It's not time to prance around with your political views, or how much Hillary was unsavory. Did anyone really read that letter to Comey? Wow. That crosses the line that divides incompetent and crazy. A child would know better.

The connection between the firing of Comey and the desire to put an end to the Russian investigation is now explicit, and now the actual narrative of the WH. That's the very definition of obstruction.

Let's hope there are enough honorable people in the GOP Senate and House to do what needs to be done. Further, my sense is that Pence is probably caught up in this since he was part of the initial lie about the firings rationale.

The House I think is unlikely. In the Senate, you would need, say, John McCain, Ben Sasse, and one other Republican for a simple majority. I imagine the Democrats would hold ranks on this. So, a special prosecutor for instance is not outside the realm of possibility. But I'm not holding my breath yet.

Doesn't McConnell need to actually let it hit the floor?

And I concur--it'll take a lot before the House Republicans turn on him since many of them staked their reputations on his success.

Yes, but 51 senators can for instance refuse to confirm a new head for the FBI until a special prosecutor is appointed. I'd think McConnell will not challenge a GOP president until hell freezes over, as you suggest.

Good point. They need to guard against an overtly political appointee.

It's time to see what McCain, in particular, is made of, no? The 2008 race seemed to change him for the worst for a bit, but standing up to his own party on big issues is the sort of thing pre-2008 McCain was known for (torture, for instance). He can get Graham at least on board, and maybe Collins, and maybe things start to move in the direction we all know they need to.

Let's cross our fingers. A long-term CIA agent was also arguing that FBI files will remain intact until a political appointee takes over there. After that, all bets are off.

My gut feeling is that they're not going to turn against Trump until (or unless) the "heartland" folks who got him elected in the first place start to sour against him. There are signs of that starting to happen, but not to the extent that it needs to happen before the Republican leadership can publicly justify it as the "will of the constituents," and can privately feel a higher likelihood of job security in the next election.

Self-interest disguised as public interest is the name of the game here. It was ever thus, but it's so much more apparent when an inexperienced, dishonest, and damnably vocal idiot continues to hold the highest office.

It's obviously too soon to be cocky about it, but signs are looking good for the Democrats to take over the House in 2018. If that happens, Trump is in serious trouble since they can subpoena tax records and/or impeach, and certainly stop his legislative agenda cold.

In the meantime, it doesn't look like Trump knows how to work and play well with others, so we can hope that he will continue to find it impossible to enact most of his agenda.

Krugman sums it up well this morning. Ryan and McConnell and the other Republicans will go along with any level of corruption, even treason, in order to pass tax breaks for the wealthy. That is all they care about. They care more about that than they do for the country. There is little chance of this stopping as long as the government is in their hands.

Jennifer Rubin said something similar in the Washington Post: "En masse, most Republicans — including those at some premier publications (which are now unreadable to all but the Trump cultists) — declared willingness to defend ignorance, bigotry, dishonesty and ineptitude on the chance that they’d get a top marginal tax rate of 28 percent. "

Naked greed is a powerful motivator, but I am reluctant to oversimplify. I think establishment Republicans also desire power and its perquisites, as much as they can obtain of it. Which would suggest that two remaining GOP principles have in fact survived the bonfire that was the Trump campaign.
The millions who voted for him were told (repeatedly) at the time that they were suckers and bigots. It's not an easy thing to stand up and say, "You were right, I am a sucker." Nobody wants to be that person.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board composed this piece entitled, "The Dishonest President. I think it is a brilliant profile of the first days of the Trump presidency. Here's an excerpt:

“What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.” – The L.A. Times Editorial Board

I just want to reiterate what I said a long time ago, in the Trump Watch thread: It looks like he is on the road to impeachment. Listen to Roger. We're not on the road to a fascist state. Not hardly. People panicked when Nixon was in, they panicked when Reagan was in, and they're panicking now, but Nixon and Reagan were polished politicians, whereas Trump is a business man - the paradigm bull in the china shop, to reluctantly use a cliche. The country is strong enough to survive the machinations of a macho, soccer-coach-style billionaire playboy in the White House. It has come through far more trying times than what we see at present.

*Putting on prophet hat (taking off the tinfoil one for the time-being)*

In 2021, DT will still be orange, though the grey roots will be greyer, and the lines in his face will be deeper. He'll write a book (with a ghost writer, naturally) about what it was like to be POTUS, and become even richer. He'll get another TV show, but by 2025 it will be cancelled, due to pressure from President Baldwin.

The most incredible thing about the whole mess is that it is forcing Trump to keep engaging with various subsets of people in a way that he has been able to avoid so far and as he does so it becomes more and more apparent that there is not a completely formed person hiding behind the schtick. He really is a small minded idiot deeply fascinated by his own reflection and little else. Like for real. Not "I just don't like him so I call him an idiot" but a for reals mindless thug is in charge of a nuclear super power. I think in the editorials that are popping up everywhere, that shoe is finally dropping for some who thought maybe behind the groping schmuck was something viable. But....no. At least some of the most vile subsets of American politics have tied themselves to this anvil as it is edged closer and closer to the precipice of bat shit crazy. Just read that Economist interview. Prime the pump. Awesome.

Thanks, Jim, for posting that link to the LA Times series of editorials. Powerful stuff.

I hope nobody overlooked this part:

Thanks, Andrew, for the Economist interview. Here is an excerpt, with Trump speaking first:

"you understand the expression “prime the pump”?

Yes.
We have to prime the pump.

It’s very Keynesian.
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?

Yes.
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do."

To be fair, I don't think Donald Trump is an idiot. I didn't think George W. Bush was an idiot. I think Trump combines an ignorance, laziness, and narcissism that make George W. look stakhanovite, with a rare gift for unfiltered speech. And that leads to astonishing moments like the one above. He becomes hard to take seriously, or put another way, easy to underestimate. People have done so before.
One Trump topos is the powerful people who keep coming to his throne for approval. We heard from Trump how Comey did so, here it is heads of state like Trudeau. These are the rules of Trumpworld, and what a sad world it is.

Update. Here is the latest NYT headline: "‘Looking Like a Liar or a Fool’: What It Means to Work for Trump"

Of course not, but he's no genius either, like Lenin or Mao. Let us be thankful for that.

Monty Python: "And there was much rejoicing..."

Outrage is what liberals do, Richard. It's the same over here. Right now it's all they do. And it's likely that scenario will continue until... oh I don't know. Until the death of grass.

There was a chap called Mr Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells on a comedy show just after the War. He did outrage. But he was on the right. I don't know what that means.

I was quoting "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" only last week. Though I called him "Outraged of Dagenham", which I suppose is a bit different.

At the risk of trivialising an important thread, am I deceived in my perception that DT is no longer orange and that the colour of his hair, which hitherto put me in mind of the beard of a billygoat I once had who used to bow his head and pee on it between his front legs, is now acceptably silver?

I was moved to comment by Bill's post #54, wherein he predicts the continuation of an image which already seems to have changed. Perhaps Trump is listening to image consultants. If so, is this a crack in the self-delusional crust? Is it a good or hope-full thing?

Ann,

Trust me on this, DT won't make 4 years. He will either be impeached, or he will resign. He hasn't the intellect nor the will to be a tyrant. He's simply a business man who stumbled into the White House, because of:

• The controversy around Hillary and her zipper-challenged husband
• The fact that a very vocal section of the 'Left' has left classical liberalism (and I am a classical liberal) and gone straight on into fascism. The US universities are breeding fascists without knowing it: they are young people who are against free speech and do not understand the theory of rights - because it is not being taught correctly. Ergo: a lot of people who would have voted democrat have gone to the 'other' side - grass is always greener complex.
  
  Everything will be fine, in the long run. No panic necessary.

Gotta say, any list that includes this but ignores the thuggery we saw last summer at Trump rallies is problematic. Fascism feeds on violence, and only one candidate not only had continual violence at rallies, but encouraged it.

One party voted in a wanna authoritarian buffoon.

He stumbled into the White House because he found a small but vocal group of people who were a combination of white nationalists, anti-intellectualists, and authoritarians. Small group, but in a field of 17, and with a celebrity as their spokesperson, he gradually gained steam and the GOP didn't have the guts to actively disown him.

Once he got the nomination, he was normalized, and the Clinton hate--some of it from real concern--brought enough people to his side.

The Left on campuses had little to do with this, though the Left is obviously in part to blame. That's a different--and thoroughly overblown--conversation best left to another thread though.

In the end, though, Bill, I think we both agree that the odds of DJT making it 4 years is low. My worry is that the damage he does to the institutions may be long-lasting. In other words, he ain't Caesar, but he may be a Gracchi brother.

Well, it's now up to the true progressive wing of the democratic party to drown out the neo-liberals -- who are the mirror image of the right's Heritage/tea party group that has hijacked congress for 10 years.

Bill Mahr is a (albeit garish) good example of intelligent progressive liberalism. So is Jon Stewart. So is Stephen Colbert. Barrack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, maybe Corey Booker, Seth Moulton and hopefully Sally Quinn represent the core of such a movement. We don't all agree lock, stock and barrel on everything, but we don't come to the arena with anything else on our agenda but solutions that advance our society as a whole, not tear it apart into factions (look what you've done, Trump). But there also must be an element of the centralist mentality to any successful movement.

Ann, Donald Trump's hair did look less unsettling last time I saw it! I'd not processed that. But his face still looked like something the cat brought in. He is not a 10.

Hey John Isbell. Lets say the theory of multiple intelligences is onto something. Maybe he is a savant in a few isolated areas that just happen to be a currency in this age where reality TV collided with a uneducated electorate dreaming of a white strongman to whisk them back into their delusional past place of Uberness. Remember, you are not observing him as a fully appearing person. He is led out to the piano by his own narcissistic disorder to play the same run of notes each time. As soon as he is asked any other tune at all, he lapses into banging the keys with his head. What more would you need see and hear from a human being to use the term idiot? That he has mastered a strange alchemy that transforms stuttered bluster and megalomania into soundbites of charisma is true enough but name any subject he has spoken on for more that a minute without script that hasn't drifted into idiot? He is a silver spoon, exposed to the best education and opportunities imaginable, yet his speech on the bus, in the oval office, in his home and in debates (with constant grooming and input from his keepers) is as low and stunted as can be imagined.

William. I am in the midst of the University system. This Horowitz stuff is silly. There are always a subset of ideologues around even the best ideas that find it too easy to just exchange the idea for the trials of using their own mind. I see more hope in the millennials that I engage with than any generation I have come across. I find them to be intelligent, spirited, and done with the previous generation's bullshit. I doubt you have spent much time in the actual presence of the new Left you are so quick to demonize. I have. From black bloc to earth firsters to general assemblies I have found some really brilliant souls. A few jackasses as well and some silly spurts of ideology and an occasional thuggish nutter but overall the salt of the earth. Horowitz was an ideologue when he was on the Left and remains so on the Right. Like Hitchens on religions. All strawman and certainty. Useless. One thing I rarely see is panic. Alot of sober assessment, a bit of despair, but mostly a desire to build their own future through various forms of resiliency and autonomous zones. Here in Portland the transition movement which grows out from the hub of the permaculture farms is full of amazing, grounded humans. There is much to hope for.

But the idea that everything was ok a short few years ago, and that soon we will lapse back into the bliss of the lavender stasis of the light blue and washed-out red is hard to defend. It is an elementary fact that that stasis has allowed the combination of our techniques, our greed,and our population to bring us into an age of extinction and biome collapse on a trajectory that, if unchecked, will collapse the ecosystem. No approach found in the mainstream politics of the last century will do anything but hasten the end. Your safe of constitutions, nation-states, and individualism has been cracked by the technicians of propaganda and plunder. It is now just a box to keep you close to the shear and the hook, quietly fattening up on miniseries and football match and most importantly convinced that any new ideas of different institutions or associations between beings is madness. "Just remain in the box while Daddy finishes up the other species and then he will get to yours."

While I appreciate the tone of the article your quote, Bill, the assurances that because a nation has survived, therefore it will is, in light of history, total nonsense. Is there still a population full of beautiful folks who will come to their senses? Yes. Are they enough of a counter weight? I don't know. This civilization has created some nation-sized crises that require nation-sized solutions and these crises are coming to a head just as the nation-sized organizations seem to be losing the modest bits of decency that once made them viable as solutions. Is catastrophe guaranteed? I hope not. But if the business-as-usual model holds on for another decade or two, they won't be needing Burke or Rousseau in class. It will be flint knapping, water dowsing and forging your own plough from Toyota parts 101.

Ok, if we're going to focus for a moment on the optics of the Donald persona, let's give it proper attention...
Yes, Ann -- It does appear to have gone silver, but the styling of it hasn't changed: the bigly comb-over, the bizzarro side-swept hair over the ears, the ducktail flip in the back (can you just imagine for a moment the time he spends in front of the mirror? --I shudder at the thought). It's straight out of central casting of a film noir villain. As John points out, his skin remains a boiled kettle of corned beef. His pouting lips a target for sucker punching.
Forgive me -- this is just a social forum, right? Will what I say here come back to haunt me? Who cares. DT already haunts me like a mysterious virus.

Andrew: savant perhaps captures my point: Donald Trump has ended up first, persuading people to make him extremely rich, and then, to put him in the Oval Office. To use the word idiot technically, I don't think that achievement would be common for idiots, even with the opportunities DT was handed. So I'm reluctant to jump to the word for him as I was for G.W., who was similarly intellectually lazy and incurious. He has a (narrow and unpleasant) skill set.
Low and stunted seems an excellent description of his speech. And moral idiots of his stature I think are hard to come by. I am no fan of Donald Trump, and i think he is a great corrupter of people and institutions. I wish for him a moment of clarity.

Oh - I also think his skill set, such as it is, is ill suited to the White House.

John I: I also think his skill set, such as it is, is ill suited to the White House.

As anyone who followed the presidential campaign will recall, (here it is) there was a concerted effort during the campaign to call into question Trumps temperament and how ill suited it was for the job. Well, the results are in...

Andrew M: He is led out to the piano by his own narcissistic disorder to play the same run of notes each time. As soon as he is asked any other tune at all, he lapses into banging the keys with his head.

No, he doesn't even need to be asked... But I love the "playing piano with your forehead" image.


I see more hope in the millennials that I engage with than any generation I have come across.

I agree wholeheartedly. It is why my optimism prevails even in this perfect storm.

Millennials

I am no fan of GW. In fact, our shenanigans with him got a round up by the secret service and a restraining order saying i couldn't be within x number of feet of the poor fellow but I don't think they are comparable. Bush was articulate in relation. The level of sustained personhood in the former president was a still pond to a tilted teaspoon in the latter in my opinion.

Andrew: sustained personhood. Yes, somehow Donald Trump seems to lack exactly that. At the end of the day there's no there there, just a collection of tics and reactions to stimuli.

BTW, the root of the word idiot is, I think, related to self. Self over the Polis by a being with no there there is Trump defined. I rest my case.

This has been called "explosive," and it is.

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/05/1...ian-mob-watch/

Terese, I've been watching this. It's a treacherous world of information out there and I'm not certain of how much of this is accurate/evidence based. Time will tell...

I haven't watched Part 2 yet.

As a complete non sequitur aside, playing the piano with one's head reminds me of one of my favorite Sesame Street bits, which I understand was discontinued because some misguided soul apparently thought kids shouldn't watch people banging their heads on pianos. Here's a sample. (It also illustrates nicely the way I go about writing rhymes).

I have spent 16 years online on various websites in deep discussion with people on the left, on Talk Freethought in particular, formerly known as Internet Infidels, and I've known several in real life. My current executive director is from Oregon and is a progressive liberal, by her own definition.

I don't care for your accusation that I've "demonized" them (and quickly, no less, which is hilariously incorrect): That's just empty, easy, and convenient rhetoric. It doesn't describe me or my position in the least, and I believe you know it. I'm a centrist, who also identifies as a classical liberal, along with many intelligent people, like Dave Rubin just for one example - a liberal who recognized the definite fascist tendencies of the radical left and has moved over toward a more centrist position.

Horowitz's book I mentioned is excellent, and was a real eye opener for me and a whole lot of other people whose hearts and minds are instinctively leftward in political thought, but who can't help but notice the direction the radical left has taken. There is nothing of the ideologue in his book, in fact quite the contrary.

The current litmus test for faux liberals would be:
Do you agree that colleges should censure who is allowed to speak on campus?