorney general altogether.

Really Broncofan? The Greeks called it sophistry, using words to say more, or less than what they mean. Did Sessions meet the Russian ambassador twice in 2016? Yes. It is as simple as that. To argue he met the Ambassador in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee or when visiting with a delegation from the Heritage Foundation does not obscure the fact that yep, he did meet the Russian ambassador. When asked at his confirmation hearings Sessions could easily have said yes, and explained the context of the meetings but he decided to tell lies, probably because Congress is a swamp that he and Donald Trump are clearing out, or have decided is irrelevant as Trump rules by Executive Order. Not one other member of the Armed Services Committee has ever had a meeting with the Russian Ambassador, whereas members of the Foreign Relations Committee have -give that a thought for a moment. But here you are dealing with the Government's senior lawyer, and he doesn't see the problem.

George W Bush's chief ethics lawyer has said Jeff Sessions' denial he had contact with a Russian ambassador during the Presidential campaign was "a good way to go to jail".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7607616.html

Lock him up? Or are we back to the central theme of the Trump Presidency -'We can do what we want, and say what we want because we don't care what you think about it'.

[trish]

Sessions was all for impeaching a standing president for lying to Congess - and that was just about a blow job, not working with the Russians to influence an American election and agreeing to turn a blind eye toward the Russian takeover of Ukraine.

[Stavros]

There was an interesting take on the Trump-Russia situation on last night's edition of the BBC-2 programme Newsnight.
A Russian analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (a think-tank for the UK military) argued that Russian strategy in place is to undermine liberal democracy -much as this was the strategy during the Cold War- but whereas in the past the USSR could use existing Communist Parties to get its message across, Russia under Putin has identified alt-right, nationalist and anti-globalization parties as its next best friend, with the aim to break down large trading blocs like the EU and the free flow of capital, goods and services associated with globalization, and return the world to a network of individual nation-states which would restore Russia's status as a major power. Globalization (this is my take) has exposed Russia as a large state with rich resources but weak markets, a fact Putin cannot change in the current set-up. Crucially, Russia had not been seen as a major power in recent years. In this context, Trump is music to Russian ears because they share the same goals of economic nationalism.
However, the Russian became engaged in the US election as they have in others, because they expected Hillary Clinton to win, thus most of their interventions were not so much intended to boost the Trump campaign but oriented to smearing Clinton's reputation, with the assumption that after the election she would not be able to shake off Wikileaks and any other revelations the Russians might have thereby weakening US democracy from within. The irony is that Trump is less hostile than Clinton, but they don't really know what to do with him, and so far has not won their favour with the proposed military build-up. The analyst thinks Trump may not lift sanctions in the near future.
So do they have dirt on Trump? The view was that Hotels in Russia have long been used by the regime to spy on, and implicate foreign dignitaries in scandals, as they are ideal locations in which to practice the dark arts, and while we don't know if they do have anything scandalous it is tempting for some to think they do, and let's face it, not much happens in Russia with people like Trump that is not recorded, it is that kind of a country.

My own view is that Trump evidently wanted in on the lucrative hotel scene in Russia, particularly Moscow which has a deficit of good hotels, and this began as early as the 1980s when Gorbachev became General Secretary; apart from a marketing adventure with Trump Vodka he doesn't seem to have been very successful in Russia, the problem is like many before and since, he was dazzled and overwhelmed in the 1990s by the fabulous wealth accrued by the Oligarchs, many of whom splash the cash with gay abandon, and wanted in on that river of riches, so the 'scandal' may lie in the associations he has had with individual Russians rather than the Government, much as Paul Manafort had dodgy dealings with the president of the Ukraine, in effect laundering Yanukovich's bribes. I could of course be wrong, but I think in time we may either find out, or just be treated to a drip-drip of names nobody outside Russia has heard of, all exposing Trump as the man we know anyway, doing deals in any way they come and go to enrich himself without much regard for the background of the people he is dealing with (his problem with Felix Sater in New York is an example of this).

[broncofan]

I'm not sure if this goes here but I've posted twice in the thought for the day section and I've now had a third thought. I look at Trump's incoherent, dangerous tweets and the more than one hundred thousand people who "like" them and wonder what is going on.

People who voted for Trump must not have thought he could make America great again but rather be harboring such a deep-seated loathing of other human beings that they would elect one of the most incompetent and corrupt members of their species to hold the most powerful office in this country.

Do they not see him tweet that Pelosi or Schumer should be investigated because they met with Russian officials at one point and see how incoherent that point is? Did Pelosi or Schumer run in elections where their opponents were hacked by the Russian government? Did they mislead Congress under oath about it? Why does he not know he cannot order investigations but that the Justice Department does it? Why can't he spell the word "tap"? Why is he tweeting about the Apprentice?

Trump supporters explain again what you like about him? Is it just the infliction of misery on others using this ignorant vessel?

[trish]

Donald’s supporters always claim that he says what he thinks; but I don’t believe it. He says all the nasty, stupid shit they say to each other and are too embarrassed to say outside their fetid little bubbles. His strategy to power has been to monopolize the media with so many idiocies that real newsworthy stories get shoved aside. It’s like a denial of service attack on our attentions. Look away.

[filghy2]

Given Trump's office has declined to clarify his remarks, the phone-tapping allegation is most likely based on something he saw in the right-wing media, just like the 3 million illegal voters and the 'something that happened in Sweden last night'. It was apparently mentioned in a recent Breitbart report. That's all it takes for something to be an accepted fact in the right-wing parallel universe. Most of the people liking his tweets probably exist in a bubble where they only choose to see or hear things that support their pre-conceptions.

[broncofan]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...o_be_like.html

The Gorsuch hearings have been interesting so far. I read that Franken made reference to a frozen trucker case in which Gorsuch issued a dissenting opinion. The opinion is in fact absurd. Gorsuch does not believe in something called Chevron deference. Under Chevron deference, an administrative agency is allowed to interpret a statute and a court will uphold its interpretation unless the agency's interpretation is arbitrary and capricious. Gorsuch believes that deferring to an agency's interpretation invades on the province of the judiciary and that judges should be able to decide whether their interpretations are correct from a neutral rather than deferential posture. This of course seems to undercut the entire purpose of having agencies, but nevermind, let's get to his wise decision.

A trucker was operating a trailer in subzero temperatures. The truck would not move with the trailer attached and its heater was not working. The trucker waited three hours for assistance before feeling his chest and legs go numb and then decided to abandon the trailer. There is a statute that protects workers who refuse to operate machinery for health and safety reasons. The agency decided in this case that the trucker's decision to drive away without the trailer was tantamount to a refusal to operate and he should be protected by the statute. Two judges agreed but Gorsuch, applying no deference to OSHA's interpretation of a health and safety statute, decided that by driving the truck away sans trailer, he was operating the machinery. Since he was operating machinery, he could not be covered by a statute that protected people who refuse to operate machinery for safety reasons.

My point is that more than an ideological conservative Gorsuch is a thoroughly unreasonable person. Somehow a man refusing to tow a trailer that stalled his truck in subzero temperatures is not covered by a statute that protects people who refuse to operate machinery for safety reasons.