BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump on Sunday offered his most definitive and clear public acknowledgment that his oldest son met with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign to “get information on an opponent,” defending the meeting as “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”

It is, however, against the law for U.S. campaigns to receive donations or items of value from foreigners, and that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya is now a subject of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe.

While “collusion” is not mentioned in U.S. criminal statutes, Mueller is investigating whether anyone associated with Trump coordinated with the Russians, which could result in criminal charges if they entered into a conspiracy to break the law, including through cyberhacking or interfering with the election.



etc...

Almost every day Team Trump tries to smooth the edges of what even Ray Charles can see is coming.

One day we will all fully understand why Trump cannot bring himself to criticize/sanction Putin. That day will come when Mueller delivers his findings. And Team Trump will do everything they can to demonize/weaken Mueller in the meantime.

The basic messaging now seems to be "It isn't a crime to commit a crime."

Forty times President Donald Trump has posted statements on Twitter asserting “NO COLLUSION” with Russia during the 2016 election. He made the claim standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month, and then a day later during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Sunday, he negated all of that by admitting that his campaign had tried to collude with Russia to win the presidency, after all.

Trump wrote in an 8:35 a.m. post on Twitter that the purpose of a June 9, 2016, gathering at Trump Tower was “to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics ― and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”

sux

Portland far-right marchers have rally plans foiled by store manager who calls tow trucks on them: ‘Our cars are toast’

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/por...ks-cars-toast/

NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION wait OK maybe collusion.

the problem is not whether or not the dotard is a scumbag: clearly he's been all along, besides being a hate-mongering racist.

but even if everything is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, who would do anything about it? that's the real problem.

first: the republican congress will not touch him. they're either terrified of him or chained in submission, but no balls to stand up to him except for a handful of people, one of which is dying of brain cancer.

second: as long as the economy appears to be going well, i am not sure that sufficient electoral districts are willing to change their congressional representation.

please note, i am not talking about popular vote or the public sentiment in major urban centers, or the people who collectively commiserate with john oliver. i'm talking about congressional districts as apportioned after the 2010 census.

that's the problem that need fixing: congress.

yes, trump could go out and murder 50 babies and congress would just sit idly by while agent orange blames obama, or hillary's emails.

so, congress.

here in nm there are 3 congressional districts: 2 in democratic hands 1 in republican hands

the democratic congresswoman from district 1 is running for governor (i really hope she wins). so the republicans are targeting her seat.

the republican congressman from district 2 is running for governor (which is a terrifying prospect). democrats are targeting his seat, but i am not sure about demographics though.

the incumbent democrat from district 3 should be okay where he is and win reelection.

I wanna vote.

the senate seat in contest seems in safe democratic hands as well.

so the challenge is to

1) beat steve pearce in the governor race

2) take his seat in district 2. he's won regularly by about 20% since the early century so i don't know we can, but worth a try. seat was democratic briefly in 2008 while pearce ran for senate (and failed). then pearce took it back in 2010 (by 10% margin only, his lowest showing). this is doable.

I absolutely love that The Twitterer In Chief has stepped in it so many times. This one is the mother of all stupid tweets.

I've asked this before: WTF does Kelly do, again?

President urged to shut the fuck up on Trump Tower meeting

Also, click below to track the investigation interactively! :D

 

I'm still trying to understand what the GOP did in 2010 with this redistribution thing. I keep hearing things like Dems need up to 7% more than GOP in popular vote to win.

(I think I'm a relatively smart person, but I still cannot come to grips with all of the details and nuances of USA elections.)

Well, paradoxically, for people like you and I, who live in more advanced societies, understanding more primitive ones can be a difficult thing. Sometimes. Other times it's just that they're corrupt and stupid.

start here for the basic concept of districting: https://law.onecle.com/constitution/...stricting.html

as populations change, districts must be redrawn.

th us constitution mandates a census every 10years

redistricting is done locally by state legislatures

anyway, once you get all that, youre ready to understand gerrymandering
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

from the very article i linked above:

Chile[edit]
The military government which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 was ousted in a national plebiscite in October 1988. Opponents of General Augusto Pinochet voted NO to remove him from power and to trigger democratic elections, while supporters (mostly from the right-wing) voted YES to keep him in office for another eight years.

Five months prior to the plebiscite, the regime published a law regulating future elections and referendums, but the configuration of electoral districts and the manner in which Congress seats would be awarded were only added to the law seven months after the referendum.[66][67]

For the Chamber of Deputies (lower house), 60 districts were drawn by grouping (mostly) neighboring communes (the smallest administrative subdivision in the country) within the same region (the largest). It was established that two deputies would be elected per district, with the most voted coalition needing to outpoll its closest rival by a margin of more than 2-to-1 to take both seats. The results of the 1988 plebiscite show that neither the "NO" side nor the "YES" side outpolled the other by said margin in any of the newly established districts. They also showed that the vote/seat ratio was lower in districts which supported the "YES" side and higher in those where the "NO" was strongest.[68][69] In spite of this, at the 1989 parliamentary election, the center-left opposition was able to capture both seats (the so-called doblaje) in twelve out of 60 districts, winning control of 60% of the Chamber.

Senate constituencies were created by grouping all lower-chamber districts in a region, or by dividing a region into two constituencies of contiguous lower-chamber districts. The 1980 Constitution allocated a number of seats to appointed senators, making it harder for one side to change the Constitution by itself. The opposition won 22 senate seats in the 1989 election, taking both seats in three out of 19 constituencies, controlling 58% of the elected Senate, but only 47% of the full Senate. The unelected senators were eliminated in the 2005 constitutional reforms, but the electoral map has remained largely untouched (two new regions were created in 2007, one of which altered the composition of two senatorial constituencies; the first election to be affected by this minor change took place in 2013).

Yah well there's gun control and stuff. :D

the military controls the guns and aims them at civilians

we've seen pictures...

Yes, that happened in 1973 and the people who would become my parents were almost killed. What the fuck is your point? Actually, strike that, this is bound to be another one of those conversations...