Thank god Michael Flynn resigned (or got fired) or whatever. I hope Hillary shows up in his driveway and chants “Lock him up!”
I especially enjoyed the part about him violating the Emoluments clause because only political geeks will get the irony.
Of course, Flynn is not the end. He’s blood in the water and the sharks are beginning to swarm in search of fresh meat.
If you were wondering if Pence and the Intelligence Community could team up to take down a pillar of the government, now you have your answer.
It’s a sad comment of the status of America that Pence turns out to be the smartest person in the room.
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“if Pence and the Intelligence Community could team up to take down a pillar of the government”
—-
Now that’s an interesting proposition.
It must be a paranoid nightmare in the Trump House right now. I think Martin’s right, Pence is going to be the linchpin of the Trump presidency. If Pence decides (for the GOP) that Trump needs to go, he’s gonna be gone.
And if Trump does suffer a ‘paranoid nightmare’ about Pence…….things could get quite ugly.
‘May you live in interesting times’ is the old Chinese curse.
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Is if he wants in the history books for a rump term. That’s a no brainer.
What you have to decide is what is the cost is for your complicity.
James Baker offered up a carbon tax. That’s a serious offer from a serious man. My take is they have to move on womens reproductive rights and healthcare. That is who is in the streets, and having that eunuch Pence stick it to the God bothers…. lulz.
I don’t think Pence pretending he was out of the loop is going to fly in the long run. Why did he not share his concerns or demand to know more during the campaign?
Inoculated as much as possible from Flynn. Priebus as well. Remember they were running the transition and anybody with two brain cells to rub together knew Flynn was a disaster waiting to happen. That means the best way to avoid getting caught up in it was to keep their distance probably through letting Bannon take point with Flynn. Cowardly? Yes. Still it gave them plausible deniability.
The people who won’t have that are the Bannon faction of this white house (Bannon/Miller/Conway) and in the end the President.
Is rat smart. When she hot foots it on over to FOX, the bugs are about to splatter on the windshield.
Factional knives are out for Preibus. Bannon guys feeling threatened?
NO!
Bannon and Flynn and Pence and Erik Prince… are strongly linked.
Keep your eyes on the movers behind the scenes.
“Fired” by two Presidents from different political parties. That might be record setting.
Note: Michael McFaul tweet
Could be the one time where
is actually true.
Flynn might have been canned for lying (lol no), and his offer to Russia might not have been illegal (it clearly was illegal but the Logan act is almost definitely unconstitutional), but really it’s not the cover-up that’s problematic.
It’s the fact that the Trumpers engaged in a criminal conspiracy with a foreign power to subvert our democratic system.
And that’s not going away with Flynn.
The bitch was about to win. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
OK. So the record is two years and two months, right? June ’72 to Aug ’74?
That’s the thrown gauntlet.
Let’s not leave behind the great likelihood that President Trump either directed or signed off on General Flynn’s violations of the Logan Act. The General needs to be served with a subpoena tomorrow.
This part from the linked story richly depicts the complete clusterfucked Administration:
“…By Monday evening, Mr. Flynn’s fortunes were rapidly shifting — his resignation came roughly seven hours after Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, said on MSNBC that Mr. Trump had “full confidence” in the retired general.
And when he did step down, it happened so quickly that his resignation does not appear to have been communicated to National Security Council staff members, two of whom said they learned about it from news reports…”.
And then we see in the story that the Administration is floating a trial balloon tonight. They propose to replace Flynn with David Petraeus, a disgraced former government official convicted of leaking classified information, storing classified information insecurely, in a case where he lied to Justice Department officials who investigated his lawbreaking.
Astonishingly bad judgement, all around.
Compared to Flynn, Patreeus would be a breath of fresh air.
Fetid air from a diseased swamp.
I don’t think lesser-of-two-evils really works in this situation.
Except that plenty in the Beltway probably still jerk off to the mention of Petraeus’ name. Remember how MoveOn caught so much shit for their Betray Us ad? And that was way before Petraeus was sharing secrets with his mistress. I doubt Joke Line or any other Beltway clown ever apologized.
Alright, but compared to Flynn? It’s like choosing between a “79 VW Rabbit diesel and a “62 Skoda. The latter is filthy and out date but basically competent and serviceable. The other is insufferable, ridiculous and, most important, really dangerous. If it doesn’t collapse like a tin can, it might just catch on fire or explode.
Someone who leaked classified information to his biographer/lover and stored it in an unsecure location is not “competent and serviceable”. There’s got to be someone with sane policy views who has not been convicted of such a crime.
Leaking it deliberately to impress his doxy,
Something like this is going to happen: Per NPR this morning Rep. Adam Schiff is suggesting some knowledge that Flynn-Kislyak contacts go “higher up” than Flynn, and we now know Sally Yates informed Trump about Flynn’s calls weeks ago, before she was fired. I.e. somebody in orange makeup is the person Schiff is referring to.
Petraeus has already shown a disregard for intelligence. What in the world would make him change his spots now? I agree this is “Astonishingly bad judgement, all around. “
I don’t know about the Logan Act but this kind of behavior from those two assholes certainly has a passing acquaintance to what some might call treason. And they said Hillary should be locked up.
flynn’s ouster illustrates what trump & co. have failed to understand about following strict vetting procedures. they see the rules as a hindrance when in fact the rules are there to protect them and the country from getting bogged down in embarrassing losses like this right out the starting gate.
no, this is not the end, not for a regime this thoroughly corrupt.
Yes, and the rules might help prevent a real treason. But f that you know. Rules don’t apply to these nut jobs.
Remember when the Bernie/Greenwald crowd were mocking Hillary for suggesting there were ties between Trump and Russia(Putin’s Puppet). I do. Those Leftists will find some excuse to deny it. It’s because the anti-global left and the anti-global right end up in the same place. Both shit.
Although written in the hours before Flynn’s resignation, this WP analysis is a reminder of the ties that bind the US and Russia. None of the problems with the SCROTUS (so-called ruler of the US) will go away with Flynn falling on his sword. Bannon’s ideology is still driving whatever happens. The inner circle is locking out seasoned national security professionals. The inner circle has no idea or interest in how to handle sensitive intel. In other words, this is what my military friends call a clusterf*ck. And it’s one that was entirely avoidable. In fact quite a number of folks warned that what we are witnessing now was a predictable disaster waiting to happen.
That clusterf**k you speak of includes the whole freaking cabinet. Geniuses all ready to show the world how ignorant they are. Sadly a whole segment of the population thinks they got it right.
The SCROTUS reference made me laugh out loud — good one!
Isn’t this a good thing? Stuffing the DeepState/PermaGov into the oubliette? Am I the only one old enough to remember the Church Committee?
Sooner or later, rats get what they got coming.
What’s great is, “You help me get elected and, in return, I’ll get rid of the sanctions” is a perfect example of The Art of the Deal. (I can imagine Trump, like Colonel Jessup at the end of A Few Good Men, blurting out, “Of course I did it! I wanted to win!”)
Yes, he didn’t write the book, and it’s an idiotic and evil “deal” anyway, but that never stopped a business person before (the only obstacle they take seriously is the threat of losing money — and Trump doesn’t even pass that test).
This is a perfect illustration of why you never want businesspeople anywhere near government. The two systems are incompatible — that’s why they’re set in perennial opposition.
Not so sure that Pence will walk away clean from this…
Don’t forget that Pence is in very, very deep with the Prince and DeVos families… and the Prince family in particular is a) connected with international mercenary activities, b) a dominionist, white supremacist hotbed, and c) very interested in the whole “Christian Soldiers vs the benighted savage” culture war unto apocalypse thing.
I have a feeling that the Steve Bannon/Flynn/Russia connection is far far far deeper than simply Trump, I think there’s a connection to Pence, Prince, DeVos that runs through it.
https:/theintercept.com/2017/01/17/notorious-mercenary-erik-prince-is-advising-trump-from-the-shado
ws
In short: The Prince and DeVos families have been funding Pence and other, like-minded Dominionists for years. Erik Prince has been close with Bannon for a while. Betsy DeVos. Flynn probably knew Prince since the early 2000’s…
The right-wing press has already started the story that Barack Obama wants to bring down Trump. This will feed that narrative.
Resistance to Trump does not hinge on the Russia sanctions issue, and what concerns a lot of people is using Russia as an excuse to continue the military industrial complex sapping federal finances that need to go to other projects. For example, public education is now toast, given the number of GOP-controlled legislatures, the GOP-controlled Congress, and Sec. Betsy DeVos.
The Russia issue does not move people outside the Beltway because the evidence is being suppressed because of “sources and methods”.
If this was indeed a Pence and intelligence community hit job, it will be interesting come the history books to find out what part of the intelligence community was involved. My sense from John Schindler’s public attack is that it was the GOP neoconservative PNAC-oriented members of the intelligence community best represented by the former intelligence directors who signed on to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Thinking that Clinton is now retired. But watch the right-wing media start tying her into the story as the left wing has been doing since the election.
The left is arguing that the Democratic Party is occupying the political space formerly occupied by the Reagan Republican Party and motivated by Third Way. I find that ignores the current disarray. But YMMV.
You Russian ass-kissers keep moving the goalposts. What the hell i wrong with you?
Awfully insulting characterization of “The Left,” don’t you think?
Too bad there are those on the left who seem so eager to live down to it, eh?
Very little of the MIC has been aimed at Russia in the last decade and more.
I respect your views but you and a few others here minimized the Russian role in our election. I’m not sure you have much credibility on the Russian issue.
In the same way a domino falling takes care of itself.
And of course no one is asking about the calls and contacts that Flynn most certainly has had since he joined the WH. How many calls have there been and what information has been relayed to the Russians from Flynn since Jan 20?
You mean ‘fraternal calls for cooperation’….
Why are we assuming that Flynn’s conversations were one way? He could just as well been getting instructions!
Pretty likely the communications since Trump took office included the identities of a couple of American agents in Russia who were taken away for secret trials and might well already be dead.
Pence’s attempt to appear unaware of current events won’t work in the long term, in my opinion. Why didn’t he voice his worries or ask questions throughout the campaign? Flappy Bird