[Winstonm]

House Intelligence Committee Republicans: "Did anyone on the campaign collude with Russia?"
Donald Trump Jr.: "I'm not allowed to answer that."
House Intelligence Committee Republicans: "O.K., that does it for me. Anyone else? No? President says no collusion. We can't find anyone who disagrees. Case closed."

[Al_U_Card]

Winstonm, on 2018-March-12, 21:59, said:

House Intelligence Committee Republicans: "Did anyone on the campaign collude with Russia?"
Donald Trump Jr.: "I'm not allowed to answer that."
House Intelligence Committee Republicans: "O.K., that does it for me. Anyone else? No? President says no collusion. We can't find anyone who disagrees. Case closed."

HSCA and David Atlee Philips, George Joannides et al. Just more of the same.

[y66]

From Rex Tillerson’s No Good, Very Bad, Final Week by Nick Wadhams at Bloomberg:

Quote

“Rex Tillerson was asleep on March 9 in the luxurious Sheraton Resort in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when President Donald Trump woke him with a 2 a.m. phone call to say he’d already decided, without consulting or warning his top diplomat, to accept a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It was the last real bit of sleep Tillerson would get in three days. The week before had been hard: Tillerson’s father had died, and he’d taken a few days off for the funeral. Now he had to deal with Trump’s latest ‘breakthrough.’ On his first trip to Africa as secretary of state and several time zones ahead of his boss, Tillerson launched into a succession of phone calls with foreign leaders to inform them that, yes, Trump had just decided to blow up decades of foreign policy convention for what could be the most momentous handshake between a U.S. president and a foreign counterpart since Richard Nixon went to China.

“By doing so, Trump also upended the carefully laid plans of advisers such as Tillerson, who’d envisioned a process that might eventually lead to a meeting with Kim, but only after painstaking, monthslong deliberation regarding all the possible pitfalls and dangers of such a move—and, most important, to assess whether North Korea’s offer was genuine. Instead, Trump had summoned a visiting South Korean delegation to his office a day earlier than planned to brief him on its own trip to Pyongyang, and the president decided on the spot to meet Kim.

“ ‘I think I had four hours of sleep in 72 hours because of a lot of what’s going on,’ a clearly exhausted Tillerson told reporters on the flight home from Nigeria. He’d spent one day with a stomach bug and was returning a day early to prepare for meetings on North Korea, tariffs, and other issues on Washington time. ‘I felt like, look—I just need to get back.’ ”

I feel you man.

[y66]

Quote

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans on Tuesday marvelled at Donald J. Trump’s ability to transform the former C.E.O. of ExxonMobil into a figure deserving of their sympathy.

Across the country, Americans expressed amazement that Rex Tillerson, who presided over the nation’s largest oil company and has an estimated net worth of three hundred million dollars, is now someone they find themselves pulling for.

“Rex Tillerson made tens of millions of dollars a year while ordinary consumers like me suffered from high gas prices,” Tracy Klugian, a hardware-store clerk in Lansing, Michigan, said. “Having said that, no one deserves to be treated the way he was today.”

“ExxonMobil had an egregious record for environmental damage and human-rights violations around the world,” Carol Foyler, a school counsellor in Santa Rosa, California, said. “Still, your heart has to go out to him.”

As for Tillerson, he bid a gracious farewell to his associates at the State Department and announced that, even though his government career was at an end, he would never stop trying to harm the world as a private citizen.

It's not easy to be so empathetic and so smug at the same time. But he has a point. No one deserves to be treated this way.

[y66]

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Lamb and Saccone are neck and neck in the Pennsylvania special election in a district that Trump won by double digits in 2016.

[y66]

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Lamb leads by 95 votes. The last 1 percent of precincts to be counted are in a county that leans toward Saccone. If they vote the same way as the other 99 percent voted, he will win by 8.

Scratch that. The NYT just corrected their #s and are showing Lamb 847 ahead at the 99 percent mark.

[y66]

Lamb eked out a 579 vote win. Hope it holds up.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2018-March-13, 22:03, said:

Lamb eked out a 579 vote win. Hope it holds up.

MSNBC is reporting that Saccone would need to win about 90% of the write-in votes in the last two counties in order to overtake that lead.

Recount is probably going to be next.

[Winstonm]

This from Slate.com is helpful in explaining and tying together all the angles of potential criminality from the 2016 campaign.

[Winstonm]

Another campaign promise kept: Trump said they would get tired of winning.

Politico:

Quote

U.S. House, Pennsylvania, District 18
Percent Candidate Party Votes Winner
49.8% Conor Lamb Dem 113,813
49.6% Rick Saccone GOP 113,186
0.6% Drew Miller Lib 1,379

[jjbrr]

Do we have any christians in this thread?

[y66]

From Strong Performance by Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania Shakes Trump and G.O.P. by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear at NYT:

Quote

LOS ANGELES — President Trump woke up here in the land of earthquakes on Wednesday morning, but he was 2,500 miles away from the tremor that was really shaking his party.

While the president hobnobbed on Tuesday night with wealthy donors in the exclusive enclave of Beverly Park, the voters in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh were in revolt, giving the Democratic candidate a narrow victory in a special election in Pennsylvania that was taking on outsize proportions.

Just as they did outside Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala., in December, and Richmond, Va., and Washington in November, energized and angry suburban voters were swamping the Trump stalwarts in the more rural parts of those regions, sending a clear message to Republicans around the country.

While Republican turnout in a district that Mr. Trump won in 2016 by 20 percentage points was healthy, Democrats showed again that they could tap unions and other traditionally friendly groups to get their voters out in droves. The N.A.A.C.P. helped win Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s former Alabama Senate seat for Doug Jones in December. Organized labor, once seen as fractured and feckless in the Trump era, gave the Democrat Conor Lamb his edge in Pennsylvania.

Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate who wrapped himself in Mr. Trump’s cloak and drew the president to his district last weekend in a bid to rescue a faltering campaign, trailed Mr. Lamb, a former Marine seeking to show his party can compete even in red territory. Mr. Lamb held an apparently insurmountable lead of 641 votes on Wednesday, with about only 500 absentee, provisional and military ballots remaining to be counted, according to county election officials.

The victory may yet be contested, but whether Mr. Lamb holds on to officially win the House seat matters less than the fact that he was so competitive in the first place. The rebuke of Mr. Trump came from a part of western Pennsylvania that overwhelmingly supported him in 2016 and that typically would not seem likely to turn to a Democrat. The district was seen as so strongly Republican that the Democrats did not even field a candidate in recent years.

And while Mr. Saccone carried the most Trump-supporting counties along the West Virginia border, Mr. Lamb made just enough inroads in those rural areas to give the voters in suburban Allegheny County the chance to deliver the Democrat the slimmest of leads.

Rarely shy about weighing in on other news of the day, Mr. Trump made no mention of the race on Twitter on Wednesday morning. Instead, he left it to an aide to find the silver lining. Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Air Force One en route to St. Louis that Mr. Trump actually helped the Republican candidate and asserted that the Democrat’s showing was really a validation of the popularity of the president’s policies.

“The president’s engagement in the race turned what was a deficit for the Republican candidate to what is essentially a tie,” Mr. Shah said. “Also, the Democrat in the race really embraced the president’s policies and his vision, whereas he didn’t really embrace Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader.”

The stinging message could hardly have been more pointed for a Republican president mired in low approval ratings, burdened by investigations and facing the growing likelihood that Democrats may seize power in Congress later this year.

Mr. Lamb, 33, defied political geography and appeared on the verge of capturing the state’s 18th District despite a torrent of Republican money and Mr. Trump’s personal intervention. At a rally Saturday, Mr. Trump mocked Mr. Lamb as “Lamb the Sham,” promised that Mr. Saccone would “vote for us all the time,” and rambled about his own achievements as he sought to transfer his own political success to the Republican candidate.

In the end, none of it seemed to be enough. Democratic enthusiasm appeared to overwhelm a part of the state that has long been a Republican stronghold. For the president, the vote is an ominous echo of Democratic victories in Virginia and Alabama, where his political efforts were shrugged off or counterproductive.

The tally was also a blunt rejection of the president’s political calculation that tax cuts and steel tariffs would persuade voters in a region once dominated by the steel industry to embrace the Trump agenda on behalf of Mr. Saccone. “Steel is back,” he repeatedly said at the rally, apparently to little effect.

A Republican victory in Pennsylvania might have helped deflect attention from the continuing collapse of the president’s inner circle, which Tuesday included Mr. Trump’s abrupt firing of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the forced resignation of John McEntee, one of Mr. Trump’s closest personal aides, who is under investigation for financial crimes and was marched out of the White House.

Instead, Mr. Saccone’s lackluster performance was a grim bookend for a day in which the president’s trip to the Mexico-California border to view wall prototypes was completely overshadowed by the churning turnovers in his national security team.

Edit: A blunt rejection of Trump? Or an example of how Dems can win back blue-collar whites if they stop speaking about them with contempt? No doubt.

[Winstonm]

FWIW Department

I happen to agree with Trump's block for national security reasons of the Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm. I wonder how many of our "markets are always right" brethren concur and how they justify this intrusion into the actions of "the market".

[Al_U_Card]

jjbrr, on 2018-March-14, 17:07, said:

Do we have any christians in this thread?

Are the lions hungry?

[Al_U_Card]

Winstonm, on 2018-March-15, 09:32, said:

FWIW Department

I happen to agree with Trump's block for national security reasons of the Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm. I wonder how many of our "markets are always right" brethren concur and how they justify this intrusion into the actions of "the market".

The "free" market is anything but when monopolies or cartels operate. Stopping corporate domination of markets is the best way to fight fascism. DT had better put on a 3-piece... the one with the kevlar vest, especially since a head shot might not do enough damage in his case :0

[hrothgar]

Oh look...

Another one of those conspiracies about "the Russians"...
This time, folks are alleging that the Russian government carried out a terrorist attack int the British Isles involving weapons of mass destruction!

Luckily, we're smart enough to know that this was a Deep State operation involving members of the Illuminati who were burrowed into MI-12

[Winstonm]

Al_U_Card, on 2018-March-15, 12:13, said:

The "free" market is anything but when monopolies or cartels operate. Stopping corporate domination of markets is the best way to fight fascism. DT had better put on a 3-piece... the one with the kevlar vest, especially since a head shot might not do enough damage in his case :0

I guess he must not be a "real Scotsman".

[Al_U_Card]

Based on the fervor about the election result (paper-thin win for the Dem) should the Dems take back the House (and even the Senate) wouldn't that place Trump in an even more powerful position? Now the Reps can frustrate the Dems but can attempt to lead Trump. If they lose that (those) majority, Trump will be an even more free agent.
I guess things really are "worse than we thought" (to borrow an alarmist phrase)

[johnu]

Al_U_Card, on 2018-March-16, 02:10, said:

Based on the fervor about the election result (paper-thin win for the Dem) should the Dems take back the House (and even the Senate) wouldn't that place Trump in an even more powerful position? Now the Reps can frustrate the Dems but can attempt to lead Trump. If they lose that (those) majority, Trump will be an even more free agent.
I guess things really are "worse than we thought" (to borrow an alarmist phrase)

If the Democrats win the house and/or senate, they control the committees. Even if legislation grinds to a halt, the committees can do a legitimate review of the administration. If they have the numbers, they would also be able to start impeachment proceedings.

[y66]

Al_U_Card, on 2018-March-16, 02:10, said:

Based on the fervor about the election result (paper-thin win for the Dem) should the Dems take back the House (and even the Senate) wouldn't that place Trump in an even more powerful position? Now the Reps can frustrate the Dems but can attempt to lead Trump. If they lose that (those) majority, Trump will be an even more free agent.
I guess things really are "worse than we thought" (to borrow an alarmist phrase)

Lamb won because he was a formidable candidate who took kenberg's advice seriously and because Saccone's Trump wingman wannabe strategy and the Republican strategy of doubling down on their "we did it for you tax reform message" did not go over well. The margin in PA was razor thin relative to 50% but hardly razor thin compared to November 2016. IMO, the message is that even disaffected voters are fed up with the dysfunction in Congress and are ready to listen to politicians who are ready to listen to them and move away from the fringes toward the middle which, ironically, is where Trump stands politically. Politically moderate is one thing. But it's not enough to offset being a pig, a racist, an oligarch, a petty tyrant and an effing moron. The idea that McConnell, Ryan and their ilk or anyone can lead Trump is mind boggling.