ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

I work with someone who moved from a little ways south of Tucson, AZ. She and her daughter each claim that there is a very serious drug problem coming from south of the border, and that they both moved because they felt like AZ is being driven towards a cliff and nobody is doing enough to stop it. Like, the state is being ruined, turning into a third world shithole, the crime was getting so bad. Not Five Dollar Pablo, but criminals, committing crimes and destroying families.

Now I don’t tend to take isolated second hand evidence too seriously—all kinds of biases and stuff going on, they’re probably exaggerating because of personal loss—however, if there is a grain of truth to what they say (and there usually is at least that), then that is who and what you’re arguing with.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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1453R wrote:

Illegals don't need those things because, as Scrotie has said something like forty times, they don't creep in across an unsecured border. They walk in the front door and then simply refuse to leave the house when they said they would.

It's less "hey, Pablo invaded my house through the basement hatch I forgot to lock and now he's living in my basement and I can't get him to leave!", it's "Hey, I invited Pablo into my house for a party, he came and drank with me and my bros for a bit and that was a lot of fun, but now he's locked himself in my basement and it's been three weeks and he WON'T GO AWAY!"

Walls don't help worth spit in that situation.

This notion that The Wall will fix everything, that just as soon as the damn bleeding-heart unAmerican liberals stop getting in Trump's way and let him put a few feet of concrete between us and Mexico no one will ever lose a job again to a filthy thieving dirty little furriner is just...why? How can you possibly think that? How does a brain work in such a way that this is a conclusion it comes to and finds to be valid?

I think a lot of it comes from simply not living on borders. I've lived near international borders my entire non-Army life, first in Detroit (with Canada across the river, and frequently going there while they never seemed to come here), then in El Paso (with Mexico across the river, and never going there while they frequently seem to come here). I do have to wonder if I'd be equally thick-skulled if I haven't literally been surrounded by empirical evidence for decades.

But let's just put it this way: every single week I go to Walmart, and every time I do I see dozens of Chihuahua license plates in the parking lot from Mexican tourists. No, they didn't all get their cars into the US illegally. I go in the store and Mexicans — not Mecican-Americans, Mexican citizens — stand in front of me in line with their groceries and talk with the cashier in Spanish. Eventually they pay with US dollars or credit card and push their carts to the parking lot to put their Bud Lite in their Chihuahua cars. This happens all week, every day, for as close to 24/7 as Walmart and people's sleep schedules allow. Incessantly.

If you believe in the Wall as an anti-immigration measure, read that paragraph again a few times. Let the reality sink in for you. I mean, if you really think we'd ever just keep all of the Mexicans out, then sure as fuck the Wall™ is going to be behind the now-more-aptly-named Walmart®.

I'm on the other border, up maybe forty miles tops from Canada. I've been in Minnesota, which is a border state, if not necessarily On The Border, my whole life.

I've yet to encounter a Damn Dirty Canadian issue up here, but yeah - there's pretty much flat nothing stopping these guys from just hopping in their cars and coming across for a beer. There's a "Hello Canadians" sign in front of the local bar grill that's been there since I moved here. Not the first/only one I've seen up here.

You might honestly be right - it didn't even occur to me until you said anything that folks might not know how spongy the borders are. There's no sharp, clear, axe-stroke line that says "THIS IS U.S." and "THIS IS CANADA/MEXICO". You can find that border on a map, but up here, at least? It's more like a gradient than a line - and trying to make it a line would be hugely problematic.

Imagine the situation's much spongier down on the Mexico border?

apology for poor english

when were you when bob mueller investigation dies?

i was sat at mom's basement eating cold tendies when nunes ring

'memo is release'

'no'

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1453R wrote:

Imagine the situation's much spongier down on the Mexico border?

Imagine you took the exact same border security you have with Canada, added a partial wall (you need to get rural before the El Paso - Juarez wall stops), and then multiplied the number of Southerners interested in shopping at Northern shops by at least 5, maybe 20.

Rob* Mueller. And I wasn't anywhere particularly important especially as the case is no, in fact, dead. or at least any more or less dead than it already was.

Let's be clear here: Trump is clearly and unambiguously guilty of obstruction of justice. This is blatantly obvious from even the most cursory examination of the facts surrounding this case - you don't get to fire or try to fire the people responsible for investigating your possible misconduct multiple times whilst also using all other means possible to attack and muddy said investigation without being guilty of obstruction.

That said? Proving obstruction without a smoking-gun piece of physical evidence, usually captured correspondence that explicitly states "man I hope this investigation I'm deliberately obstructing doesn't find this memo, ha hah!" is notoriously difficult in criminal cases. Far more so when the criminal involved is the President and a case can be made - even if it's wrong and everybody knows it's wrong, it can still be legally made - that Trump is not trying to criminally obstruct investigations, he's just a brash asshole who's using powers the President normally has in ways that okay maybe he shouldn't, but which he clearly believes he's allowed to do.

Note, however, that you don't have to be guilty of anything else to be guilty of obstruction. Trump could very be, and likely is, innocent of any deliberate Russian wrongdoing because as I've said before, Russia would have to be impossibly stupid to trust this braying asshole to keep what color underpants he wears a secret, let alone anything like traitorous collusion with a foreign power. You don't tell the braindead stooge you're setting up to win the election as an act of fortuitous sabotage that you're doing so; you just do it, then cackle in your Moscow back rooms as the country you just jacked over goes apeshit for four years looking for any possible way it can to get this moron out of office so he stops fucking everything up.

The Russia probe could've concluded that Trump had nothing to do with any Russian interference with the election, and if Trump had left it alone it would've done so already and been as forgotten as anything ever gets around here. But his constant attacks on it, his ceaseless attempts to brute-force Comey, and then Mueller, and no doubt whoever comes after Mueller if he succeeds in shutting Mueller down, are obstruction. I refuse to believe anyone could be so stupid as to continue to do what he's done despite being told by thousand and thousands of people that doing what he's doing is making him look guilty as sin and the best thing he could do would be to shut the fuck up, let Mueller do his job, and get it over with. And obstruction is obstruction regardless of whether you were trying to hide anything in the first place.

The problem is that trying to get the man impeached and arrested on obstruction charges at this point would be almost impossible. He's guaranteed that this 'cloud' is never going to go away, everyone in the country and half of the planet all knows he's guilty of obstruction and we're not going to let him forget it. But the investigation has been so badly compromised by the circus going on around it, and now by this memo business, that it will never be able to produce the sort of etched-in-steel evidence it needs to get a conviction hammered through. Nobody will trust it because it's been dragged out into such a dog-and-pony show that anyone who's still stubbornly clinging to the idea that "TRUMP DID NOTHING WRONG!" (he did, by the way, and you're factually incorrect, but we can gloss that over for now) is never going to accept anything Mueller produces.

Convict Trump on any charges Mueller produces, no matter how legally solid, and all you do is divide the country further. Trump supporters feel like they've been attacked on all fronts since the man announced his candidacy, and frankly they have been. People have been beating each other up over this thing for going on two years now, and The Base that got Trump elected in the first place (with the help of their buddies in Moscow, mind) have dug in their heels and lowered their horns. You're never going to get reasonable discourse going with a lot of these folks, and frankly I'm not sure we should even try until the next campaign season.

Nothing a gal like me has to say will ever do anything but piss off a Trumpist. And frankly, I'm not sure I can listen to much of anything they say either, not when I see red every time I subject myself to another 'TRUMP DID WHAT?!" article in the news. Tempers are short and stakes are high across the board. The Nunes memo doesn't change a damn thing; Trump and his cronies have been claiming misconduct from the FBI since the beginning.

Frankly? Who cares.

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1453R wrote:

Frankly? Who cares.

Imagine Trump doing the same thing to the Democrat candidate in 2020. Would you care?

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Xavderion wrote:

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1453R wrote:

Frankly? Who cares.

Imagine Trump doing the same thing to the Democrat candidate in 2020. Would you care?

You act like I don't fully expect Trump to do whatever he can, legal or otherwise, to try and brute-force his way to a second term. It's not 'would I be offended if he did it', it's 'will I be offended when he does it?'

Answer? Not really. Or at least it won't make me despise the man any more than I already do.

Would Trump set up illegal surveillance of his opposition, or manipulate the FBI into shenanigans, to swat down Hillary 2.0? Of course he would. He's Trump. He's proven by now, over and over and over again, that there is no low to which he will not stoop to WIN A FIGHT, and general elections are the best kind of fight for him. People are acting like this Nunes thing is something Trump would not, or has not, done. Does it bollox the Russia thing? Probably. Does it bollox obstruction investigations? Considering Trump released it against the wishes of law enforcement agencies, I'd say it enhances obstruction investigations.

But yeah. Nah. Still don't care. If the Dem candidate in 2020 isn't prepared for this, then the Dem candidate isn't ready to stand in the GE. Whoever gets picked to go to the mat against Trump in 2020 will need the best hip waders mankind can invent because the bullshit will be neck deep and rancid beyond belief in that election.

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1453R wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

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1453R wrote:

Frankly? Who cares.

Imagine Trump doing the same thing to the Democrat candidate in 2020. Would you care?

You act like I don't fully expect Trump to do whatever he can, legal or otherwise, to try and brute-force his way to a second term. It's not 'would I be offended if he did it', it's 'will I be offended when he does it?'

Answer? Not really. Or at least it won't make me despise the man any more than I already do.

Would Trump set up illegal surveillance of his opposition, or manipulate the FBI into shenanigans, to swat down Hillary 2.0? Of course he would. He's Trump. He's proven by now, over and over and over again, that there is no low to which he will not stoop to WIN A FIGHT, and general elections are the best kind of fight for him. People are acting like this Nunes thing is something Trump would not, or has not, done. Does it bollox the Russia thing? Probably. Does it bollox obstruction investigations? Considering Trump released it against the wishes of law enforcement agencies, I'd say it enhances obstruction investigations.

But yeah. Nah. Still don't care. If the Dem candidate in 2020 isn't prepared for this, then the Dem candidate isn't ready to stand in the GE. Whoever gets picked to go to the mat against Trump in 2020 will need the best hip waders mankind can invent because the bullshit will be neck deep and rancid beyond belief in that election.

In one post you said he probably didn't collude with Russia. Now you're saying that he's done something illegal to get into office. Which one is it? Btw I'm a full blown Trumpist (heh) and I'd be super angry if he pulled illegal shit like that to win the 2020 election.

The OOJ thing stands on very wonky legs anyway. Proving intent is basically impossible. If (big if tbh) Democrats win the House, they will probably try to impeach him as a hail mary for 2020 ("how could anyone reelect an impeached president?") but something tells me that would backfire on them.

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1453R wrote:

Let's be clear here: Trump is clearly and unambiguously guilty of obstruction of justice.

Obstruction of injustice isn't a crime (except in Cuckistan).

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1453R wrote:

You act like I don't fully expect Trump to do whatever he can, legal or otherwise, to try and brute-force his way to a second term. It's not 'would I be offended if he did it', it's 'will I be offended when he does it?'

Answer? Not really. Or at least it won't make me despise the man any more than I already do.

When the Right breaks a rule, off with their heads. When the Left breaks a rule... [the same black cat walks past doorway twice] what rule? I don't see any rule.

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Xavderion wrote:

In one post you said he probably didn't collude with Russia. Now you're saying that he's done something illegal to get into office. Which one is it? Btw I'm a full blown Trumpist (heh) and I'd be super angry if he pulled illegal shit like that to win the 2020 election.

The OOJ thing stands on very wonky legs anyway. Proving intent is basically impossible. If (big if tbh) Democrats win the House, they will probably try to impeach him as a hail mary for 2020 ("how could anyone reelect an impeached president?") but something tells me that would backfire on them.

He didn't (likely) collude with Russia this time.

Does that mean I think he would hesitate for a nanosecond to break every single law he could get away with breaking, and then probably one or two more besides, if breaking those laws meant even a slightly better chance, short-term, of getting what he wants?

No.

Trump has proven that he has no respect at all for American law, our legal system, or those who enforce it, as proven by the fact that he fires anyone and everyone associated with those systems the moment they do something that even mildly inconveniences him. His constant demands for 'LOYALTY', by which he means cult-like, slavish devotion to him and him alone, rather than to the office of the President or the American people, are a pretty big indicator.

So is his active obstruction - you can say 'basically impossible to prove intent' and be legally correct, but come on. Do you really think it's okay for the President to be able to just up and fire every single investigator charged with investigating possible presidential misconduct until he finally gets to one willing to be bought off or intimidated? He's guilty, but he has also successfully raised enough ire on this subject that he will never be tried for obstruction.

So yeah. No. I don't trust for one single heartbeat that Trump will act within the laws of the United States if those laws constrain him in ways he does not feel like being constrained. He's already proven that he doesn't care about the law, the same way he doesn't care about the country or the people in it. The folks he's got under his thumb are going to vote for him and back his policies no matter what because he's successfully divided the country so fiercely into Us and Them that Trumpists would excuse him for actually, factually stabbing someone in the face live on Fox News. They'd figure that whoever got stabbed had it coming and find a way to shift the blame for the stabbing onto some Dem or other, or onto CNN.

Not because they hate the country or anything, but because they're feeling backed into a corner by the constant attacks from people who cannot fuckin' tolerate that screeching goblin and take it out on Trump supporters. Is it fair? No, not really. Sorry about that. But on the flip side, you guys stuck us with an actively treasonous lawbreaker who has done, and is in the process of continuing to do, nigh-irreparable damage to this country.

I very much look forward to Trump being remembered and reviled as not only one of the worst Presidents in the history of this country, but also one of the worst world leaders in the history of the world. Also I really hope I can stop apologizing to my overseas friends for this oaf in 2020, because there's only so much "I am so...so sorry, I tried, I really did, I would fix it if I remotely could..." a girl's pride can take.