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Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1635 –
It's a problem for Turnbull because of the initial phone conversation he had with Trump.
Then the visit that papered over the cracks.
In that light it will be highlighted as Turnbull revealing his true feelings towards Trump.
...and it's the media that will dictate how the story will be handled.
Most major news outlets have now picked it up.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1636 –
Quote from: mateinone – on
The issue is how it is perceived. It already has traction in the UK also.
I agree it should never have been leaked, it could not have been considered to be in the best interests of Australia and it was a pretty average thing to do  (and I don't even like Liberals).

Will be very interesting to see the fall out, but traditionally Trump doesn't take too well to mocking, he tends to get a bit sulky, just ask Alec Baldwin

It's normal for the US Ambassador to be at the Winter Ball, so Trump will have first-hand feedback available if he wants it!
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1637 –
Quote from: Lods – on
It means you let the checks and balances inbuilt in the system take care of Trump.
You don't raise a level of hate and hysteria against the individual but you work to tone that down and work against him with reasoned logic and argument.

If you adopt this approach any over-reaction on his part clearly draws a line between him and his opponents

Some folk are working against him in that respect and slowly but surely it will do the job.
Others have gone off half cocked  (Arts, academia, politicians) and they're the ones that are being counter productive.
You sound like Jeb Bush naïvely thinking that decency would be all he needed to deflate Trump.

I don't share your optimism that the checks and balances in the system will do the job.  Trump clearly wishes to neutralise them and rule by fiat.  That's why today's news about the Mueller investigation is so sensational.  Imagine a President trying to kill an investigation into his campaign associates by sacking an FBI Director.

Trump deliberately thumbed his nose at conventions surrounding the relationship between the FBI Director and the President.  As Comey noted, Obama contacted him only once apart from saying a quick goodbye last year.  Trump initiated a series of meetings at which he demanded personal loyalty.  That is incredibly inappropriate and weakens the independence of law enforcement.  That is just the tip of the iceberg.  At his first cabinet meeting, he acted like a dictator accepting compliments from sycophantic underlings.

We like to imagine that our systems of government are foolproof and we have become so sophisticated that we wouldn't allow someone to bring them down.  But that's a conceit.  if that concern is seen as hysterical, so be it.  But don't tell me that Trump is behaving with anything like the ethical integrity of Obama and he's just being painted in a harsh light.  Mueller doesn't appear to think so at least.

Some GOP figures are trying to blame "caustic rhetoric" from Dems for the shooting.  Nice try.  Remember that the Democrats don't control either the House of Reps or the Senate.  What worries the GOP most is the heat the GOP is taking over the attempt to repeal Obamacare.  Republicans enjoyed Town Hall meetings leading up to the 2010 elections as the Tea Party ran amok, electrified by the passage of Obamacare.  The GOP loved the pressure exerted on the Democrats through those meetings.  But now that Republicans who face the voters in 2018 are experiencing passionate opposition at their Town Hall meetings, they are mostly refusing to hold any.  They trot out the usual line that the passionate opposition just comes from paid protesters rather than accepting that this is democracy at work.  Of course, they huff and puff when the passion at the meetings is compared to the passion of the Tea Party.  Without any proof, they claim the former is simply manufactured while the latter was a real reflection of the concerns of the people.

Peaceful protest isn't caustic rhetoric and is at the heart of true democracy.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1638 –
Quote from: Mav – on
You sound like Jeb Bush naïvely thinking that decency would be all he needed to deflate Trump.

I don't share your optimism that the checks and balances in the system will do the job.  Trump clearly wishes to neutralise them and rule by fiat.  That's why today's news about the Mueller investigation is so sensational.  Imagine a President trying to kill an investigation into his campaign associates by sacking an FBI Director.

We'll have to agree to disagree....and down the track one of us will be right and one of us will be wrong.
I tend to think that when Trump is finally removed it will be through a proper process of the system working as it was intended.

Quote
"Peaceful protest isn't caustic rhetoric and is at the heart of true democracy."
I thought that's what I was advocating.

My problem is with hysterical hate filled comments and that applies to both sides.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1639 –
Quote
Former FBI Director James Comey met with the Senate Intelligence Committee in multiple private sessions in which he detailed Loretta Lynch's reaction of silence to his evidence from the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

Comey met with the committee multiple times over the last couple months and detailed an encounter with Lynch, who served as former President Barack Obama's attorney general, shortly before Clinton's email probe was shut down, Circa reported.

Comey told lawmakers in the close door session that he raised his concern with the attorney general that she had created a conflict of interest by meeting with Clinton’s husband, the former President Bill Clinton, on an airport tarmac while the investigation was ongoing.

During the conversation, Comey told lawmakers he confronted Lynch with a highly sensitive piece of evidence, a communication between two political figures that suggested Lynch had agreed to put the kibosh on any prosecution of Clinton.
2012 HAPPENED!!!!!!!

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1640 –
Quote from: Lods – on
My problem is with hysterical hate filled comments and that applies to both sides.
The problem is you keep on trotting out that phrase "hysterical hate-filled comments".  Just as we all are against evil but we aren't necessarily against rock and roll and sex outside marriage, we're all against hysterical hate-filled comments but we might not agree with you about what deserves that label.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1641 –
Had not seen this before today, but geez I can't imagine a better video to show why this guys is nothing more than a self-serving twat It is so embarrassing to see these leaders of the USA fawning over him.

[flash=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/v/6ARgUIpM6f0[/flash]

We all praise the blessed all mighty and powerful Kim Jong-un Donald Trump
Goals for 2017
=============
Play the most anti-social football in the AFL

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1642 –
@MBB, I know that Trump would like to deflect attention and GOP Senators are only too happy to oblige, but Clinton, Lynch and even Comey are now just historical figures.  Few Americans and even fewer Australians worshipped Clinton with religious fervour. Certainly, I'm not one of them.  Her main virtue for me was that she wasn't Trump.  If I waste any time thinking of what might have been, I regret that Obama wasn't able to run for a 3rd term. 

Even though our recent coaches have inspired a lot of passionate debate, you see little appetite for continuing that debate.  Interesting, though, that I'm now coaching a grandson of Pagan - he looks exactly like Pagan would have as a kid!

This is a classic case of whipping a dead horse.  I wonder what the GOP will do without the Clinton bogeyman.  I guess they're praying that Chelsea goes into politics  ;D

Having said that, the "highly sensitive evidence" seems to be a Russian intelligence report which was likely a sham.  Apparently, his own staff warned him he couldn't rely on it but he worried that if it had been made public it would paint the FBI in a poor light.  The people referenced in the report were never approached by the FBI to verify or debunk the report and all now deny the assertions point blank.  'None of it makes much sense': Experts are baffled by Comey's use of a fake Russian document to skirt the DOJ, Business Insider Australia.

I can't understand why Comey allowed himself to be bum-rushed into holding his infamous press conference.  Let's say his advice to Lynch ended up being that Clinton should be prosecuted.  If she than declared that there would be no charges, I'm sure someone at the FBI would have leaked Comey's contrary advice and there would have been a furore.  On the other hand, once he decided that there would be no prosecution, what would be the harm in Lynch declaring that the investigation was over and there would be no charges? It has me confused.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1643 –
Interesting take on obstruction of justice from Professor Alan Dershowitz. He believes that the law should be changed to provide that the President can't fire a special prosecutor or the FBI Director or direct an FBI Director to drop an investigation which cuts close to home. 

But he thinks that until such laws are passed by Congress, the President has the power to do all of those things.  In his view, Trump Had the power to tell Comey to stop investigating Flynn and his campaign associates up front.  Moreover, implying that Comey should stop investigating Flynn when he had the power to make it a specific direction couldn't be an obstruction either.

Others disagree with Dershowitz's view.  But if Dershowitz is right, this underscores how vulnerable US democracy is to a strongman in the Oval Office.  It may be that the President is like an Emporer who is free to do anything he pleases in his area of constitutional power. 

He would be free to put flunkies in to the Justice Department and demand that it follows his demands to persecute his rivals and give his allies freedom from legal action.  For instance, any allies of his could be protected from white collar criminal investigations.  That's not just a theoretical possibility.  Preet Bharara, the head of the New York financial crimes unit, was sacked by Trump amid reports that he was investigating Tom Price, Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Apparently, there were suggestions that Price had used insider information that Price had as a Senator to make out like a bandit on the stock market.  The day before Trump called on 8 Federal Prosecutors to resign, he called Bharara but, unlike Comey, Bharara refused to take the call as he believed doing so would be inappropriate.  Bang, he was out.

Concerns about Kushner, Trump and his sons using Trump's position to make money from foreigners would not, then, be legal concerns. 

Not only could he destroy the independence of the Justice Department and all other arms of government, he no doubt wants to tame the Courts.  The most obvious way would be to install Supreme Court Justices who believe that there should be few if any limits to the power of the President.  But he can also carve up Federal court districts to sideline judges he thinks are too liberal.

Of course, there may be a political price to pay if he continues down this path.  But if he is able to convince his base that he has to demolish checks and balances in order to "drain the swamp", he may well be able to bully the GOP into standing behind him (at least until the 2018 mid-term elections, anyway).

Yes, Trump could be impeached as the Congress isn't bound by legal definitions of "high crimes and misdemeanours" - it's essentially a political issue.  Undermining the independence of the Justice Department could easily justify impeachment.  But while Trump has the GOP in his pocket and the GOP controls Congress, he has little to fear in that regard.

He's already showing his hand by demonising Mueller and his team, calling them "bad and conflicted men".

We've had similar brushes with this sort of centralisation of power in Australia.  Rudd was a control freak and Abbott gave Peta Credlin a lot of power such that Abbott and Credlin were like co-rulers.  Fortunately, both discovered that they ruled only at the pleasure of their parliamentary colleagues and we've stepped back from the US presidential model.  And current ministers are now learning that they can't trash the courts like Trump does.  Thank heavens for small mercies.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1644 –
As each day passes Trump looks more and more like Putin, the differences are barely perceptible.

Trump is doing his best to differentiate himself, but the actions do not match the words.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1645 –
Now that everyone (except Trump) is expected to tone down their caustic rhetoric, we should stop calling Putin a dictatorial strongman.  After all, he is the democratically-elected head of Russia and no doubt the Russian parliamentary system has checks and balances to suppress autocratic tendencies.  And the suggestion that he had anything to do with the assassination of critical journalists or that he in any way was behind the unfortunate habit of political opponents falling out of windows or being shot is beyond the pale.  If there were any truth to that, Russian police would be right on it and it would be all over Russian TV news.  ;D

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1647 –
Russia sending a message Steve Scalise style! :D

I know the GOP have Trump's back, or at least he seems to have the GOP falling into order, but I wonder how long that persists after the Scalise incident?

I cannot help but feel this is the tip of the iceberg, lawyers and politicians might debate, but the nutters will act perhaps some with a little push!

Ahhh we laughed, but is it a fearful laugh!
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1648 –
What has me beat is the insinuation that both sides are as bad as the other when it comes to caustic rhetoric and everything just cancels out.

I hope Lods or someone else can point to comments on the Dem side which cancel out Alex Jones' rant in the wake of the shooting yesterday when he talked about CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer getting a bullet in the head and others needing to hit the eject button to escape what's coming in the civil war: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alex-jones-blitzer-bullets_us_5943106ce4b06bb7d27214f8?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Yes, he's a knob who told a Court in divorce proceedings that he's not unhinged - he's just a performance artist who playacts losing his temper.  But he's a guy that Trump has legitimised as a commentator and reporter of the truth. So where is his opposite number on the opposite side of the aisle?  Surely SOMEONE can give me a lead ...

PS: I think Jones' comments fall within the category of "hysterical hate-filled comments".  That helps us flesh out that label.

Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

Reply #1649 –
Quote from: Mav – on
What has me beat is the insinuation that both sides are as bad as the other when it comes to caustic rhetoric and everything just cancels out.

I hope Lods or someone else can point to comments on the Dem side which cancel out Alex Jones' rant in the wake of the shooting yesterday when he talked about CNN journalist Wolf Bliter getting a bullet in the head and others needing to hit the eject button to escape what's coming in the civil war: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alex-jones-blitzer-bullets_us_5943106ce4b06bb7d27214f8?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Yes, he's a knob who told a Court in divorce proceedings that he's not unhinged - he's just a performance artist who playacts losing his temper.  But he's a guy that Trump has legitimised as a commentator and reporter of the truth. So where is his opposite number on the opposite side of the aisle?  Surely SOMEONE can give me a clue ...

I'm done Mav
I was talking about the absolute extremes on both sides...but you've taken it as a personal attack on yourself so it's best to let it go.

Thankfully it seems that in the wake of the shootings yesterday both Republicans and Democrats have expressed the view that some comments need modifying.