monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

It doesn't look like that at all.

It looks a lot more like you don't know what you're talking about

and hastily jumped to your own conclusions before waiting to hear the facts.

Not in this case.

You're an obstinate man George, but Gulliani should know better than to state it's perfectly fine to accept information (intell) from the Russians. Sure, lets invite them to the GOP convention, while we are at it...send them invitations to the inauguration....they deserve a little consideration....it's great...invite them into the Oval Office and back slap those chortling bastards while they measure the windows for drapes. Perhaps it's small potatoes to you, but I'm alarmed that this Administration is so careless with the Russians. I think your opinion of the situation is flaccid and irresponsible.

All evidence points to Islamist terrorism (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) — there has been no suggestion of an ethnic Tamil connection.

I might have misunderstood the thread's title.

The Mueller report is like a legal version of a thriller movie in which three malevolent forces are attacking a city all at once. Everybody’s wondering if the three attackers are working together. The report concludes that they weren't, but that doesn’t make the situation any less scary or the threat any less real.

The first force is Donald Trump, who represents a threat to the American systems of governance. Centuries ago our founders created a system of laws and not men. In our system of government there are procedures in place, based on certain values — impartiality, respect for institutions, the idea that a public office is a public trust, not a private bauble.

When Trump appears in the Mueller report, he is often running roughshod over these systems and violating these values. He asks his lawyer to hamper an investigation. He asks his F.B.I. director to take the heat off his allies. He tries to get the relevant investigators fired. I don’t know if his actions meet the legal standard of obstruction of justice, but they certainly meet the common-sense standard of interference with justice.

The second force is Russia. If Trump is a threat to the institutional infrastructure, the Russians are a threat to our informational infrastructure. We knew this already, but it was still startling to see the fact declared so bluntly — that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election “in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

It may not be bombing buildings or shooting at people, but if a foreign government is attacking the factual record on which democracy runs, it is still a sort of warfare. The Russians are trying to undermine the information we use to converse, and the trust that makes conversation possible.

The third force is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. They are a threat to our deliberative infrastructure. Any organization needs to be able to hold private conversations in order to deliberate. Whether it is State Department cables or Democratic National Committee emails, WikiLeaks has violated privacy and made it harder for institutions to function. We’re now in a situation in which some of the worst people on earth get to determine what gets published.

The Mueller report indicates that Trump was not colluding with Russia. But it also shows that working relationships were beginning to be built, through networkers like Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone. More important, it shows that many of the Trumpists, the Russians and the WikiLeaks crowd all understood that they were somehow adjacent actors in the same project.

I would say that’s the report’s central importance. We are being threatened in a very distinct way. The infrastructure of the society is under threat — the procedures that shape government, the credibility of information, the privacy rules that make deliberation possible. And though the Chinese government does not play a big role here, it represents a similar sort of threat — to our intellectual infrastructure, the intellectual property rights that organize innovation.

It is as if somebody is inserting acids into a body that eats away at the ligaments and the tendons.

These forces are motivated by self-interest, but their common feature is an operational nihilism. They are trying to sow disorder at the foundation of society. The goal is not really to convert anybody to a cause; it is to create cynicism and disruption that will open up the space to grab what you want to grab. They rig the system and then tell everybody, “The system is rigged!” And therefore, all values are suspended. Everything is permitted.

As I was reading the report I thought of a podcast called “Against the Rules” by Michael Lewis. A recent episode jumps off from the way athletes are getting more vicious toward referees. But that’s not just true in sport; it’s true in society. In all societies there are rules defining good conduct, and there are supposed to be impartial, honest referees that enforce those rules and make sure the game is fair.

And today, across society, two things are happening: Referees are being undermined, and many are abandoning their own impartiality. (Think of the Wall Street regulators, the Supreme Court, the Senate committee chairmen, even many of us in the blessed media.) Things begin to topple.

The system more or less held this time. But that’s just because people around Trump often refused to do what he told them to do. And we happened to have Robert Mueller, who seems to be a fair referee.

The Justice Department has not been defended from political assault. William Barr’s news conference before the report’s release eroded any claim to impartiality and trustworthiness.

Trump doesn’t seem to have any notion of loyalty to an office. All power in his eye is personal power, and the government is there to serve his Sun God self. He’ll continue to trample the proper systems of government.

It’s easy to recognize when you are attacked head-on. But the U.S. is being attacked from below, at the level of the foundations we take for granted.

but since I'm by nature a quiet, reserved and humble person ... ...

It may not have been his intention, but special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has forced a momentous choice on the Democrats who control the House of Representatives. How they navigate the next several months will matter not only to politics but, more importantly, to whether the rule of law prevails.

If we lived in a normal time with a normal president, a normal Republican Party and a normal attorney general, none of this would be so difficult. Mueller’s report is devastating. It portrays a lying, lawless president who pressured aides to obstruct the probe and was happy — “Russia, if you’re listening . . . ” — to win office with the help of a hostile foreign power. It also, by the way, shows the president to be weak and hapless. His aides ignored his orders, and he regularly pandered to a Russian dictator.

Mueller’s catalogue of infamy might have led Republicans of another day to say: Enough. But the GOP’s new standard seems to be that a president is great as long as he’s unindicted.

Kremlin rejects Mueller report, calling it inconclusive, harmful to U.S.-Russia ties

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Friday rejected special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling it inconclusive in establishing any such meddling and damaging to U.S.-Russia relations.

The report “still does not present any conclusive evidence of alleged interference by the Russian Federation in the electoral process in America,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday. “We continue to refuse to accept any such accusation.”

hightor wrote:

All evidence points to Islamist terrorism (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) — there has been no suggestion of an ethnic Tamil connection.

It appears that, in the words of Rep. Omar, that "someone has done something".

georgeob1 wrote:

hightor wrote:

All evidence points to Islamist terrorism (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) — there has been no suggestion of an ethnic Tamil connection.

It appears that, in the words of Rep. Omar, that "someone has done something".

So then, all Muslims are responsible and accountable.

So then, all Muslims are responsible and accountable.

InfraBlue wrote:

So then, all Muslims are responsible and accountable.

I didn't say that. Instead, I merely provided an example of what Rep. Omar was referring to. She would have us believe there is nothing in Islam that condones or encourages such action. Numerous events over the last two decades suggests she is wrong in this.

In the fall of 1998, Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with the speaker of the House. Mr. Bowles enjoyed a better relationship with Speaker Newt Gingrich than anyone in the Clinton White House, partly based on a shared Southern heritage and commitment to fiscal conservatism. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Bowles put a very direct question to Mr. Gingrich: Why were the Republicans intent on impeaching Bill Clinton? The speaker replied, “Because we can.”

I had a front-row seat and a small speaking role in the political drama that followed. Now, as the country is gripped by another impeachment debate, many are comparing the two scandals and handicapping what the Democrats might do.

Just as Speaker Gingrich did in 1998, Speaker Nancy Pelosi could direct the impeachment of President Trump because she can. Unlike in 1998, she stands on firmer ground: The Clinton case involved an egregious personal mistake and purported steps to cover it up; the Trump case involves an effort to thwart an investigation into a foreign attack on our democratic system.

Inevitably the news media and the political chattering class, of which I count myself as a card-carrying member, has focused on the party politics of impeachment. With the benefit of hindsight, impeaching President Clinton was a disaster for the Republicans. Mr. Clinton’s job approval was at a record 73 percent the month he was impeached, Democrat’s defied the odds and picked up seats in the midterm elections and Mr. Gingrich returned to the private sector.

Impeaching Bill Clinton was wholly a political decision; the substance mattered little in 1998. Two decades later, Democrats face almost the exact opposite dynamics.

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation. Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Mr. Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. Free trade abandoned for protectionism. Challenging our adversaries and promoting democracy replaced by coddling Russia and cozying up to dictators near and far. Fiscal conservatism replaced by reckless spending and exploding deficits.

What’s left of the party is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson — a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

We’re not quite there yet — but keeping President Trump in office is the best way to cement Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party.

Republicans themselves know it, and that simple fact is a huge problem for them: By and large they don’t like him, and they know he’s a long-term problem for the party — but in the short term they know they can’t get re-elected without his voters. For Democrats, it’s the dream scenario — as long as he completes his term.

President Trump should be impeached because he is unfit for the presidency. He represents a clear and present danger to our national security. We didn’t need Robert Mueller’s report for that. But if Newt Gingrich taught us anything, impeaching the president is likely to be bad politics.

Nothing will unite an increasingly fraying Republican Party more than trying to remove the president anywhere but at the ballot box. Democrats risk the kind of overreach that doomed the Republicans 20 years ago. And in any case Democrats are not likely to succeed in getting votes in the Senate to convict the president. And in politics, a loss is a loss — there are no moral victories.

I fully understand the historical imperative of holding the president accountable for his behavior. I also share the sentiment of so many Americans who want to punish him for what he’s done to the country. But I believe there is something bigger at stake.

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble — and this is the best bet we’ve had in a long time.