Tortured_Genius wrote:
Presumably the US ambassador to the UK sends nothing but nice things about how lovely the UK government is and things are going swimmingly (I'm guessing in simplified comic book form), rather than actually telling the truth.

CdesignProponentsist wrote:Fuck Trump

Fenrir wrote:

Tortured_Genius wrote:
Presumably the US ambassador to the UK sends nothing but nice things about how lovely the UK government is and things are going swimmingly (I'm guessing in simplified comic book form), rather than actually telling the truth.

I'm guessing reports on the condition of the greens at Trump's Scottish monstrosity might constitute the bulk of any correspondence there's any chance Trump might have someone verbally summarize for him.

As it turns out, the Bipartisan Policy Center isn’t alone in its concerns. The Hill reported this morning that lawmakers are “growing anxious that they might have to vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling in a matter of weeks.”

Lawmakers had hoped they would be able to avoid the politically painful vote to raise the debt ceiling until the fall – and that it could be packaged with other legislation to fund the government and set budget caps on spending.

But that could be much more difficult if Treasury’s ability to prevent the government from going over its borrowing limit ends in mid-September – just days after lawmakers would be set to return from their summer recess.

At some point, we should all probably have a conversation about why federal tax revenue is proving to be a problem – have I mentioned lately that the Republican tax plan was a bad idea? – but in the short term, the prospect of an ugly train wreck is coming into sharper focus.

Trump’s Florida resort hosting golf tournament for unregistered charity with strippers as ‘caddy girls’
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/07/trumps-resort-hosting-golf-tournament-for-unregistered-charity-with-strippers-as-caddy-girls/

President Donald Trump’s Doral, Florida resort is forgetting about family values and holding a stripper-fueled golf tournament Saturday.

Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold broke the news Tuesday that a Miami-area strip club will allow golfers to pay to buy a dancer to serve as a “caddy girl” while they golf.

The “Shadow All Star Tournament” is hosted by a club called Shadow Cabaret in Hialeah, an area northwest of downtown Miami.

“The Trump name and family crest are displayed prominently in the strip club’s advertising materials, which offer golfers the ‘caddy girl of your choice,'” Fahrenthold observed.

Alan C wrote:As I write this, Twitter seems to be down, I wonder how Tinyhands Tweetolini is taking it not being able vomit forth what can only charitably be called thoughts.

L'Emmerdeur wrote:http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1834473#p1834473

I think this article would have triggered a cataract of specious verbiage from a certain Trump defence counsel manque. Many pixels have been given a reprieve!

'Mueller Missed the Crime: Trump’s Campaign Coordinated With Russia'

Ever since the release of the Mueller Report, countless commentators have implored everyone to just #ReadtheReport. The problem is not who is reading it—the problem is the report itself, and its many errors.

Robert Mueller made a significant legal error and, based on the facts he found, he should have identified Trump campaign felonies. Mueller’s errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia; second, he failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates for felony campaign coordination (see in a concise timeline below); third, the 10 acts of felony obstruction in Volume II fell flat among the general public because it lacked compelling context of these underlying crimes between the campaign and Russia. On top of these errors, the former special counsel said he deliberately wrote the report to be unclear because it would be unfair to make clear criminal accusations against a president.

The bottom line is that the Mueller Report is a failure not because of Congress or because of public apathy, but because it failed to get the law, the facts, or even the basics of writing right. When Mueller testifies before Congress on July 17, he should be pressed on all of this.

...

Mueller should have concluded that both Manafort and Gates engaged in felony campaign coordination, and he should have indicted Manafort for it. Manafort is a lawyer with decades of experience working for presidential campaigns: it would be less difficult to establish “knowing and willful” violations. And Manafort’s extraordinary record of lying to prosecutors—and coordinating his lies with Trump’s lawyers—would help prove the case as an inference of consciousness of guilt. In the very least, Mueller should have explicitly stated that there was substantial evidence of illegal coordination, even if it was insufficient for a criminal prosecution.

Members of Congress should [...] ask tough questions of Mueller: Why did you ignore the law of campaign coordination, which was clearly established by Congress and the FEC, and thoroughly upheld in broad terms by the Supreme Court? Did your failure to identify the correct legal standard limit your investigation of Manafort, Gates, Stone, and Trump? If you knew of these rules, why did you fail to identify this coordination as illegal once you found it?

Mueller’s failures and omissions have another round of dangerous cause-and-effect. He is opening the loophole that Congress was purposely trying to avoid, and he is telling all the 2020 campaigns that these rules will not be enforced. Now Trump and his aides seem to think they have legal permission to openly do all of it again. Rudy Giuliani flagrantly tested these coordination rules in his political contacts with Ukraine officials. Given Mueller’s failure and Trump’s exploitation of that failure, it is now Congress’s duty to the public, the candidates under investigation, and future candidates to identify the law clearly, and to explain that some of this behavior was a civil violation, and in fact a criminal violation.