Re: caption, please
 

Rapist sandwich on white bread?

Re: caption, please
 

A bill in the hand is worth two in the bushes?

No, strike that.

Re: reading Gibbon is more useful every day
 

So he'd leave the cord.

While we're looking to other countries as examples for our democracy, just remember that it could be worse. "An Australian senator elected three times to Parliament resigned Saturday after revealing he'd learned was a citizen of New Zealand, and thus ineligible to serve."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Economists discovering what ordinary people know, wage growth edition.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Moral judgment, particularly in this arena, is too fuzzy to hold any meaningful value.

This Stupid Watergate/Russia Debacle is an ocean away from the sort of thing that compelled Joseph Welch to take a moral stand against Joe McCarthy. It's more just another in long continuum of degraded political acts. Here are just a few recent ones (in no order):

LBJ accusing his opponent of being a pigfucker to win a seat;
Joe Kennedy attempting to steal the vote in Chicago;
Hoover's political use of the FBI;
Nixon's enemies' list;
Watergate;
Iran/Contra;
Allende overthrow;
Propping up stooges (the Shah) to racists/bigots (Saudi Arabia) around the globe;
WMD lie;
Bush's ads about McCain's children in 2000;
Clinton's racist dog whistles about Obama in 2008;
Clinton executing a mentally retarded man to look tough on crime for political purposes;
Holder's war on journalists;
Obama Admin's "interesting" use of the internal rev service;
FL Secretary of State working for Bush interests in 2000 election recount;
Willie Horton;
HRC's "superpredator" nod to the tough on crime bigots;
HRC flipping on the bankruptcy reform act (and just about everything else if it'd get her votes);
Bush's and Obama's expansion of domestic surveillance;
Bailout '08;
The Holder Doctrine

This could go on forever, but the obvious point is, Trump's meeting with Russians is uniquely awful why? It stands apart from the long list of despicable behaviors we've shrugged off as "just politics" in what huge regard?

Look, I understand this is a board of lawyers. Nobody concedes shit, and this will be attacked with a dozen arguments. Russkigate will be distinguished from every conceivable angle.

But step back, take off the advocate hat, put away the lawyer-think for a second and consider - from 10,000 feet, assessed in the context of our deeply corrupted and morally degraded system - isn't this Stupid Watergate more expected, predictable even, than surprising? We've been pushing the envelope (or searching a nadir) for a long time now.

Trump isn't a change agent or a throwback. He's what happens in a situation like the one we've got.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm starting to seriously wonder about your mental health. The level of disorganized thinking required to not be able to see distinctions among these things is pretty scary.

Because it involves compromising the administration to a foreign power. And solely for political gain.

Some of those things are dirty politics. Some of them are international meddling. None of them are selling out to a foreign power (whether intentionally or not).

You're aware that Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment for one of the things on your list, right (among other things)? And that there was an extensive investigation, including quite a few Congressional hearings, about another?

What does that have to do with anything? If it's predictable it's not a problem?

But I'm sorry, I do think it's surprising that (1) a candidate for president would seek out illegal help from a foreign power and (2) that his party would bend itself so far to dismiss it.

Okay, the latter part is less surprising than the former, but still.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That's the best you've got?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

We lied to the UN (and the world) about weapons of mass destruction to initiate a war against a sovereign nation. We've spied on our own citizens for more than a decade (that can be proven).

Those two alone so outweigh the act of seeking intel from an often hostile foreign power, one has to ask:

This, America? This is what finally awakens you to the fact that the house is on fire? You're complacent fools on everything else, but when a lurid person half of you dislike acquires power, and you can "resist" something (in a binary fashion, that doesn't require you to consider much grey), now you're incensed?

Maybe this is the silver lining of the Trump Presidency: public re-engagement in civic matters. And it only took the election of a reality TV goon to get it done. Why couldn't we have elected Puck from the Real World back in '96?

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
 

Sebby forgot an actual comparable event.

Nixon's collusion in October 1968 with agents of the Republic of China (Madame Chiang and Anna Chennault) to persuade South Vietnam to reject the tentative peace deal that the Johnson Administration had negotiated in Paris with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong to scuttle Humphrey's election. Just like in 2016, American intelligence found out about it, and a furious LBJ accused Nixon of treason. But he did nothing. Had news of Nixon's perfidy (and the thousands of American deaths/maybe millions of SE Asian deaths) he caused come out, he have actually died in prison. Politics as usual?

One could argue that the Federalist Party's use of the XYZ Affair (Tallyrand demanded bribes from American envoys to negotiate some issues between Revolutionary France and the US) to attack Thomas Jefferson is analogous, but Nixon's collusion with RoC and SVN agents to prevent a peace deal that would have elected HHH is pretty close to Trump.

Carry on.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You are just intellectually and morally lazy or indifferent.

Sure, other people have done other bad things. Apart from you, possibly, nobody here has been an apologist for all of them, so the notion that there's hypocrisy in outrage now is best directed either at yourself, or nobody.

And who is "incensed"? Nobody here. I was just reacting to what you said. I'm not incensed by it -- it was just kind of sloppy and pathetic. eta: Which is to say, I wouldn't have been surprised to see that sort of thing in a random comment somewhere else on the internet, but obviously you have more and better things to say when you bother to.

What do I find somewhat more interesting is your constant ability to spout DJT talking points without apparent awareness or acknowledgement that that's what you're doing.

Re: Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
 

I think there's some text missing from your quote. LBJ did not accuse Nixon of treason, at least not in public. Apropos of that:

John Dickerson in The Atlantic

Re: Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
 

Exactly - LBJ did not make any public accusations. Thanks for the catch. And Nixon and his apologists denied it until long after the fact because they knew that what Nixon did was, if not treason, something pretty goddamned close to it.

And Sebby says that Bush has blood on his hands re Iraq? Over 19,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam *after* January 1969. Richard Nixon sacrificed them for nothing other than his desire to be president. Had proof of this come out before President Ford pardoned him, he would have died in jail.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

More of a trump apologist every day. Who would have guessed?

Also, you forgot to mention Chappaquiddick.

Re: Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
 

Indeed, these are your two events comparable to Putin's Puppet.

But the Russian Affair is just one of a myriad of sins Trump is committing. True, Nixon had some other pretty serious sins as well, but he took a few years to commit them. And being compared to Nixon is not exactly a way of praising someone.

Re: Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
 

So LBJ and his intelligence services didn't make it public as it would be "inimical to our country?" Are you saying they were more patriotic than those running this Russian story?