[KaiserJeep]

I heartily agree, Populism is a good thing and provides something that the two party system does not: real choice.

But I have never been a registered D or R, and am distinctly anti-partisan.

Trump as a Populist can make real changes. The establishment candidate from either the D's or the R's can not. That Trump chose too assume the mantle of one of the two parties, rather than form a third party as did both Teddy R and Perot, reflects pragmatism - there was a talent vacuum in both parties, which will still be true in 2020, he has no real competition. But whoever runs as a Populist must oppose the incumbent establishment, which was at the time a Democrat named Obama, who had generated massive dissatisfaction - a perfect setting for a Populist to run as a member of the opposition party.

[Revi]

I heartily agree, Populism is a good thing and provides something that the two party system does not: real choice.

But I have never been a registered D or R, and am distinctly anti-partisan.

Trump as a Populist can make real changes. The establishment candidate from either the D's or the R's can not. That Trump chose too assume the mantle of one of the two parties, rather than form a third party as did both Teddy R and Perot, reflects pragmatism - there was a talent vacuum in both parties, which will still be true in 2020, he has no real competition. But whoever runs as a Populist must oppose the incumbent establishment, which was at the time a Democrat named Obama, who had generated massive dissatisfaction - a perfect setting for a Populist to run as a member of the opposition party.

Who's generating massive dissatisfaction now? It looks like Bernie's the populist choice, but I hope he runs with a younger vice president.

[Revi]

We have been through this many times before. We need someone who can campaign. I am obviously not a fan of our present leader, but he does know how to campaign.

[Plantagenet]

We need someone who can campaign. I am obviously not a fan of our present leader, but he does know how to campaign.

How about Old White Joe? Revi, Are you a fan of Old White Joe?

Old White Joe is way ahead in the D polls, so his campaigning skills must be pretty good. On the other hand, a lot of Old White Joe's support is coming from the black community, and I don't think Old White Joe has the black vote locked up.

Old White Joe reminds me of Hillary.....once the black community figured out there was a black guy named Obama running in 2008 they switched their support from Hillary to Obama and the rest is history. I can see that happening again.....I can't see why black Ds are going to vote for Old White Joe when they can vote for a black woman named Kamala or even a weirdo black guy named Corey instead of Old White Joe.

Old White Joe is taking a big chance running as the second coming of the Obama administration, when Obama himself hasn't endorsed him. Why hasn't Obama endorsed Joe? Probably because he does't support Joe. I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama come out and stab Old White Joe in the back by endorsing....say......Kamala Harris and once he does Old White Joe's support will evaporate like the morning dew.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Joe lost my support when he came out for Obama’s “all the above” energy approach.

AOC was tight to call BS on him.

[Plantagenet]

Russian sources of the Steele "Pissgate" dossier now revealed

steele-dossier-sources

Steele identified at least some of the Russian sources he got the Pissgate dossier from.

Soo-prise Soo-prise, the fake info in the dossier came directly from high level people linked to the Kremlin and to Russian intelligence agencies

Dossier author Christopher Steele identified a former Russian spy chief and a top adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin as being involved in handling potentially compromising information about President Donald Trump, State Department notes show.

In her notes, State Department official Kathleen Kavalec also referred to the two Russians — former Russian foreign intelligence chief Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Putin aide Vladislav Surkov — as “sources.”....the notes are significant because they are the first government documents that show Steele discussing potential sources for the information in his dossier, which the former MI6 officer provided to the FBI.

Trubnikov also has links to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who collected information from Trump campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Halper arranged for Trubnikov to visit intelligence seminars at the University of Cambridge in 2012 and 2015. He also tapped Trubnikov to contribute to a Pentagon study published in 2015.

So now we know Steele got the dossier material from very high level Russian intelligence agents and the Kremlin, and now we also know that anything that can be checked in the dossier has proven to be false. Its time to face facts---- the dossier is a clearly Russian disinformation scheme since we know it came from the highest levels of the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies and we know it is filled with disinformation.

Of course Mueller was too busy being duped by the Russians to actually look into the Russian sources of the Steele dossier, but thank goodness Mueller has made himself irrelevant and now AG Barr is now on the case and the facts are starting to come out.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Source?

(Kind of ironic that I ask actually)

[Newfie]

Thoughts on Trump FISA record declassification?

And here is an interesting piece on relations between major players. Don’t know if it true, but interesting. Sounds a lot like some big organizations I worked in.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com ... e_out.html

[Cog]

The CIA and FBI have repeatedly played the game of losing information, texts, emails, or simply saying they involve intelligence matter and can't be released. The reality is the information is embarrassing to them since it shows their involvement in this attempted coup. The Strozk and Page emails were purposely hidden from Congress until the OIG found them in their files. The FBI apparently lost their copies(Yeah right). AG Barr will have to do a lot of digging to get this damaging information. The Deep State protects itself at all costs and that has been going on for decades. He is going to have threaten people with subpoenas and jail time to get to the truth about it.

At the heart of the matter is a question. Was the investigation into the Trump campaign the result of a legitimate concern over foreign meddling in our election or was it a tool used by the former administration to destroy the incoming one? Guess it depends on who you trust as to what you believe.

My take on it is if this was a legit investigation, then someone should have been charged with colluding or conspiring with the Russians. Mueller did not find that nor did he charge anyone with it. So why was the investigation even began if there was no definitive evidence that such collusion existed?

[Plantagenet]

At the heart of the matter is a question. Was the investigation into the Trump campaign the result of a legitimate concern over foreign meddling in our election or was it a tool used by the former administration to destroy the incoming one? Guess it depends on who you trust as to what you believe.

My take on it is if this was a legit investigation, then someone should have been charged with colluding or conspiring with the Russians. Mueller did not find that nor did he charge anyone with it. So why was the investigation even began if there was no definitive evidence that such collusion existed?

The investigation into Trump was begun to create an "October surprise" that would win the White House for Hillary.

Remember that Hillary was under investigation by the FBI during the whole 2016 election. Hillary wanted the FBI to start an investigation of Trump so she could say look-----Trump is under investigation by the FBI too!

So Hillary and the Ds manufactured a pretense for an FBI investigation of Trump. Hillary and the DNC hired Fusion GPS who hired Christopher Steele who colluded with some Russians to manufacture a phony document that claimed Trump was a Russian spy. D appointees in the Obama DOJ to stovepipe this misinformation into the highest levels of the FBI, and once the FBI started to investigate the phony dossier, then various Obama appointees leaked this info to Congress and the media to try to get the news out and create the "October surprise." Christopher Steele himself briefed the NY Times and WaPO and freely admitted his purpose was to defeat Trump.

That much we know.

What we don't know is how far things went to try to gin up this phony investigation of Trump. The House Intelligence Committee, before the Ds took it over, pretty much delineated how the FBI and DOJ connived to help Hillary and the Ds. But what we don't know is the extent that the CIA played a role in this scheme. There is suspicion that Joseph Mifsud and Asra Turk and the other mysterious characters involved in the ealiest spying on Trump campaign people were actually CIA agents who were entrapping the Rs to help set up phony FBI investigation.

This is what AG Barr is now investigating. What role did the CIA play in spying on the Trump Campaign before the official FBI investigation even started?

More questions revolve around the famous joint intelligence finding on Obama's last day in office that the Russians were trying to help Trump win the election. There is no evidence that supports that....other then the phony Hillary/DNC Dossier.....and the FBI and CIA are now publicly fighting over which agency insisted the phony dossier be used to judge the Russian's intent.

Another question involves the degree to which various Obama DOJ appointees and Obama himself were aware of this scheme. We know that "unmasking" of the names of Americans caught up on surveillance tapes tripled under the Obama administration. We know that Ds right in the White House were getting the surveillance tapes from Trump Tower, and they were getting the names unmasked. That seems to be an obvious case of political espionage. Lets pray to heaven that AG Barr and new special counsel Dunlap have the fortitude to face down the CIA and get all the facts on this.

Cheers!

[jedrider]

Trump’s War on the Constitution - Is it at a Breaking Poing?
https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-war-on-the-constitution-has-reached-a-breaking-point/

It may be at a breaking point, but this has been playing out for the last 20/40 years of Republican administrations and Clinton was no angel either.

This moment is genuinely historic, an “inflection point” as described by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California). “Either the Trump camp’s claims about executive power stand,” writes Esquire blogger Charles P. Pierce, “or the Constitution does.” What began with Richard Nixon and accelerated through Dick Cheney has come to full noxious bloom under Donald Trump. It is time for Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats to salvage this thought experiment we call a country, and to salvage the institution they serve while they still can. Impeachment is the way.

Is Pelosi the only one standing in the way? Evidently, she won't make her move until she is assured of some type of victory. Alternatively, it is possible that Congress doesn't want to own up to any sort of true responsibility. Clinton got impeachment proceedings launched because no one thought that they would really go through. This time, with Trump, would be far different, I suppose.

[Plantagenet]

Impeachment....impeachment.....

What do you imagine Trump will be impeached for?

Thanks to the Mueller report we know there was no collusion with Russia and we know Mueller had insufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, especially in the absence of an underlying crime whose investigation Trump was supposedly obstructing.

Do you have some other crime in mind that Trump should be impeached for, or do you think the Ds will just continue on with the conspiracy theory nonsense that Trump is a Russian asset, even though Mueller has now thoroughly debunked that D silliness?

Cheers!

[jedrider]

Impeachment....impeachment.....

What do you imagine Trump will be impeached for?

Thanks to the Mueller report we know there was no collusion with Russia and we know Mueller had insufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, especially in the absence of an underlying crime whose investigation Trump was supposedly obstructing.

Do you have some other crime in mind that Trump should be impeached for, or do you think the Ds will just continue on with the conspiracy theory nonsense that Trump is a Russian asset, even though Mueller has now thoroughly debunked that D silliness?

Cheers!

I imagine there are many reasons Trump can be impeached. The Mueller report was not about 'obstruction' AFAIK, but about Russian interference. The interesting thing is that the 'obstruction of justice' just gets deeper as time goes on. Impeachment could proceed on just unconstitutional behavior IMO.

[Cog]

What unconstitutional behavior might that be? That sounds very vague to start impeachment proceedings. Where are the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution refers to and to which Mueller found insufficient evidence to charge Trump with anything. Somehow I don't believe "Orange Man Bad" is something the American people are going to accept as a sufficient charge and specification. If the Democrats want Trump out so badly, we have an election next year to decide that.

It is not the role of the legislative branch to decide if the president's policies and executive orders are unconstitutional. That is the role of judiciary. The Congress has the power of the purse strings and that is sufficient to either fund the president's policies or to deny that funding.

[dissident]

What unconstitutional behavior might that be? That sounds very vague to start impeachment proceedings. Where are the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution refers to and to which Mueller found insufficient evidence to charge Trump with anything. Somehow I don't believe "Orange Man Bad" is something the American people are going to accept as a sufficient charge and specification. If the Democrats want Trump out so badly, we have an election next year to decide that.

It is not the role of the legislative branch to decide if the president's policies and executive orders are unconstitutional. That is the role of judiciary. The Congress has the power of the purse strings and that is sufficient to either fund the president's policies or to deny that funding.

Sad how so few D. Party worshipers know so little about the US system of government. Instead, they act like banana republic thugs who do not know what due process is.

[Newfie]

Sitting in a motel room, watched about 20 minutes of CNN in full Trump Derangement Syndrome seizure. Granted Trump attracts this shit and seems to encourage it. But no excuse. I suppose the acid commentators are just as bad.

The “news” has gotten totally abysmal.

[Revi]

I am much more focused on the environmental abominations that his administration is perpetrating every day. He's also got to be the sleaziest person that has ever occupied the office. His businesses have been propped up by the russians for many years now. When they want a favor, he's their man.

[Newfie]

Try reading a good bio of LBJ if you want to know sleazy. Or Nixon if you want to know narcissism.

But back to constraining the Presidents powers, it strikes me that every President since Carter (and maybe him) has expanded these powers to where they are far beyond what was intended by the Constitution. Obama’s attack on Libia and the drone strikes (assignation on a foreign countries soil) come to mind as excesses.

Cog, you have an opinion on that?

In any case I would be more impressed if Congress were to push in that front. Because they don’t I consider this all just s real time “Game of Thrones”. And we the people willing support which ever lord we are accustomed to.

[Tanada]

Try reading a good bio of LBJ if you want to know sleazy. Or Nixon if you want to know narcissism.

But back to constraining the Presidents powers, it strikes me that every President since Carter (and maybe him) has expanded these powers to where they are far beyond what was intended by the Constitution. Obama’s attack on Libia and the drone strikes (assignation on a foreign countries soil) come to mind as excesses.

Cog, you have an opinion on that?

In any case I would be more impressed if Congress were to push in that front. Because they don’t I consider this all just s real time “Game of Thrones”. And we the people willing support which ever lord we are accustomed to.

I'm not Cog but historically speaking Presidential over reach goes back much further than you think. For example Andrew Jackson violated the constitution when he continued to forcibly remove First Peoples from the eastern seaboard after the tribes had gone to the Supreme Court and received a ruling saying they could not be removed. Abraham Lincoln violated all sorts of constraints in his quest to 'preserve the Union' by doing things like suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus so that separatists in areas under his authority could be jailed without charge for the duration of the war. Woodrow Wilson went even further creating the first internment camps for immigrants from Germany during the first world war and taking extreme measures against anyone who protested or spoke out against getting involved on European affairs. FDR rebuilt the internment camps in 1941-45 and took the extra step of drafting all able bodied men in those camps for military service with the Italians and Germans being sent to fight in the Pacific and the Japanese being sent to North Africa and Europe.

[Newfie]

Correct, and thanks for pointing that out.

I don’t think that modifies my point that Congress is being very selective in what they are being outraged over.