Starker on 16/3/2018 at 07:06
The. Best. People.
Quote:
(
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/paul-manafort-faces-305-years/index.html)
Paul Manafort could face the rest of his life -- and almost 300 years or more -- in prison, a federal judge said Tuesday.
"Given the nature of the charges against the defendant and the apparent weight of the evidence against him, defendant faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison," federal judge T.S. Ellis III of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia wrote Tuesday.
[...]
Ellis said Manafort has the financial resources and international connections to help himself flee before his trial and stay at large, "as well as every incentive to do so."
Manafort is currently wearing two GPS monitors -- one from the federal court in Virginia and one from the federal court in DC.
june gloom on 16/3/2018 at 23:58
Quote Posted by Pyrian
"President Pence" is seeming less and less bad an idea in comparison every day, even if he is much more likely to get re-elected.
No, I'd rather die. He's even further to the right than Trump. I don't want to be that person weaving a tale of impending doom for queer people with mass conversion camps, but the danger is real. To say nothing about his views on women.
Renzatic on 17/3/2018 at 00:08
Two years of an overbearing, ultimately unpopular, albeit relatively stable president who'll likely have his religious initiatives stymied by congress and SCOTUS vs. two more years saddled with a narcissistic blowhard who might end up dragging us into a pile of shit we won't easily be able to climb out of during a fit of pique?
Pence is a fairly quiet, unassuming, by-the-books style individual, and does have at least some respect for our institutions. Any damage he may cause during his stint as president can be mitigated, or curtailed entirely. With Trump, you don't if he'll hold the same opinions on a matter from Wednesday to Thursday, and will eventually allow himself to be surrounded by bootlicks who'll run roughshod over everything simply to keep themselves in his good graces.
...yeah, Pence might actually be the better of two bad choices here.
june gloom on 17/3/2018 at 00:14
Quote Posted by Renzatic
who'll likely have his religious initiatives stymied by congress and SCOTUS
You sweet summer child.
Renzatic on 17/3/2018 at 00:42
Eh, I'm an optimist.
demagogue on 17/3/2018 at 00:59
"Better" is unfortunate in its connotation. More like, in that presidential ranking historians make, Pence would be in the bottom 1/3, whereas Trump is already unambiguously the worst in US history. Pence would still be awful, but better than the worst in US history in the literal English sense of the word. Not a ribbon to stick on your fridge really.
Edit: This percolating disaster could play out in so many ways. I was reading an article about Xi's ambition now that he's dictator of China for life. They really want to make a push to reintegrate Taiwan during Trump's term and making overtures that force could be involved, which every other post-war president has been clear the US would oppose and is committed to its defense militarily. But how would Trump really respond? Another story this week was Trump quietly make plans to unilaterally junk the Iran nuclear agreement, which Iran by the way has been following, presumably so Trump can better denuclearize Iran on his own initiative? And what would that look like beyond just bombing their nuclear power plants outright? And there are so many ways the meeting with Kim could go badly. Kim gets all the validation for bringing the US to the table, but what does the US get out of it?
I mean his negotiation style is brinkmanship. You start with the most extreme position, in these cases war, and hold the line to the utter end until they give up their batna (best alternative to non-agreement). That may work for business negotiations (if you're unscrupulous like he is) but for diplomatic negotiations it's a bad idea. I don't have confidence in him to even be within 500 feet of the room of these things going on, much less the key decisionmaker.
Renzatic on 17/3/2018 at 01:16
Right now, we're not hoping for the next great hope. We're hedging our bets. Better is, yeah, very relative here.
Starker on 17/3/2018 at 17:18
Jeff "(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFsgU_WLko) I don't recall" Sessions fired McCabe for lack of candor under oath:
Quote:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/us/politics/andrew-mccabe-fbi-fired.html)
WASHINGTON — Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director and a frequent target of President Trump's scorn, was fired Friday after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected an appeal that would have let him retire this weekend.
Mr. McCabe promptly declared that his firing, and Mr. Trump's persistent needling, were intended to undermine the special counsel's investigation in which he is a potential witness.
Mr. McCabe is accused in a yet-to-be-released internal report of failing to be forthcoming about a conversation he authorized between F.B.I. officials and a journalist.
In a statement released late Friday, Mr. Sessions said that Mr. McCabe had shown a lack of candor under oath on multiple occasions.
nickie on 17/3/2018 at 19:06
The current administration continues on its utterly despicable way. It seems I was wrong in believing Tillerson to have been fired on the Friday though there does seem to be a lack of clarity over when he knew. An aide who said Tillerson didn't know the reason for his firing has also been fired. And the new proposed CIA head, Gina Haspel, is apparently an expert in torture having run the first CIA black site, or so I hear. Great stuff all round.
I am wondering whether 'the American people' also want to puke every time Stormy Daniels' lawyer invokes the phrase - more or less every sentence so far.