On tax cut: Of course the tax cut has yielded positive short term results; an unfunded tax cut is just pure stimulus. The problem is: The timing: this is absolutely not the right time for stimulus. The recipients: most of the benefits go to the already wealthy The deficit: as mentioned, it's mostly unfunded, so it just goes straight onto the books as deficit spending. NATO: We have been putting pressure on NATO prior to Trump, and it was under Obama that the US secured commitments to reach the 2% guideline within a decade. It's also important to keep the point of the 2% guideline in mind: it's not to save the US money, it's to maintain the deterrent value of the treaty. However much you value the deterrent value of an uptick in European defense spending, it is completely counterbalanced by the negative value of the US President implying the US might not stand behind Article V. CFPB: Trump has installed an acting director who straight up hates the agency and tried to get it eliminated while he was in congress. The Student Loan Ombudsman just quit in protest of the director's policies and accused him of failing to enforce the law. Any google search of "Mulvaney CFPB" will bring up a bunch of stories of the efforts he's taking to gut the bureau.
I'm literally the opposite of "or bust" for the foreseeable future: Beto or... the next best candidate ...or the next best after that ...or the next best after that ...ad infinitum
I'm anyone-but-trump. I would prefer a moderate republican over a moderate liberal, but would vote republican if the dem was hard liberal. Unless that republican was trump. In which case, fuck him.
Or, as I said in a previous post, conversely, it only appears that way to the other half of the population that believes the the legacy media and social media have discredited themselves with their actions. If you believe the "Muh Russia" things, then there are questions that should be answered: -Why is Stefan Halper, a known and paid DoD informant and MI-6 official with ties to Russia meeting with Trump campaign officials leading up to the election? -What is the original source information for the FISA warrant on Carter Page? Is it the Steele document? Is it the known effort by Stefan Halper? If it is something else then by all means please correct me. Otherwise, this looks strikingly like a concerted Government effort against a Presidential candidate. Save yourselves the political grandstanding though, I don't give a shit which team you play for because I play for neither and you won't convince me......there are FISA court rulings stating just that and an ongoing OIG investigation of these particular FISA court abuses and people are going to end up in prison at the end of this.
I’d like to remind you that people are already headed to prison. They just aren’t the agents of the Deep State. Funny how that’s working. Your general position is nuts though. Asserting that the trump campaign shouldn’t have been or be investigated when we know that a) Russians tried to influence the election through illegal means b) that the trump campaign was open to their help (trump tower meeting) c) trump et al lies about all of it at every turn. He is lying about it all again today saying that Lester Holt doctored the video where he admitted to firing Comey because of the investigation. For a guy who thinks that all politicians are dirty liars and the entire system is corrupt, I cannot fathom your credulity regarding all things trump. He lies to you every day over and over and over again about matters big and small, but sure, keep on huffing that deep state paint. I’m sure it’s easier to do that than contend with the fact that you voted for a dude whose incompetence is only matched by his corruption.
It just depends on who is running the investigation and giving it press attention. Given certain facts, if you wanted to spin it that way, McCain could've been given the same treatment. Manafort's partner at the lobbying firm, Davis, was McCain's campaign manager. In 2008, McCain met with the same Russian that the Trump campaign is accused of hooking up with, etc. So, I think a lot of people just tune out.
This isn’t all just some cockamamee bullshit cooked up by the press or an opposing political campaign. I don’t know anything about the McCain thing, and I’m too lazy to look it up, but it’s worth noting that the person running this investigation is a republican who was appointed by republicans.This isn’t a partisan witch hunt.
It's not so much an investigation into Russian election meddling, as much as "find any crime you can and prosecute it" but I'm at the point where I hope he was careless enough to pay Stormy Daniels straight from the campaign funds. Circumstantially, it almost seems like a technicality, but it's breaking a law other politicians have gone to prison for, and is solid grounds for impeachment. Fox news and co can pretend it's a simple campaign violation (look at how much Obama got fined!) but it's lot more serious than the administrative fines they keep comparing it to. I don't know how many more of Trump's 'tough guy' tweets I can stomach. I think it was his "special place in hell" statement to Trudeau and this tweet to Iran that finally broke me. I don't know that the effects of his policies have been nearly as disastrous as some believe, but if you think so you can take some solace in the fact that Trump's #1 priority is and always will be whining about the media. You only have so much time for little details like your actual job when that's your primary focus. I don't know if he's even attempted to implement some of the stuff he campaigned on, but he does have his economic advisers reviewing whether or not google's search engine was mean to him. Unbelievable.
Let's not forget that this whole thing got started because during normal "foreign spy" surveillance as far back as 2015, Trump and Co were being discussed by the Russians, and those discussions are what got this whole thing on the radar in the first place. That followed up with national security agencies investigating and finding legitimate reasons for further investigation, so the special counsel investigation was kicked off. Also, don't forget that a lot of the shit being litigated right now is NOT part of that special counsel investigation, it's info that was uncovered by that investigation that was then handed over to the State, etc, to prosecute. For the most part, we have no idea what Mueller has uncovered, only that there are so far some 19(?) indictments and people are in jail... it's been reviewed by a non-partisan panel and they unanimously agreed it should continue. I'm amazed that there are a ton of people who feel it should just be canned because it's looking bad... we spent 2 years going through Bengazi bullshit with ZERO results, and here we are with actual indictments, people in jail, and legit results that really should be investigated. And it's not just the Republicans that are being investigated... they have also expanded to include some Democrats now, based on what they've found. If you want to clean up your political system, why the hell wouldn't you want this to keep going? Other than you're afraid of "your team losing", of course... which is the heart of the issue... blind devotion to "your team". How about you clean out the bad players on your teams and rebuild with something better? <--- advice for ALL teams
Any dems involved should go to jail just like the rest of them. Let the chips fall where they will. This whole system needs a nice dose of legal ex lax.
I fully support cleaning up the political system, and investigating and prosecuting criminal activity and corruption in our government. The point I intended to make in my reply to Gravy, was that a lot of people have a hard time thinking that's what's actually being done (in general). The fact that it appears that instead of unbiased investigating, reporting, and prosecuting, that every single thing is politicized. And, it's been going on for some time, ramped up recently because of how polarizing Trump is.* "Clinton lied, impeach him!" It was just sex. "Obama was born in Africa, he's a fraud!" You're psycho. Clinton leaked to the Russians! No, actually, it was Trump. * Of course the answer is that "reporting" is not some specially revered service of the people, but rather a business. Reporting on Trump's ridiculous tweets gets a LOT more views, web traffic, etc. than some banal discussion about improving a trade deal with China. And, it's a beast, too. Fox News doesn't even have to report on anything. They can simply make a headline out of "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT CNN SAID ABOUT TRUMP" and then they get their page views. So, yeah, a lot of people tune out.
Painting everything related to the Mueller investigation as being nothing but politics is a tactic Trump is using effectively. He has crossed so many lines verbally by attempting to discredit what are normally apolitical law enforcement bodies by publicly interfering in his own investigation. He’s blurred boundaries and the GOP is proud to play along because anyone on his team sees a convenient excuse to think this investigation is itself corrupt. So now when Mueller comes back with whatever he has, his supporters will think the whole thing is bogus. This whole thing is such an obvious coverup. No innocent person behaves this way.
This is what he's referring to by the way The video in that article of him skateboarding in a Whataburger paring lot is awesome Oh, and then because the GOP started it, of course twitter dug up pictures of Cruz in high school. Those pictures were.... less than flattering.
They thought they were making him look like a stoner-slacker type when all they were doing was making him look awesome. It was a spectacular backfire.
They literally took what was supposed to be a token, local, flash in the pan senate candidate, and made him a nationally-known name overnight. It was so stupid it's beautiful.
It probably went down the wrong tube or something... It's almost like most politicians have no clue about technology or social media except for what they hire firms to handle for them. Who woulda guessed...
I am not directing this at you directly more as a response to all of the recent responses- You state above that these entities are supposed to be apolitical in how they prosecute crimes. The point I am trying to get across is this is not what has happened. Look at the list of people who were involved with the Trump investigation who have been demoted and fired or demoted and left. There are ongoing OIG investigations into this stuff that could very likely land people in jail because they were not behaving at the very highest levels of both FBI and Justice as an apolitical entity. Separately, everyone wants to point to Mueller's Republican affiliation as proof that this investigation was a bipartisan effort. Don't forget, Trump isn't really a Republican; he is no more a Republican than Bernie is a Democrat. I think of it more along the lines that Trump is an outsider and the insiders are making it abundantly clear he is not welcome. The DNC was able to pull this off with Bernie before he could get to the general election......I guess kudos for them that they didn't have to Jeopardize the integrity of Federal Law Enforcement institutions to do it. No matter though, I guess, we just brush that aside as well and back to business as usual with that party. In any case, with those things being said; I have never stated that I think Trump is a good person, nor that he shouldn't be investigated and charged if wrong-doing is proven. I have said that I don't think he will ever be impeached or charged based on this particular event because when you get to the nitty-gritty of the evidence against him, the Government went way out of bounds to come after him. You can't send known spies (Halper) at one political campaign essentially creating a honey pot situation offering intel on the other campaign and not do it to the other party as well. You can't weaponize the Federal wiretapping court system against one party and not do it to the other one. When you do that, you are putting your thumb on the scales of Justice, the Government agencies are effectively picking their future leadership/protecting their turf/whatever. If that were done in reverse the press would be at DEFCON 1 and every purple-haired moron and Antifa Flag-waving weenie would be in the streets burning Starbucks to the ground across the nation. I am very much about cleaning up Government corruption and political corruption but this whole set of events - the campaigns, the election and the aftermath shows not only the worst of political corruption it also shows the absolute worst of Government corruption as well. At the end of the day, with the two choices presented to me, I wouldn't change my vote.
They just gave millions of young voters somebody to relate to. This isn’t Clinton playing “Pink Panther” on Arsenio-type pandering, he can honestly relate with youth. Real smooth move, Texas GOP. Learn to internet better.