TRUMP 2016

[LittleFuzzy]

This is an honest IANAL question: does this mean that individuals in a campaign are not criminally liable for violations of the law carried out by the campaign? As in, let us imagine that we do have proof that Trump Jr knowingly received opp research on HRC from a foreign power; it certainly appears that this would violate the law. Are you suggesting that:

a) We don't have proof he received said information yet so he can't be prosecuted.

or

b) Even if we did have proof he couldn't be prosecuted because of legal argy-bargy.

I'm ignoring the question of involvement in hacking and collusion etc. because right now we have no evidence that it happened. But we certainly have evidence that Trump Jr wanted to break the law (based on his 'I love it!' email), and some evidence that he may in fact have done so. Can't he theoretically be prosecuted on that, irrespective of other issues?

It depends on which laws were violated. The typical target for violations of regulatory election law (which is not criminal law) is the campaign/candidate, precisely to prevent sloughing wrongdoing off on scapegoats. And as far as I can tell, receiving material aid from foreign sources in an election is not a criminal violation but merely a regulatory restriction on campaigns. If he managed to violate criminal statutes as well he'd be charged personally for those. . . not that there'd be much point. Can anyone doubt a presidential pardon would be immediately forthcoming?

[Aimless]

If enough republicans are willing to overlook the worst aspects of both Trump's and the GOP's antics to give the Trump administration a similar approval rating to Reagan's and Bush's, that would be pretty damning. See recent discussions with Lewk about what he'll stomach in order to get a conservative Supreme Court judge for an illustrative example about what that would say about the GOP and its voter base. However, Trump's ratings among Republican voters have tended to be worse than his predecessors'.

As for the media, I think it's fair to say that there are degrees of stomach-turning crappiness. It's astonishing to see a person even imply that it's almost all equally reprehensible but sure, I guess it's difficult to make out the details when one's looking down from the heavens.

[Aimless]

It depends on which laws were violated. The typical target for violations of regulatory election law (which is not criminal law) is the campaign/candidate, precisely to prevent sloughing wrongdoing off on scapegoats. And as far as I can tell, receiving material aid from foreign sources in an election is not a criminal violation but merely a regulatory restriction on campaigns. If he managed to violate criminal statutes as well he'd be charged personally for those. . . not that there'd be much point. Can anyone doubt a presidential pardon would be immediately forthcoming?

There wouldn't be much point and if they did press the matter they would at most impose a fine.

These guidelines are a mess but afaict it is in theory possible to prosecute and every imprison an individual for violating this campaign finance law:

https://www.justice.gov/sites/defaul...tbook-0507.pdf

But it's far from certain that Trump Jr's actions crossed the threshold for making such prosecution possible.

[LittleFuzzy]

Except. . . I believe these fall under the rubric of electioneering communications (certainly the release of info via Wikileaks falls under that). And that's the one section of the "foreign figure" area which goes to FEC administrative action.

Hmm. Except "electioneering communication" specifically does not apply to the internet, according to that pdf.

[Steely Glint]

You really need to stop using that word. It has a very tightly defined meaning in American law and this isn't it. Even if you went with a somewhat more colloquial meaning, the currently known behavior, while probably illegal and certainly unethical and unwise, does not rise to even that standard.

In fact, I need to continue and possibly expand my use of the word.

To address your points, though:

1) The American legal definition of treason is just stupid. It is restricted to working enemies of the United States, defined as I understand it to anyone in a state of declared or open war with the United States. Under this definition, you cannot call, for example, the Americans who spied for the Soviet Union traitors. There may be good constitutional reasons to have such a restricted definition (I understand that, back in the day, certain American politicians were in the habit of calling anyone and their dog traitors, thus being the fine American political tradition of taking a perfectly serviceable pejorative word and running it into the fucking ground) but it is silly to say that the US legal definition is how the word should be used in general conversation.
2) I am not American
3) America is a nation founded not on ethnic or national identity, nor on religious creed but on an ideal. When you undermine that ideal by e.g. conspiring with hostile foreign powers to undermine American democracy and the legitimacy of it's political institutions then you have betrayed American in just about the most profound way it's possible to betray something. Because without it's democracy, and it's institutions, what even is the point of America.

Ever major presidential campaign in the US likely has associates or operatives who have some sort of Russian connection. They're one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world with an important (albeit contentious) relationship with the US. Certainly Manafort's Russia-boosting is unusual for a campaign manager (as was nearly everything about the Trump campaign), but merely having Russian contacts - or even being positively inclined toward Russia - does not make you a traitor. This is not the McCarthy era.

You understate the case.

Off the top of my head, we know the following suspicious pieces of information:

* Michael Flynn, national security advisor, forced to resign for failure to disclose conversations with Russian officials before taking office. He also failed to disclose money he had taken from Russia and/or Russians for a speaking engagement
* Carter Page, placed under surveillance because of a trip to Russia in July 2016. We, or at least I, don't know much, but apparently it was enough to raise some spook eyebrows because they obtained a warrant to intercept his communications and prompted them to take a serious look at links between the Kremlin and Trump.
* Paul Manafort was basically just a flat out Kremlin lobbyist
* Sessions failed to disclose two meetings with a Russian ambassador.
* Trump Jr met with someone claiming to represent Russia offering dirt on Clinton
* Then we come to the Steele dossier. To answer your earlier question about it, a couple of minor facts in it - conversations which it says took place - have been verified by the US intelligence community. Nothing else has. If you want my opinion, it contains a kernal of truth but the more sensational aspects (pee tapes) of it will turn out not to be true. It was compiled by a credible person, so I think it was put together by the intelligence community to put Trump on notice.
* Speaking of the intelligence community, they're leery of Trump and some reports have been that they've basically been refraining from sharing intelligence with the Whitehouse because they do not believe it was secure. I believe that intelligence agencies do not do stuff like this without a jolly good reason, and they're in a much better position to know what's up than us
* Trump fired the head of the FBI in an attempt to stop the Russia investigation. Occam's razor says: he did it because he didn't like where it was going
* Trump asked Russia to hack into the DNC so he could have a look at Clinton's emails in the middle of a speech or something lol jk just kidding. cough.
* Trump shared classified intelligence with a bunch of Russians in a meeting in the Whitehouse
* Trump has numerous links with Russia going back decades, some of which are of the decidedly shady persuasion

On their own, none of these facts is particularly damning (at least to Trump himself, some might get some of his associates in very hot water) but together? Suss.

One suspicious looking connection with Russia is probably innocent, two is co-incidence... 10 or more is beginning to look a lot like treason.

But the key point here is that we can't let our antipathy for the bozo running the US to cause us to eschew appropriate procedures and standards of proof.

Well, I recall our SpaceX conversation and I think we have difference standards of what we consider proof and somewhat different epistemological philosophies (???) , which is fine. But induction and inference are damn useful tools in my day to day life, and I see no reason not to use them which I try and figure out whether or not Trump needs to use the following entrance when he visits the Tower of London on his state visit over here:



(he does)

Do you not realize that in one breath you're saying that the foibles of one politician are not representative of a general failing of a party or its policy prescriptions and then turn around and tar the entire Republican party and their supporters with one giant brush?

1) it isn't just one politician, it's like... most of them
2) I said philosophy, not party
3) OK, so when you as an organisation - talking about any organisation here - have 'a few bad apples' and you, that organisation, comprehensively fail to deal with those bad apples in an appropriate fashion and even go further than that by actively covering for those bad apples then you, as an organisation, are just as bad as those bad apples.

Yes, I'm deeply concerned with the direction of the Republican Party as a whole - its rhetoric has descended into identity politics, it has ugly elements, it is often needlessly obstructionist, etc. I won't bother drawing comparisons to the Democratic Party because two wrongs don't make a right here, and it's perfectly reasonable to be repelled by much of what has gone on in the GOP in recent years. But this does not mean that I think that everyone who voted for Trump was a 'deplorable', or that supporters and politicians of the GOP are necessarily racist, misogynist scumbags. They might be, but membership/support for the GOP does not equate with that. To use the latest election as an example, most of the people I know who voted for Trump were dismayed by his rhetoric but voted for him anyway, despite his ugliness as a candidate and person. They had all sorts of reasons - policy preferences, distaste for HRC, etc. This isn't to say that you didn't get white male racists who also voted for Trump because he's an asshole, but it does mean that you can't lump them all into a single category.

They knew what he was, they knew what he'd do and who he'd do it to, and they voted for him anyway. That makes them worse in my book. I have nothing but contempt.

IMO one of the most pernicious trends in politics today - on both the left and right - is to question the motives of one's political opponents. Democrats must not care about little people, they just are in the pockets of big unions and buy votes with handouts and race/gender based identity politics. Republicans don't care about smaller government or libertarian ideals, they are in the pockets of big banks and corporations. Etc. It's possible to have a disagreement over policy that is either based on different weighting of conflicting priorities or by disagreements about the effects of said policies. It doesn't make everyone who disagrees with you a bad person - they might be wrong, still, but their motives are not suspect. When we instead paint our political opponents as caricatures of evil and corruption, we poison the well of rational public discourse - there's no point in arguing with someone about policy if they don't have the welfare of the country at stake, is there?

Counterpoint: when you refuse to paint your opponents of caricatures of evil and corruption when that is what they are, that's how you end up with even more corrupt politicians who are caricatures of evil. It is how you end up with a culture of impunity. Exploiters and abusers respect no unwritten norms, they will not reciprocate your restraint by refraining from using it as cover to get away with whatever they can get away with. High standards of proof will simply be used as a sort of cheat sheet for how sneaky they need to bother being about their underhand affairs. Unwritten rules about what you 'can't say' about politicians are simply things they know they can get away with being.

I'm not trying to say that there aren't venal politicians more interested in their own power and self-aggrandizement than thoughtful governing. I'm just saying that we can't assume that all of our opponents (or even most) fall into this category while, naturally, assuming that our own side has only the purest of motives. We can't just write off an entire party because you don't like some things about them. This is as true for you as it is for the Lewks of the world. And if being committed to seeing one's political opponents as being at least slightly decent-minded people means that I require solid evidence before bandying about words like treason, then that is what I will do.

I'm not 'assuming' anything, wig, simply observing their behaviour. If we're not assuming things, you can't assume I'm throwing these words around lightly or because the Republicans are my political opposites.

You're in deep fucking shit over there. Time to stop pretending everything is normal.

Obviously hyperbole, but you realize that the level of criticism and party rebellion Trump has faced - even measured and lukewarm as it has been - is pretty unprecedented in modern American history. A President in his honeymoon period controlling both houses of Congress should generally get a lot of traction on nominees, policy proposals, and party unity over political attacks and scandals (IIRC the only two recent times POTUS started his term with both houses of Congress were Obama and Clinton, and much before that Eisenhower; before that you'd have to go to FDR). Yet lots of Republicans - both before and after the election - have broken ranks in one way or another. There's an entire chunk of the party and its supporters who define themselves as 'Never Trumpers', for crying out loud! It's not crazy for Congressional Republicans to be a bit mealy-mouthed in their criticism of Trump, given the political realities and their desire to enact policy, but even the amount of rebellion we've seen is pretty substantial. And when you look at people who aren't beholden to the President - e.g. the Republican intelligentsia - nearly no one supports him.

acta non verba.

Also, Trump himself is unprecedented, so I'd expect the Republican response to him to be a bit more unprecedented than some mild grumbling, even if it is early term.

Also, I would have expected even Republicans to prioritize, you know, their country over their repulsive agenda or their pissant careers when the stakes are this damn high.

I was wrong.

[Loki]

I'm not convinced. On, say, voter suppression, I suspect that a lot of GOP supporters are genuinely worried about voter fraud and don't even think about how things like voter ID requirements affect certain populations (GOP strategists think differently, of course, and it is indeed a policy I disagree with). I'm not sure it's functionally worse than gerrymandering, which is a happily bipartisan endeavor. And I'm betting that if Dems could figure out a way to disenfranchise GOP voters with a wheeze like Voter ID, they would. This isn't to say it's appropriate - just because Dems would do it too doesn't make it right - but it does suggest that it's not as norm-breaking as you suggest.

I'm not talking about voters, but the party itself. I have a bridge to sell you if you really believe the party apparatchiks don't know that voter fraud doesn't exist. This is the party whose official North Carolina twitter account boasted about reducing the black turnout in 2016. It's inconceivable that the GOP doesn't know that it's dealing with a non-existent problem by keeping Democrats from voting.

The Dems could have made it more difficult to vote by removing polling stations in rural areas. They didn't. But you know who intentionally removed polling stations in urban areas? Republicans. Again, for very obvious reasons.

As for the media, I hate most of the media - 95+% of it is garbage. Pretty much all broadcast/cable news and all of radio news with the exception of a portion of NPR is trash. In terms of written media, there are a handful of papers that do a reasonable job, at least part of the time, and a few magazines that are palatable. But at the very least by readership/viewership, the media consumed by the majority of Americans - GOP or otherwise - is awful.

Are you being serious here? It's one thing to acknowledge the media's many faults, it's quite another to dismiss everything it says, to assume it's part of an anti-Republican conspiracy, and to listen to raving lunatics instead. That is the median Republican voter right now.

On universities, I saw an interesting piece on it. I don't agree with a lot of it, but what's interesting is that conservatives have had a pretty testy relationship with universities for decades, and it's not entirely undeserved.

The hatred for universities has increased significantly in the last few years, and it's not because universities got much meaner to Republicans in that time period. What did change is universities becoming the new wedge issue, pushed by both conservative blowhards (e.g. Limbaugh) and the GOP itself.

On approval ratings for Trump, I'm not really surprised. I'd love to see comparisons to similar points in the Bush and Reagan administrations, though, to see if his numbers even there are weaker than expected. There's also self-selection (people may have stopped self-reporting as Republicans because they don't like Trump), selective blindness (say, they like his SCOTUS pick and his push for healthcare reform and on the balance are willing to overlook his BS), etc. Doesn't mean they're all terrible people.

Towards the end of his term, George W. Bush had ~70% approval from Republicans and ~25% from independents. He was in the 90s in the first term, but that was due to 9/11 and Iraq. Reagan averaged 80% from Republicans and 55% from independents. Trump is getting 33% from independents and 87% from Republicans. So yes, 80% support from your own party is common. 80% support in the midst of a historically awful presidency is not normal.

There's no evidence of selection. If there was, the number of independents would have spiked; it hasn't.
http://www.gallup.com/interactives/1...al-center.aspx

While I'd prefer some louder and more principled resistance to Trump among rank and file GOP politicians, I think it's a bit of an unfair metric to hold them to at this point in his term.

It's unfair to expect the GOP to push back on possible collusion with a hostile foreign power, constant attempts to discredit key American institutions, attacks against the constitution, an unprecedented collapse in America's standing in the world (worse than Bush, who had Iraq), and generally unprecedented incompetence, deceit, and unprofessionalism? Trump is a major war away from being the worst American president of all time, and you don't think Republicans should push back? Seriously?

And you didn't respond to the GOP sometimes passively, sometimes actively supporting white supremacists and Islamophobes, including by helping them get elected to national office.

[Lewkowski]

No, it's people like you who care more about making "liberals cry" than about the well-being of your country.

To be fair the two are often synonymous.

[wiggin]

Steely - first off, I appreciate you continuing this discussion vigorously without descending into ad hominem attacks. It's hard to do about a subject which is clearly of great importance, so thank you.

In fact, I need to continue and possibly expand my use of the word.

To address your points, though:

1) The American legal definition of treason is just stupid. It is restricted to working enemies of the United States, defined as I understand it to anyone in a state of declared or open war with the United States. Under this definition, you cannot call, for example, the Americans who spied for the Soviet Union traitors. There may be good constitutional reasons to have such a restricted definition (I understand that, back in the day, certain American politicians were in the habit of calling anyone and their dog traitors, thus being the fine American political tradition of taking a perfectly serviceable pejorative word and running it into the fucking ground) but it is silly to say that the US legal definition is how the word should be used in general conversation.
2) I am not American
3) America is a nation founded not on ethnic or national identity, nor on religious creed but on an ideal. When you undermine that ideal by e.g. conspiring with hostile foreign powers to undermine American democracy and the legitimacy of it's political institutions then you have betrayed American in just about the most profound way it's possible to betray something. Because without it's democracy, and it's institutions, what even is the point of America.

1. I won't touch your assessment of the historical precedents (since my understanding is that most of said precedents were European in nature), but I agree that our legal definition is tightly limited. We do have other language (and laws) to deal with people who might fit a broader definition of 'treason' - notably espionage laws - and I think that it would be reasonable to use the term for someone who had clearly participated in such behavior. My argument is not that you can't use the term treason/traitor outside of the legal definition, but that even colloquial understandings of the term generally encompass a pretty severe set of behaviors that have not as yet been proven to have been done by Trump et al.

2. You're talking about American politicians working under American laws, ostensibly committing treason against America. I think using American norms for your discourse would make sense in this context.

3. I appreciate this point, and I understand why it might be a particularly apt terminology to use if indeed we found strong evidence that Trump et al had worked to undermine the democratic elections of which we are so proud. Yet the data so far do not support such a conclusion. You'd either need to expand your definition of treason to cover all sorts of election shenanigans that would encompass nearly every politician on a national level or you'd need to wait for more evidence to come to light before making such an accusation.

You understate the case.

Off the top of my head, we know the following suspicious pieces of information:

* Michael Flynn, national security advisor, forced to resign for failure to disclose conversations with Russian officials before taking office. He also failed to disclose money he had taken from Russia and/or Russians for a speaking engagement
* Carter Page, placed under surveillance because of a trip to Russia in July 2016. We, or at least I, don't know much, but apparently it was enough to raise some spook eyebrows because they obtained a warrant to intercept his communications and prompted them to take a serious look at links between the Kremlin and Trump.
* Paul Manafort was basically just a flat out Kremlin lobbyist
* Sessions failed to disclose two meetings with a Russian ambassador.
* Trump Jr met with someone claiming to represent Russia offering dirt on Clinton
* Then we come to the Steele dossier. To answer your earlier question about it, a couple of minor facts in it - conversations which it says took place - have been verified by the US intelligence community. Nothing else has. If you want my opinion, it contains a kernal of truth but the more sensational aspects (pee tapes) of it will turn out not to be true. It was compiled by a credible person, so I think it was put together by the intelligence community to put Trump on notice.
* Speaking of the intelligence community, they're leery of Trump and some reports have been that they've basically been refraining from sharing intelligence with the Whitehouse because they do not believe it was secure. I believe that intelligence agencies do not do stuff like this without a jolly good reason, and they're in a much better position to know what's up than us
* Trump fired the head of the FBI in an attempt to stop the Russia investigation. Occam's razor says: he did it because he didn't like where it was going
* Trump asked Russia to hack into the DNC so he could have a look at Clinton's emails in the middle of a speech or something lol jk just kidding. cough.
* Trump shared classified intelligence with a bunch of Russians in a meeting in the Whitehouse
* Trump has numerous links with Russia going back decades, some of which are of the decidedly shady persuasion

On their own, none of these facts is particularly damning (at least to Trump himself, some might get some of his associates in very hot water) but together? Suss.

One suspicious looking connection with Russia is probably innocent, two is co-incidence... 10 or more is beginning to look a lot like treason.

Honestly, most of these are easy to dismiss. I am pretty sure, for example, that Sessions didn't discuss anything of value with Kislyak; he just got in trouble for failing to disclose said meetings. Trump's actions fit into his broader idiocy and incompetence without in any way presupposing a conspiracy: you pulled out Occam's Razor, but Hanlon's Razor is pretty useful here as well. Etc. By far the most concerning issues, based on the evidence we have today, are the following:

1. Trump's attempts to obstruct the investigation, irrespective of the existence of collusion or not (this may IMO be impeachable though not likely without real revelations from the Russia investigation). It ain't treason, but it sure as hell isn't kosher.

2. Evidence that the campaign may have solicited dirt on Clinton from Russian operatives - the strongest evidence to date being the Trump Jr meeting.

Literally everything else is innuendo. I'd like to propose the following thought experiment: Let us imagine that Russia did not tamper with the election to our knowledge. There were no hacked emails, no Wikileaks releases, etc. Would the connections you note - Manafort's clear pro-Russia bias, Flynn/Page/Sessions taking meetings with Russian officials, Trump saying nice things about Putin - be enough to suspect collusion? As in, we could imagine that Trump won fair and square but Russia might still be trying to influence the presidency through agents/blackmail/bribery/whatever. Would these meetings be enough to convince anyone? I think not.

Of course Russia did try to influence the outcome of the election in favor of Trump, but it's not like there was any doubt who Russia preferred in the White House - the wannabe strongman Russophile or Clinton.

Well, I recall our SpaceX conversation and I think we have difference standards of what we consider proof and somewhat different epistemological philosophies (???) , which is fine. But induction and inference are damn useful tools in my day to day life, and I see no reason not to use them which I try and figure out whether or not Trump needs to use the following entrance when he visits the Tower of London on his state visit over here:

Induction and inference are indeed powerful tools, but they are also deeply flawed. For an issue of this magnitude - as you yourself said, the foundations of our democracy and the most powerful position in the world - I require a very high standard of proof. Induction and inference can still be used, yes, but only sparingly.

I share your thought that this may be down to epistemology. I have spent the last 1.5 decades or so immersed in a highly empirical world. I specifically work with systems that are so complex that it's impossible to model more than a small chunk of them when I'm trying to understand a set of data. Because of this, I tend to discount the value of theories and logic in favor of cold, hard data - I've seen far too many elegant theories and logical hypotheses get soundly destroyed because the data, stubbornly, refuses to cooperate. Thus, my standard for drawing a conclusion about reality is quite high - requiring a lot of data that attacks the issue from a variety of perspectives that, ideally including direct evidence of causative mechanisms rather than mere correlation of phenomena. This manifests here as skepticism about unwarranted conclusions based on the available data to date, and in other discussions as skepticism about the accuracy of ambitious forward-looking projections.

1) it isn't just one politician, it's like... most of them
2) I said philosophy, not party
3) OK, so when you as an organisation - talking about any organisation here - have 'a few bad apples' and you, that organisation, comprehensively fail to deal with those bad apples in an appropriate fashion and even go further than that by actively covering for those bad apples then you, as an organisation, are just as bad as those bad apples.

I'd like to address the third point. I agree that the 'bad apple' argument, while sometimes valid, is not always a great defense. It's also not really appropriate, however, to condemn an entire organization and their supporters because elements of their tolerated behavior are wrong. I'd be hard pressed to find an organization that is so upstanding that it doesn't tacitly endorse at least some behaviors that are problematic. My point was that there's a lot of ugly in the Republican Party but calling them all scumbags isn't fair. It's possible to be a broadly decent person who still holds some assholish opinions (or tolerates it in others); in fact, I'd hazard a guess that nearly everyone here falls into that category.

They knew what he was, they knew what he'd do and who he'd do it to, and they voted for him anyway. That makes them worse in my book. I have nothing but contempt.

See, while you respond with contempt, I respond with puzzlement. I want to understand people who voted for Trump - not the fringe racists or misogynists or whatever, but the bulk of his support that was normal Joe Schmoes who would probably be aghast at a neighbor of theirs using the kind of rhetoric (and behavior) of Trump but felt it was a necessary evil. I want to understand why any woman or person of color would vote for him, why any religious person would vote for him, etc. I don't just assume they're all terrible people who will compromise everything they profess to care about just for party affiliation or a SCOTUS nominee, but that they had a good reason to go against their instincts and support someone so clearly unfit for the job.

Contempt is not constructive, and while understanding might not bring me to agreement with my political opponents, at least it might help me better figure out how to frame my debate with them.

Counterpoint: when you refuse to paint your opponents of caricatures of evil and corruption when that is what they are, that's how you end up with even more corrupt politicians who are caricatures of evil. It is how you end up with a culture of impunity. Exploiters and abusers respect no unwritten norms, they will not reciprocate your restraint by refraining from using it as cover to get away with whatever they can get away with. High standards of proof will simply be used as a sort of cheat sheet for how sneaky they need to bother being about their underhand affairs. Unwritten rules about what you 'can't say' about politicians are simply things they know they can get away with being.

I don't think that we should give people a free pass for policy positions that have bad outcomes, but I don't think it's productive to paint them as evil (most of the time); that stifles useful debate and completely eliminates the possibility of compromise. For example, I think you'd have to be an idiot not to think that the ACA could use a fix at a minimum and that rising healthcare costs need addressing. It also seems likely that GOP attempts to fix the ACA will substantially decrease access and will not decrease healthcare costs much or at all, especially those costs borne by certain individuals. Yet rather than suggesting that the GOP are full of heartless stooges for insurance companies who just want to screw poor people, don't you think it would be better to engage them on their actual priorities? Leftists should talk to them about how to create a system with sustainable growth in healthcare costs without drastically cutting benefits, about how to avert looming budgetary disaster with a mix of policies that might actually preserve access and reduce cost. Democrats definitely don't have a politically workable solution for healthcare, and it looks like the GOP doesn't either - but casting one side as evil means there's no value in negotiating with them.

Now obviously that is a pure policy debate and we're talking about something much more primal - the inviolability of our democratic process. And while I think we should avoid using a caricature, I do think that certain of Trump's actions and policies are hard to see in a positive light. When he himself tells you he wants to ban Muslims from the country (a deeply unAmerican and unconstitutional move) and then proceeds to do it, it's important to call a spade a spade: the policy is wrongheaded, period. But even then it costs us nothing to call out the policy without resorting to calling Trump himself a racist. He might be a racist (actually I suspect he almost certainly is) but it doesn't gain us anything by calling him one; instead we can cast the policy as racist and leave ad hominem attacks to the cable news.

I'm not saying we can't ever call someone's motives into question: obviously it is sometimes necessary. But I think that absent strong evidence to the contrary, it helps our public discourse to work on the assumption that our political opponents as a group (not necessarily specific individuals) genuinely believe that their position is the best path forward. Maybe they're wrong (after all, we disagree with them), but that doesn't mean we need to doubt their sincerity.

I'm not 'assuming' anything, wig, simply observing their behaviour. If we're not assuming things, you can't assume I'm throwing these words around lightly or because the Republicans are my political opposites.

I apologize; I did not intend for that to come off as a personal attack. I guess my issue stems from the fact that I would be hard-pressed to come up with a contemporary situation where I would ever describe a political grouping with the language you use; as such, I assume you're quite emotionally invested in opposition to the GOP rather than a disinterested observer. It matters little, though; let us discard my assumptions about you (sorry!) and just say that I don't think that Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan are just politicians calculating which policies will keep them in power/wealth, or how they can stick it to whatever groupings I imagine they dislike while helping people like themselves. I think that while there's an element of that in every politician, they genuinely believe that their proposals are the best (politically feasible) way forward for the country.

acta non verba.

Also, Trump himself is unprecedented, so I'd expect the Republican response to him to be a bit more unprecedented than some mild grumbling, even if it is early term.

Also, I would have expected even Republicans to prioritize, you know, their country over their repulsive agenda or their pissant careers when the stakes are this damn high.

I was wrong.

I, too, have been troubled by the relatively muted protests by large chunks of the GOP rank and file in Washington, especially in the House. But I think you discount the truly remarkable and unprecedented things that have happened since Trump became the presumptive nominee. The Speaker of the House publicly doubted Trump's conservative credentials and openly criticized a number of his signature policy proposals, and indeed has largely ignored Trump's policy proposals that require legislative approval. A number of senators openly opposed his nomination and publicly refused to vote for him, in some cases going so far as to openly support alternative candidates. Trump's policy initiatives have gotten even less traction in the Senate (and his nominations have been subjected to a surprising amount of GOP grilling in addition to the expected opposition grilling). His public comments and demeanor have been repeatedly criticized by a wide range of GOP leaders. Etc. This is not normal, and I think it is rather more consequential than some 'mild grumbling'.

I think you have to put yourself in a GOP lawmaker's shoes: You have an opportunity to pass important legislation that has a chance of not being vetoed, and to do so you need the cooperation of a famously volatile and egotistical guy. Should you (a) ignore his bullshit and get on with the business of governing, (b) voice full-throated denunciations over every ridiculous tweet, (c) some mixture of the two? Most lawmakers have done (c), voicing criticism but tempering it some in the hopes of having a functioning government.

[Aimless]

ACA repeal-and-replace efforts shelved for now and the Iran deal stands as congress moves on to the matter of the budget.

[Aimless]

Except. . . I believe these fall under the rubric of electioneering communications (certainly the release of info via Wikileaks falls under that). And that's the one section of the "foreign figure" area which goes to FEC administrative action.

Hmm. Except "electioneering communication" specifically does not apply to the internet, according to that pdf.

I must confess I'm honestly not sure we're talking about the same things here.

Being a layman, I've relied mostly on public statements made by legal scholars. Most of the legal commentary I've come across so far has focused on the question of whether or not the released emails--and subsequent statements--can be used to show that Trump Jr. attempted to obtain, on the campaign's behalf, illegal campaign contributions (in the form of damaging "opposition research") from a foreign national or foreign government. Few have focused on the question of deeper collaboration or coordination eg. when it comes to the hacks, the leaks etc, mostly because, even if you think this is a smoking gun, the case isn't watertight.

Bob Bauer's posts on Just Security summarize some views on both questions here and here. Rick Hasen has explored specific aspects--eg. how the FEC and courts have interpreted the term "thing of value"--on electionlawblog.org. Both Bauer and Hasen have on occasion been pretty categorical in their views but even more cautious analyses have taken broadly similar views.

The most widely acknowledged argument against criminal charges being brought against Trump Jr. has, afaict, been that we can't yet show that his actions constituted a willful and knowing violation of campaign finance laws, which appears to be a prerequisite for criminal prosecution in cases such as these. This argument is explored at some length here. I find this argument persuasive and I don't believe Trump Jr.--or any of the other representatives of the Trump campaign that were in attendance--can be successfully prosecuted based on what we currently know about the meeting. At best, someone may, at some point, somewhere far down the line, be charged with perjury--depending on what Mueller's investigation uncovers. It's possible that these emails will one day be used to help make the case that the Trump campaign was guilty of illegal coordination with eg. agents of the Russian govt. but that possibility is still remote.

[Loki]

Twitter Link

And BS like this is why the modern GOP is completely hopeless.

And here's Sessions working under his motto of "Do More Evil." Apparently, the police doesn't seize enough property through civil forfeiture.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...rican-citizens

[LittleFuzzy]

You know one reason I don't like Twitter? Because soundbytes aren't informative and don't tell me whatever is actually being referenced. Can you provide some context, Loki, or are you just like the twits making the tweets?

[GGT]

Fox News

[Loki]

You know one reason I don't like Twitter? Because soundbytes aren't informative and don't tell me whatever is actually being referenced. Can you provide some context, Loki, or are you just like the twits making the tweets?

Fox is doing a whole show attacking Clinton for unexplained Russian ties, violations of the emoluments clause, and discussing her lack of popularity.

[Lewkowski]

Fox News

Fair and Balanced.

Fox News clearly carries water for conservative causes but it actually is balanced in the sense it balances out much of the liberal media on the other end. Aaand the show does actively promote debate - they bring on liberals regularly to discuss the right and the left perspective. (The majority are conservative though).

[Loki]

Pretending that Trump is Clinton is not promoting debate; it's promoting delusional thinking.

[Lewkowski]

Pretending that Trump is Clinton is not promoting debate; it's promoting delusional thinking.

Clinton scandals are they being talked about by CNN, MSNBC etc?

[Aimless]

Omg you're right!! It looks like they're all focusing on current developments in scandals involving the current president! Good thing Fox is making sure their viewers don't learn anything at all about that current information. Maintain that bubble of delusion, Fox! Lewk's with you all the way. Trump will never let the Iran deal stand, in fact he tore it up last year!

[LittleFuzzy]

Fox is doing a whole show attacking Clinton for unexplained Russian ties, violations of the emoluments clause, and discussing her lack of popularity.

And why would you think I (or anyone else here except maybe Lewk) watch Fox News? Saying "there's something about Clinton on Fox News" doesn't do anything more than that tweet. So you are just another twit.

[Aimless]

Everyone should watch Fox "news" and follow them on Facebook.

[Ominous Gamer]

And why would you think I (or anyone else here except maybe Lewk) watch Fox News? Saying "there's something about Clinton on Fox News" doesn't do anything more than that tweet. So you are just another twit.

We have had at least 1 other user in the past defend the use of Nazi imagery by Fox's conservative talk show hosts by explaining how the show is usually segmented. So no, lewk isn't the only one who watches fox.

But seriously? A tweet peaks your interest concerning context and instead of researching you attack a board member? You're a lazy motherfucker.

[Aimless]

Fuzzy just doesn't like Twitter. Regardless of our preferences and pet peeves and character defects, if we want to understand what the hell is happening--and has been happening--in the US we have to keep an eye on the single most important source of news in the US.

[wiggin]

Loki, I apologize for taking my time in responding; it requires more than just rhetoric to give your post the response it deserves, and that took me some time.

I'm not talking about voters, but the party itself. I have a bridge to sell you if you really believe the party apparatchiks don't know that voter fraud doesn't exist. This is the party whose official North Carolina twitter account boasted about reducing the black turnout in 2016. It's inconceivable that the GOP doesn't know that it's dealing with a non-existent problem by keeping Democrats from voting.

The Dems could have made it more difficult to vote by removing polling stations in rural areas. They didn't. But you know who intentionally removed polling stations in urban areas? Republicans. Again, for very obvious reasons.

I tried to explicitly acknowledge this above, but I realize I was probably unclear: I absolutely believe that GOP party leadership is fully aware that the voter fraud argument is BS, and that this is a naked attempt to make it harder for certain populations to vote. If you want to take issue with this, I'm happy to agree with you. My defense was aimed specifically at GOP supporters - your post was a mix of criticism aimed at specific party initiatives as well as beliefs among GOP supporters. My entire issue with the rhetoric about the GOP is that it assumes that everyone 'over there' is a callous bastard interested only in money and power. While I have no doubt that the GOP leadership will work hard to give themselves advantages in elections, and that sometimes it will amount to voter disenfranchisement, I do not think this automatically makes the entire party and its supporters not worth engaging with.

For that matter, I grew up in Chicago and have no illusions about the Democratic Party's attempts to electioneer. For one example, read the piece below. That is tame compared to some of the bullshit that goes on in Chicago.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ress-the-vote/

This isn't whataboutism; I think the GOP's attempts to suppress certain elements of voter turnout (as well as gerrymandering in GOP-controlled states) are wrong, full stop. But I don't think they're so uniquely beyond the pale that they are persona non grata.

Are you being serious here? It's one thing to acknowledge the media's many faults, it's quite another to dismiss everything it says, to assume it's part of an anti-Republican conspiracy, and to listen to raving lunatics instead. That is the median Republican voter right now.

Is it? I have no doubt that a substantial proportion of GOP supporters believe as you describe. I don't think it represents the typical Republican voter, though. Infowars et al, while incredibly awful and damaging, are not mainstream Republican news sources.

The hatred for universities has increased significantly in the last few years, and it's not because universities got much meaner to Republicans in that time period. What did change is universities becoming the new wedge issue, pushed by both conservative blowhards (e.g. Limbaugh) and the GOP itself.

I don't have enough data to really evaluate if this is true, but even if it were, I think this is regrettable but not 'consign the GOP to the ash heap of history' kind of material. Universities are useful, important institutions in the US but are not fairy lands that every red blooded American must love. It does point to a growing trend in the US that is anti-elitist and opposed to the idea of an 'expert opinion' that I find troubling, but this does not make the entire GOP a 'rotten tree'.

Towards the end of his term, George W. Bush had ~70% approval from Republicans and ~25% from independents. He was in the 90s in the first term, but that was due to 9/11 and Iraq. Reagan averaged 80% from Republicans and 55% from independents. Trump is getting 33% from independents and 87% from Republicans. So yes, 80% support from your own party is common. 80% support in the midst of a historically awful presidency is not normal.

There's no evidence of selection. If there was, the number of independents would have spiked; it hasn't.
http://www.gallup.com/interactives/1...al-center.aspx

This is what took me the most time to develop a response; unfortunately I can't figure out how to get access to Gallup's raw data, and their publicly posted data is not particularly helpful. Here are a couple of stories looking at the numbers in more detail that suggest that selection is happening, some, and that Trump's base is shrinking in other ways:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/u...-it-seems.html (lower GOP identification in polling)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-is-shrinking/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.85accd62d5a3 (strong approval numbers are dropping while strong disapproval numbers are increasing)

Historical comparisons are trickier to make for obvious reasons; the more I looked at Bush 41/43 and Reagan the more it became obvious that idiosyncratic factors and historical drift in things like party affiliation were making it tough to compare.

It's unfair to expect the GOP to push back on possible collusion with a hostile foreign power, constant attempts to discredit key American institutions, attacks against the constitution, an unprecedented collapse in America's standing in the world (worse than Bush, who had Iraq), and generally unprecedented incompetence, deceit, and unprofessionalism? Trump is a major war away from being the worst American president of all time, and you don't think Republicans should push back? Seriously?

They have pushed back on possible collusion - there are multiple Congressional investigations ongoing, some of which actually seem to have some teeth. They have pushed back against his agenda - for example, they laughed his budget proposal out of Congress and made their own, and every signature policy proposal of his that needs Congressional support hasn't happened. I'm not sure what specifically you're referring to wrt 'key American institutions' and the constitution. And there has been a great deal of very public consternation about his approach to foreign affairs, his demeanor, and the conduct of both candidate Trump and POTUS Trump.

I'm saying it's unfair to expect wholesale GOP rebellion at this point. If 'possible collusion' becomes 'collusion', if Trump does something more than lob a few cruise missiles at Syria and rattle sabers at NK, or whatever other truly crazy thing he might do, I fully expect outright GOP rebellion. But as it is, there's a lot of unrest in the Republican party, when in any normal presidency you'd see a massive conservative agenda being crafted and implemented right now.

And you didn't respond to the GOP sometimes passively, sometimes actively supporting white supremacists and Islamophobes, including by helping them get elected to national office.

I'm sure I could find a few objectionable Democrats who get elected to public office as well, Loki. I have substantial issues with the rhetoric of, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement (despite the fact that the underlying issue is one that I find of great importance to this country). There are plenty of leftist groups that have openly antisemitic (and, in fact, racist) platforms that are still part of the 'big tent' of the Democratic Party. I'm okay with that; some crazies do not make the entire party crazy.

I don't know enough about Steve King to know whether he has gotten all that much national level support for his statements, but I firmly agree that he should be kept at arms length inside the party. If he is indeed a champion of the GOP who is feted for his incisive analysis of the role of 'Western civilization' in history, then that's certainly concerning.

[Loki]

And why would you think I (or anyone else here except maybe Lewk) watch Fox News? Saying "there's something about Clinton on Fox News" doesn't do anything more than that tweet. So you are just another twit.

I don't. But 3 million Americans regularly do watch that show. That includes our president.

[Ominous Gamer]

we have to keep an eye on the single most important source of news in the US.

Speaking of which, this is how he passed the buck on yet another of his failures:

Twitter Link

[wiggin]

Of all of the things that have happened in the Trump presidency, one of the ones that most concerned me about its long term ramifications was using the nuclear option for SCOTUS nominees. Extending it to the rest of Senate business would be even more troublesome.

[LittleFuzzy]

We have had at least 1 other user in the past defend the use of Nazi imagery by Fox's conservative talk show hosts by explaining how the show is usually segmented. So no, lewk isn't the only one who watches fox.

But seriously? A tweet peaks your interest concerning context and instead of researching you attack a board member? You're a lazy motherfucker.

No, a tweet doesn't peak my interest. But Loki wants it to. And I want Loki (and the rest of you retwits) to engage in actual communication yourselves. There was a time on here when people wanted you to provide the article you were drawing from and not just choice quotes. I realize that's alien to you because we were usually wanting you to do that and you never wanted to do more than just provide some quotes and maybe a link to the reddit where you found them and call it done. The lazy motherfuckers are posters like you that have found something to be outraged about but expect others to do your research for you to find out why you think we should be outraged as well.

[LittleFuzzy]

And here's Sessions working under his motto of "Do More Evil." Apparently, the police doesn't seize enough property through civil forfeiture.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...rican-citizens

Now that pisses me off. I loathe the way departments have been using foreiture already and he wants to expand it? This is not supposed to be a revenue stream for the police goddamnit! If the government wants to take something from someone, it ought to be part of the damned sentence. Anything else is a violation of due process unless they use eminent domain. And it damn well does not include their homes, their cars, their computers or phones, and anything else the police feel like picking up with sticky fingers over the course of an investigation.

[Steely Glint]

Honestly, most of these are easy to dismiss. I am pretty sure, for example, that Sessions didn't discuss anything of value with Kislyak; he just got in trouble for failing to disclose said meetings.

Then why didn't he disclose them?

Trump's actions fit into his broader idiocy and incompetence without in any way presupposing a conspiracy: you pulled out Occam's Razor, but Hanlon's Razor is pretty useful here as well. Etc. By far the most concerning issues, based on the evidence we have today, are the following:

The problem with this - Hanlon's Razor - is that idiocy is random, conspiracy is not. If it was just Trump being stupid in his dealing with Russia, you'd expect that stupidity to take all kinds of forms. He might, for example, be caught in a secret meeting with one of the oligarchs Putin doesn't like. He might be caught on tape by a reporter saying unflattering things about Putin. He might make business dealing which the Kremlin looks unkindly upon. Yet he doesn't do any of those things, all of Trump's supposed idiocy is in one direction: Pro-Kremlin.

I am happy to invoke Hanlon's Razor for individual incidents, but it does not adequately explain a suspicious pattern of behaviour.

Literally everything else is innuendo. I'd like to propose the following thought experiment: Let us imagine that Russia did not tamper with the election to our knowledge. There were no hacked emails, no Wikileaks releases, etc. Would the connections you note - Manafort's clear pro-Russia bias, Flynn/Page/Sessions taking meetings with Russian officials, Trump saying nice things about Putin - be enough to suspect collusion? As in, we could imagine that Trump won fair and square but Russia might still be trying to influence the presidency through agents/blackmail/bribery/whatever. Would these meetings be enough to convince anyone? I think not.

I think for me they'd be more indicative of what Trump wanted to do going forward rather than anything they wanted to do with the election.

Induction and inference are indeed powerful tools, but they are also deeply flawed. For an issue of this magnitude - as you yourself said, the foundations of our democracy and the most powerful position in the world - I require a very high standard of proof. Induction and inference can still be used, yes, but only sparingly.

Well, it's not like either of us have any actual power here. I speak merely of what I need to convince myself of what was actually going on in 2016. If I were somehow given the means to prosecute Trump I'd require more proof. But then if I somehow found myself in in that position I'd also have the means to go and get that proof. And if all I'd found after I'd conducted that investigation was basically the same as what is public knowledge right now I'd come to a different conclusion: that Trump probably did not collude with Russia.

I share your thought that this may be down to epistemology. I have spent the last 1.5 decades or so immersed in a highly empirical world. I specifically work with systems that are so complex that it's impossible to model more than a small chunk of them when I'm trying to understand a set of data. Because of this, I tend to discount the value of theories and logic in favor of cold, hard data - I've seen far too many elegant theories and logical hypotheses get soundly destroyed because the data, stubbornly, refuses to cooperate. Thus, my standard for drawing a conclusion about reality is quite high - requiring a lot of data that attacks the issue from a variety of perspectives that, ideally including direct evidence of causative mechanisms rather than mere correlation of phenomena. This manifests here as skepticism about unwarranted conclusions based on the available data to date, and in other discussions as skepticism about the accuracy of ambitious forward-looking projections.

A rational approach when you're dealing with the behaviour of pharmaceuticals (that is ​what you do, right?), but not when you're dealing with human beings. Drugs don't make an active effort to deceive you, or conceal information, or make unwarranted assumptions in the things they tell you, or simply refuse to co-operate. Or any of the other frankly weird things people are likely to do.

I'd like to address the third point. I agree that the 'bad apple' argument, while sometimes valid, is not always a great defense. It's also not really appropriate, however, to condemn an entire organization and their supporters because elements of their tolerated behaviour are wrong. I'd be hard pressed to find an organization that is so upstanding that it doesn't tacitly endorse at least some behaviors that are problematic. My point was that there's a lot of ugly in the Republican Party but calling them all scumbags isn't fair. It's possible to be a broadly decent person who still holds some assholish opinions (or tolerates it in others); in fact, I'd hazard a guess that nearly everyone here falls into that category.

It would depend on the severity of the tolerate problematic behaviour, how widespread it is and how important to the organisation the people carrying it out are.

...and that's why I have no trouble calling the Republicans a garbage party who should get in the sea.

See, while you respond with contempt, I respond with puzzlement. I want to understand people who voted for Trump - not the fringe racists or misogynists or whatever, but the bulk of his support that was normal Joe Schmoes who would probably be aghast at a neighbor of theirs using the kind of rhetoric (and behavior) of Trump but felt it was a necessary evil. I want to understand why any woman or person of color would vote for him, why any religious person would vote for him, etc. I don't just assume they're all terrible people who will compromise everything they profess to care about just for party affiliation or a SCOTUS nominee, but that they had a good reason to go against their instincts and support someone so clearly unfit for the job.

Well, you could always read one of the approximately 700 thousand thinkpieces that the media has written on the subject since the election. Where the reporter goes off to Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania and talks to Real Americans(TM) in a diner or something.

I wish you luck in your endeavour, but I don't think you're going to enjoy the answers you find very much.

I don't think that we should give people a free pass for policy positions that have bad outcomes, but I don't think it's productive to paint them as evil (most of the time); that stifles useful debate and completely eliminates the possibility of compromise.

The GOP made it crystal clear throughout Obama's term that they're totally unwilling to compromise on anything.

For example, I think you'd have to be an idiot not to think that the ACA could use a fix at a minimum and that rising healthcare costs need addressing. It also seems likely that GOP attempts to fix the ACA will substantially decrease access and will not decrease healthcare costs much or at all, especially those costs borne by certain individuals. Yet rather than suggesting that the GOP are full of heartless stooges for insurance companies who just want to screw poor people, don't you think it would be better to engage them on their actual priorities?

Why on earth would I want to do that when they won't reciprocate?

Their "priorities" are a load of bollocks anyway.

Leftists should talk to them about how to create a system with sustainable growth in healthcare costs without drastically cutting benefits, about how to avert looming budgetary disaster with a mix of policies that might actually preserve access and reduce cost. Democrats definitely don't have a politically workable solution for healthcare, and it looks like the GOP doesn't either - but casting one side as evil means there's no value in negotiating with them.

Leftists should save their breath.

If the GOP was an actual, functional and responsible political party with legitimate policy goals with which I happen to disagree and an genuine interest in dialogue and compromise, then what you say has a lot of merit. But that hasn't really been true of the GOP since the Tea-Party, and is getting less true by the minute.

Now obviously that is a pure policy debate and we're talking about something much more primal - the inviolability of our democratic process. And while I think we should avoid using a caricature, I do think that certain of Trump's actions and policies are hard to see in a positive light. When he himself tells you he wants to ban Muslims from the country (a deeply unAmerican and unconstitutional move) and then proceeds to do it, it's important to call a spade a spade: the policy is wrongheaded, period. But even then it costs us nothing to call out the policy without resorting to calling Trump himself a racist. He might be a racist (actually I suspect he almost certainly is) but it doesn't gain us anything by calling him one; instead we can cast the policy as racist and leave ad hominem attacks to the cable news.

What it costs us is a situation where calling someone racist is seen as worse than being a racist, and where racists consequently feel empowered to be racist, knowing the won't face any consequences because everyone is too polite to call them what they are, and thus leaving the people who are the targets of racism, and who don't have the luxury of such high minded abstemiousness, high and dry to deal with their abuser on their own, without the support they deserve from the rest of us.

Basically? Fuck that.

I apologize; I did not intend for that to come off as a personal attack. I guess my issue stems from the fact that I would be hard-pressed to come up with a contemporary situation where I would ever describe a political grouping with the language you use; as such, I assume you're quite emotionally invested in opposition to the GOP rather than a disinterested observer. It matters little, though; let us discard my assumptions about you (sorry!) and just say that I don't think that Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan are just politicians calculating which policies will keep them in power/wealth, or how they can stick it to whatever groupings I imagine they dislike while helping people like themselves. I think that while there's an element of that in every politician, they genuinely believe that their proposals are the best (politically feasible) way forward for the country.

I don't doubt their motives by default, like you I will assume someone is acting in good faith until shown otherwise.

Unfortunately, the Republicans have shown me otherwise. From the contrast between their loud protestations of patriotism and attacks on leftists for lack of same compared to their utter indifference to what Trump is doing to their country or relatively trivial things like Mitch McConnel calling the block of Obama's supreme court nomination nearly a year out from the end of his presidency the 'proudest moment of his life' to whining when democrats did the same thing less than a year later they have demonstrated quite clearly to anyone willing to listen that their words and professed beliefs mean nothing and that they are willing to say whatever is convenient to get what they want at that time.

I, too, have been troubled by the relatively muted protests by large chunks of the GOP rank and file in Washington, especially in the House. But I think you discount the truly remarkable and unprecedented things that have happened since Trump became the presumptive nominee. The Speaker of the House publicly doubted Trump's conservative credentials and openly criticized a number of his signature policy proposals, and indeed has largely ignored Trump's policy proposals that require legislative approval. A number of senators openly opposed his nomination and publicly refused to vote for him, in some cases going so far as to openly support alternative candidates. Trump's policy initiatives have gotten even less traction in the Senate (and his nominations have been subjected to a surprising amount of GOP grilling in addition to the expected opposition grilling). His public comments and demeanor have been repeatedly criticized by a wide range of GOP leaders. Etc. This is not normal, and I think it is rather more consequential than some 'mild grumbling'.

Sounds like the very definition of mild grumbling to me, but I won't press the issue.

I think you have to put yourself in a GOP lawmaker's shoes: You have an opportunity to pass important legislation that has a chance of not being vetoed, and to do so you need the cooperation of a famously volatile and egotistical guy. Should you (a) ignore his bullshit and get on with the business of governing, (b) voice full-throated denunciations over every ridiculous tweet, (c) some mixture of the two? Most lawmakers have done (c), voicing criticism but tempering it some in the hopes of having a functioning government.

B.

The answer is B.

[Ominous Gamer]

I realize that's alien to you because we were usually wanting you to do that and you never wanted to do more than just provide some quotes and maybe a link to the reddit where you found them and call it done. The lazy motherfuckers are posters like you that have found something to be outraged about but expect others to do your research for you to find out why you think we should be outraged as well.

sure you aren't confused again on how the internet works? i remember you getting all worked up over twitter, and then worked up because i was providing relevant news links without commentary, there may have been a time when you were behind on the lingo? not exactly sure what you're ranting on about contextless quoting other reddit users though