Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

Maybe we have to turn over the POTUS to the Speaker of the House, like we did in 1974 (?).

Treason only applies during war.

Racer Chris wrote:Treason only applies during war.

Don't think so. People were tried under treason during peace time also for being a foreign agent/spy. May be lawyers on the forum can chime in for accuracy...

I don't know, I've never defended anyone on treason.


U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2381
18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason

Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
US Code
Notes
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Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

Drug stocks getting destroyed by Trump today.

I warned everyone about that.

All that pharma lobbying money they paid to Democrat/Republican Billy Tauzin (treason?!) for naught.

JimHow wrote: Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, ...

As I understand it, without a declaration of war, another country is not our "enemy". This is how the code has been historically interpreted.

My brother Neal in Waldoboro posted this on Facebook this morning:
"....Golden showers fill your eyes..... Lies await you when you rise..... Sleep American sheeple, do not try....Trump and Pence will make you cry..."

Wow. All I can say is wow.

Stupid Americans.

Betting markets now assign 50% probability to Trump being impeached in his first term.

Who knows whether the latest lurid allegations are true? But there is rarely smoke without fire. And a lot more really bad stuff is bound to come out.

His approval rating has already sunk to 37% which is very low for a President elect a week away from his inauguration. It is normally double that.

His plan to separate his business interests have been exposed as a complete sham. I wonder if/when the Congressional Republicans turn on him?

Why isn't John McCain going after him. Afterall he was the first to flag how dangerous Putin is, he is 79 and just got elected to another six year term.

Actually he has been involved:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... WEML6619I2

John McCain is the most overrated politician in America.
There is no hope left, Comte. The U.S. government has been taken over by a bullying fascist.
We are truly doomed.

Comte Flaneur wrote:Betting markets now assign 50% probability to Trump being impeached in his first term.

It's hard not to at least imagine this coming to pass, especially if a wave of dissatisfaction gives the House back to the Dems in two years.

Even without the specter of Russian hookers and a Manchurian Candudate, Trump's refusal to wall off his business will lead to enormous conflict of interest issues and daily violations of the Emoluments Clause.

Given current districting, there would have to be a massive backlash to return the House to the Dems. A simple majority certainly won't, I think it would take at least 60% of voters to return the House to the Democrats.

Not only will the Democrats not retake the House, they will lose seats in the Senate... yes, even in an off year following the other party's presidential election victory. Something like two thirds of the senators up for reelection in 2018 are Democrats. We are so fucked, it's not even funny.

Blanquito wrote:

Comte Flaneur wrote:Betting markets now assign 50% probability to Trump being impeached in his first term.

It's hard not to at least imagine this coming to pass, especially if a wave of dissatisfaction gives the House back to the Dems in two years.

Even without the specter of Russian hookers and a Manchurian Candudate, Trump's refusal to wall off his business will lead to enormous conflict of interest issues and daily violations of the Emoluments Clause.

I hope they make a movie on him, with Alec Baldwin as the lead. The entertainment value will be so rich.

European politics are also turning crazy. Watch what's going on in Italy, as well as France.

I wouldn't bet on the Dems retaking the House as of today. But no one gave them a chance of it in 2006 as little as a few months before (the gap was even bigger than today I think), and then a wave election developed.

The folks at 538 have crunched the numbers and for the Dems to take back the House with all the gerrymandering, they would need to win the national generic ballot by something like 4-5%-- that's big, but not undoable. It would take another wave election where people turn out in droves for a midterm election because they want blood. I can certainly see that happening if the Trump Express goes off the rails. Unfortunately he's a lucky SOB and has inherited a generally robust economy (just like W did in 2000, come to think of it).

We are screwed yes, but not dead yet.

In the U.K. since the Brexit vote catastrophe we have learnt to remain calm and carry on drinking

Trump is a teetotaler, something that the secret dossier reveals.

Hopefully BWE can make up for that shortcoming.

I keep pinching myself that someone so manifestly unfit to be leader of the free world - especially temperamentally unsuited, as was amply demonstrated in his press conference, in fact, someone who is demonstrably mentally unstable/ill - is a week away from taking office. The man who erects monuments to himself, beholden to vain idols. Students of theology should maybe chime in here...

Rome survived Nero.

Sortof.

Comte Flaneur wrote:I keep pinching myself that someone so manifestly unfit to be leader of the free world - especially temperamentally unsuited, as was amply demonstrated in his press conference, in fact, someone who is demonstrably mentally unstable/ill - is a week away from taking office. The man who erects monuments to himself, beholden to vain idols. Students of theology should maybe chime in here...

Apparently Melania put him up to running for POTUS.

Perhaps she got tired of his "If I was in charge...." speeches.

So now look what she's gotten herself into.

Byron Wien, a famous Wall St. strategist, thinks within a year or so, DJT will be tired of DC, and Congressional obstructionism.

He will return to NYC, and triumphantly tweet that he has successfully drained the swamp, and leave all the hard work to others.

It'll be sort of like the John Tyler presidency when the biggest fights were between the same party who controlled Congress and White House.

tim wrote:Rome survived Nero.

Sortof.

Well, it got ruined and people suffered in the process...

One of the things that strikes me is how boundless he is.
We knew the primary and general elections were going to be awful, and they ended up being even worse than expected.
We knew his transition was going to be awful, and has been even worse than we expected.
I tremble at what is coming.

JimHow wrote:One of the things that strikes me is how boundless he is.
We knew the primary and general elections were going to be awful, and they ended up being even worse than expected.
We knew his transition was going to be awful, and has been even worse than we expected.
I tremble at what is coming.

He says he is a law and order president - but he is lawless
He says he is gonna bring manufacturing jobs back - but he ships his own manufacturing outside US
He says he is gonna drain the swamp - but he picked not just insiders, but entrenched insiders in some cases
He says national debt is too much - but he is ready to spend like a drunken sailor
He says he is for the vets - but he ridicules war heroes and families
He says he is gonna be tremendous for military - but he disparages intelligence officials and generals who disagree
He says fake news is bad - but he peddled the same throught before, during and even after the campaign
He says he loves press and stands for freedom of press - but he suppresses them, mocks them and instigates people against them
He says special interests are bad - but his former campaign manager just opened a new lobby firm
.
.
.
.
Just the beginning...More yet to come as we move further down the year....

I hope I am wrong, but the list keeps growing day by day, and Trump coolaid is becoming rotten length and breadth.

Donald Trump, and, perhaps even more significantly, his people, are capable of anything.
ANYthing.
He is an unbalanced megalomaniac.
And, as of January 20th, he can destroy the world -- everything we have ever known -- in fifteen minutes.

Wow sounds like some bad stuff went down in that Comey briefing.
Man, this was a real coup, wasn't it.

Yeah, reports of Trump's collusion with the Russians go unmentioned by the FBI, but emails on Carlos Danger's laptop merit a public letter to Congress. Really, Comey should be in jail and the youth of America should be storming the barricades. A coup indeed.

How is that a coup?
I agree that Comey was unethical and was more after self promotion than public service, but I doubt the Russian hack job hurt the democrats much, still Trump won by gaining more votes in the electoral college. That's all that matters.
Of course, he's a megalomaniac and a sociopath who is unfit to rule but people voted for him. I am not happy, I don't like it, but I blame the system for giving us two deplorable (in different ways) candidates.
What am I missing?

I predict he will not last a full four years as the prez. He will either be brought down or resign.

I agree with almost everything you say, Jacques, but two Fridays before the election Hillary was up by 6 points and she was steamrolling into that last week.
She was going to pull it out.
Then Comey hit. And she never recovered.
And Trump won by the narrowest of margins.
I agree with you that these were two terrible candidates.
But it is impossible to ignore Comey's role in this, and the fact that the country's leading law enforcement agency was corrupted.
I know what my eyes told me.
Two Fridays before the election I was convinced Clinton was going to win.
One Friday before the election I still thought she was going to win but I thought the momentum was for Trump.
I think a huge part of what happened during that one week was attributable to Comey's obviously partisan maneuvering.

JimHow wrote:I agree with almost everything you say, Jacques, but two Fridays before the election Hillary was up by 6 points and she was steamrolling into that last week.
She was going to pull it out.
Then Comey hit. And she never recovered.
And Trump won by the narrowest of margins.
I agree with you that these were two terrible candidates.
But it is impossible to ignore Comey's role in this, and the fact that the country's leading law enforcement agency was corrupted.
I know what my eyes told me.
Two Fridays before the election I was convinced Clinton was going to win.
One Friday before the election I still thought she was going to win but I thought the momentum was for Trump.
I think a huge part of what happened during that one week was attributable to Comey's obviously partisan maneuvering.

Not only did the polls show the Comey Coup Effect, but the voter turn out models and post-election surveys also showed his effect, and it was more than enough to swing the election to Trump given how incredibly close Trump's margin was in the 3 key Midwest swing states (and Florida too).

We know agencies like the FBI have (an illegal) ability to swing a close election. That's why the DOJ has strict guidelines for keeping federal agencies out of elections, which the FBI/Comey blantantly violated over strenuous objections from watch dogs.

Think of this: if the FBI had instead announced 10 days beforehand that they were investigating the Trump campaign for possible collusion with the Russian government, Hillary would have won going away.

This is all speculation guys. I thought she was going to win by a landslide the evening of the election. I understand that whta Comey did was improper, probably even illegal but I think she lost because she was a flawed candidate who decided to party with JayZ and Beyoncé instead of campaigning the last few days.
Let me put it this way, Bill would not have stopped campaigning.

I love you, man.
And it seems crazy to say the I agree with 95% of what you say, but I disagree with your ultimate point.
I agree with you:
The Clintons are terrible.
Hillary was an awful candidate.
I tried to warn you guys that Bernie would have been better, but you and the superdelegates in the Democratic Party wouldn't listen to me.
But I trust my eyes.
When I see the greatness of 2002L, I will say it is great, even if Parker and his many sheep say otherwise.
I'll say 2003 GPL sucks, regardless of some conventional wisdom out there on cellartracker, Parker.com, or elsewhere.
And my eyes tell me that what Comey did was WRONG.
That was bullshit.
It wouldn't be a big deal if we had an informed, intelligent electorate.
But we don't. We have a very ignorant, malleable electorate.
There were many reasons why the flawed Hillary Clinton lost.
But for Comey's conduct ten days before the election, my eyes and my experience tell me that there is a substantial likelihood that Clinton would have won and, as unsavory as that would have been for many of us, it would have saved us from a Donald Trump presidency and all of the harm that is about to be imparted upon us.

I'm with Jacques on that. This whole "Comey stole the ball" thing is some sort of weird displacement therapy.

Outside of liberal strongholds like NY, CA -- HRC lost by like 3mm votes.

She was supposed to crush him with her Blue Wall barricades.

And she never once visited to check on how firm they were.

Instead more campaign cash collecting in states she was going win anyways, and wasting time in places like Georgia which were unrealistic pretty much the whole time.

There are other analysts who believe the election turned when the whole deplorables quote came out.

I too thought that Clinton was going to win, and win big. I didn't even watch the news because until late that Election Night, when it suddenly something improbable, something impossible was happening . A fellow who could not be elected town dog catcher is the new tenant of the Oval Office, to sit in the same chair as Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and so on.


"I'm going to make the dogs self catch themselves, and they will pay for it!"

Just because people keep repeating convenient untruths over and over, louder and louder, doesn't make it any more real.

If the Democrats spend the next 4 years thinking that they need to change nothing (beyond finding Comey a new job), they'll have ended up getting spanked twice, when the lesson should have learned once.

Yes we have a malleable ignorant electorate. I think we have a tendency to go too far as to self destruct. And we got what we deserve. I hope we survive the next four years.

Jacques and Arv, there was more than one factor in this election. Your contention that it was all due to Clinton's flaws is just as speculative.

It's simply not realistic to say that Comey's behavior was not a factor. Would it have made a difference if Clinton was a better candidate? If she had a better electoral college-based campaign strategy? If the press, earlier on, reported more of Trump's shenanigans and less of the incessant right-wing howling about Benghazi and emails? Sure, Comey likely would have been a non-factor if that had been the case. But it wasn't the case. He was a factor, a significant one, and it was criminal. That he did it would be criminal even if it wasn't a factor, though there'd likely be less interest in pursuing him.

Comey didn't even have probable cause for reopening the investigation and he knew it when he wrote that mealy-mouthed pre-election letter. It was a blatant political ploy. I don't buy the "well, if he hadn't done anything and there was something there" argument. He had a lot more reason to suspect collusion between the Trump Organization and Russia, but remained silent on that topic. The guy is disgustingly dirty. But in one week, Trump and the R's will be able to cripple or cancel the investigation. Maybe Trump will give him a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Prosecution.

Edited to add this:
Going after Comey does not mean the Ds don't need to change. They do. Going after Comey means we still have the rule of law, not a corrupt system in which the FBI Director can try to throw an election, regardless of which party he/she is for, and get off without consequences. The principle is much bigger than just this one election (hard as that is to believe given the impending disaster of a Trump presidency).

I have to agree with Jim and David on this.

Everbody agrees that for all Trump's shenanigans and scandals, it would have been cakewalk for democrats. But the flaws of Hillary made it into a contest, but I think she would have won with a thin margin like Trump did. In fact, I never thought she would win big, but would win enough to become the president. But the Comey thing right before the election made the difference in the outcome. The flaws of Hillary and campaign missteps is one thing, but a third person referee tilting the outcome in one direction is another thing.

In fact, since democrats outnumber republican voters on east and west coasts, the Comey effect didn't cone out in those areas. But in the midwestern states the election was close enough for Comey effect to change the outcome in those states.

What an election. Who would have thought that a communist ideology minded country would sabotage world's oldest democracy, and the sad thing is people and politicians, irrespective of their politics, are not calling spade a spade.

The irony is that the would be leader of the greatest democracy, who prospered immensely under its democratic ideals, colluded (atleast so far it points to such) with entities and foes bent upon destroying the US.

The question is when Trump says companies who jack up drug prices are getting away with murder, then what is he getting away with?

Ah well, it was a combination, I guess.
Clinton was a terrible candidate.
I mean, this business of giving like one speech every day or two.
Trump worked hard for a year and a half, you have to give that to him.
In the end he was hitting like six states a day.
Can't wait to see who he nominates for the stolen Supreme Court seat.

I have to protest. Clinton was NOT a terrible candidate. She suffered a relentless attack for years by the GOP which was aided and abetted by the media. The majority of the attacks on her were false. The main characteristic she lacked, from a political perspective, was an ability to rally people at crowds. But the rest was created.

In addition, the idea that she was a less popular candidate than Trump is false. She won the popular vote by a landslide. She lost the distribution of that vote based on the rules. There is lots of blame to go around, but let's not ignore the facts of the election.

It is becoming clear that the Russians made a coordinated attack on our democratic election process - in an effort to assist the campaign of D Trump.
For this, I stand with John Lewis - and say that Trump is not a legitimate president.

I agree with Tim. H Clinton was not a terrible candidate.
I strongly disagree with Jacques' characterization of her as deplorable.