[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-August-24, 05:35, said:

From Adam Serwer at The Atlantic:

And there is this:

Quote

Federal Agencies Have Been Sending Employees Articles From White Nationalist And Conspiracy Websites For Months

Why is it important that an agency of the executive branch that has normally been non-partisan suddenly acting extremely partisan?

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“This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die

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“On the electoral road, none of these things happen. There are no tanks in the streets. Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions remain in place. People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2019-August-24, 05:36, said:

Why the Senate can't do its job (from 2010).

Minority Rules ---
Ten Ways to Bring the Senate to Its Knees


As far as the filibuster is concerned, it is not, and never has been part of the US Constitution.

I am going to suggest that the problems in this country are vastly complex and will take decades to overcome, if at all. At its heart, it looks like extreme partisanship is the problem but underneath that is the devaluation of political norms, the devaluation of the worth not only of the ideas with which disagree but of the persons with whom you disagree.

In my mind, the republic is like a marriage. In order for a marriage to work and last, the marriage should take precedent over any individual want. The problems we are having now are much more like a divorce than a successful marriage. The only issue now is who gets the House.

[Winstonm]

I think this is one of the best opening paragraphs I have read:

by Lucian K. Truscott IV

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Another week of shaking our heads and wondering how much longer we can survive him. Yet again, Donald Trump overwhelmed practically everything with the force of his obscene personality, running his mouth and his thumbs even while he was failing to run the country in any sort of conventional sense. He doesn’t actually do anything, but he dominates everything. Living in America today is like being trapped in a room with him — no doors, no windows, no exits, only Trump and the sound of Trump and the hideous image of Trump, all day, every day, for day after day after day.

And it is the feeling of disquiet and discomfort he creates among people of good will that appears to create joy in his supporters.

[kenberg]

As mentioned, I think there is some hope. There is a group of us oldsters who go for a hike every Saturday. Today I was chatting with a woman of about my age, she was born in rural Kentucky, she is a church goer, I expect there are many like her. We rarely talk politics but we briefly did today and she was saying that she just wants him gone, she can hardly wait for him to be gone. Not that she has some deep policy disagreements with him,. Maybe she does but that wasn't her point. She just recognizes a disaster of a person when she sees one.

Democrats need to not screw this up. It's critical.

[johnu]

More emoluments clause material:

Trump’s company could save millions if interest rates fall as he demands

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In the five years before he became president, Trump borrowed more than $360 million via four loans from Deutsche Bank for his hotels in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, as well his 643-room Doral golf resort in South Florida.

The payments on all four properties vary with interest rate changes, according to Trump’s official financial disclosures. That means he has already benefited from falling interest rates that were spurred in part by a cut the Federal Reserve announced in July, the first in more than a decade — and his payments could drop by millions of dollars more annually if the central bank grants Trump’s wish and further lowers short-term rates, experts said.

Although foreign and corporate visitors looking to buy influence with the Grifter in Chief are conspicuously booking space in his hotels, there is evidence that the Con Man in Chief's overall business is bleeding money.

Trump Inflating Scottish Golf Resorts’ Value By $165 Million, Per UK Filings

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His 2018 “public financial disclosure” filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics also claims those two resorts earned him “income” of $23.8 million. His filings with the U.K. Companies House office in Edinburgh for that period showed the resorts had actually lost 4.6 million pounds ― equal to $6.3 million.

His U.S. disclosure statement also fails to mention $199.5 million in loans Trump has made to those resorts: $54.9 million from him personally to Trump International, Scotland in Aberdeenshire; $144.6 million from his trust to Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire.

There are also criminal penalties on the horizon for misreporting on official disclosures.

The Mulligan in Chief's Doral resort also appears to be having some serious financial problems.

Ex-Trump Doral golf members may wait the rest of their lives for refunds from the president

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Golfers who quit their memberships at Trump National Doral after the property’s namesake became president were aiming to lose their link to a man they do not support. Turns out they could be waiting for Trump to pay them back for the rest of their lives.

Two long-time golf members who resigned weeks after Trump won the 2016 presidential election said they were no longer willing to write him checks. Another quit last December after he said the club became too political. They spoke to the Herald on the condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation. These former members are now on a waiting list to get their deposits back — ranging from $10,500 to $19,000 — that stretches more than 265 people-long.

To move up the list by one spot, four new golf members need to join the club, according to the membership terms. Deposit amounts vary depending on when members joined.

The Grifter in Chief lives up to his reputation

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Trump agreed to honor the membership and the refund waiting list when he purchased the property. At that time there were nearly 500 active golf members and around 200 on the refund waiting list, according to bankruptcy records.

Shortly after buying the resort, Trump held a meeting with golf members in one of the ballrooms. Brooke remembers Trump promising renovations to the golf courses and saying, “No one ever leaves my clubs.”

As it turned out, that wasn’t strictly true. Now, Brooke said, the club is visibly desolate. He said he rarely runs into anyone in the gym in the morning. During Trump’s first visit to the property as president this past June, hotel occupancy was at just 23 percent. On a recent Wednesday morning during the August dog days, three people sat in the members lounge.

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But in a review of the property’s taxable value last year, a Trump Organization consultant told the Miami-Dade Value Adjustment Board that the property was “severely under-performing” compared to its competitors and blamed the shortfall on “some negative connotation that is associated with the brand.” As evidence, the consultant showed profits fell nearly 70 percent from 2015 to 2017. The county agreed to reduce the resort’s assessed value for 2018 from $110.3 million to $105.6 million. Trump reported that he made $76 million from the Doral resort and golf club in 2018, down from $116 million in 2016.

"blamed the shortfall on “some negative connotation that is associated with the brand" is a very accurate insight since many potential customers would rather sleep under a freeway overpass than give money to the Racist in Chief.

[y66]

Church bells in many U.S. cities will be tolling for 4 minutes at 3 PM today to commemorate the arrival of slaves in Virginia 4 centuries ago and the contributions of Africans and their descendants to build this country.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-August-25, 09:25, said:

Church bells in many U.S. cities will be tolling for 4 minutes at 3 PM today to commemorate the arrival of slaves in Virginia 4 centuries ago and the contributions of Africans and their descendants to build this country.

No wonder Trump left the country.

[y66]

From Nate Silver:

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Given that a primary challenge to Trump is very unlikely to *actually* succeed, having someone who's more bombastic / skilled at drawing media attention (say, Joe Walsh) probably causes more problems for Trump than a patrician, moderate Republican would (say, Bill Weld).

Quote

Mind you, this is like a 2.4 on the 0-to-10 scale of "Trump's biggest re-election problems". But Weld was like an 0.6.

[barmar]

Today, when Trump was asked by a reporter if he had second thoughts about escalating the trade war with China, he answered, "I have second thoughts about everything."

The WH Press Secretary later claimed that what he meant was that he regrets not raising tariffs higher. But I have a different theory: he doesn't know what the idiom "second thoughts" means, and thinks it means thinking about something long and carefully (not that he actually does that, but he likes to claim that he does).

[barmar]

johnu, on 2019-August-24, 16:13, said:

Ex-Trump Doral golf members may wait the rest of their lives for refunds from the president

He doesn't even pay his employees and vendors, why would these people expect to get anything out of him.

[y66]

Excerpt from The Education of Elizabeth Warren by Stephanie Saul at NYT:

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By 1981, Ms. Warren and her husband had secured temporary teaching posts at the University of Texas, where she agreed to teach bankruptcy law. She quickly earned a reputation for lively lectures, putting students on the spot and peppering them with questions and follow-up questions — the consummate practitioner of the Socratic method.

Even visitors to her class got the treatment. One of them was Stefan A. Riesenfeld, a renowned bankruptcy professor who had come to lecture on the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. The law, which had expanded bankruptcy protection for consumers, was already under attack by the credit industry, which argued that it made personal bankruptcy too attractive.

Even so, Mr. Riesenfeld explained to Ms. Warren’s class, those who filed personal bankruptcy were “mostly day laborers and housemaids who had lived at the economic margins and always would,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir.

“I asked the obvious follow-up question: ‘How did he know?’” Ms. Warren wrote. After more questioning, it became clear that not only did Mr. Riesenfeld have no real answer, he was irritated by Ms. Warren’s probing.

The subject struck close to home. When she was growing up in Oklahoma, her father’s heart attack had thrown their household into precarious financial territory, forcing her mother to take a minimum-wage job answering telephones at Sears.

She remembers being fearful as she lay in bed at night listening to her mother cry. “She thought I had gone to sleep. I didn’t know for sure the details of why she was crying, but I knew it was bad and that we could lose everything,” Ms. Warren said.

(Later, the oil glut of the 1980s would destroy her brother David’s once-thriving business delivering supplies to oil rigs. Her brother John, a construction worker, would also struggle after the oil market collapsed. Her family ended up in such dire straits that Ms. Warren and her husband would ultimately provide financial assistance to some relatives, including help buying their homes.)

She wanted answers, more than Professor Riesenfeld could provide. She began discussing her questions with colleagues.

“There was this new bankruptcy code, and nobody knew much about what was happening out there in the world,” Mr. Westbrook said. “We got to talking and decided it would be kind of interesting to go down and take a look at some of the cases on file in the Western District of Texas, San Antonio to El Paso. We literally went to the courthouses and talked to the judges.”

As the study expanded, the researchers began visiting other states to collect data from the court files — then available only on paper.

“We got two portable Xerox machines, which in those days were a big deal — high technology,” Mr. Westbrook remembers. “We had to buy a ticket for them. We didn’t trust them to baggage.”

They nicknamed the equipment R2-D2.

Dozens of people would eventually be involved in the effort, an analysis of a quarter million pieces of data gathered from bankruptcy cases filed from 1981 through 1985.

Among the researchers was Kimberly S. Winick, then a University of Texas law student and now a lawyer in Los Angeles. While Ms. Warren didn’t talk a lot about her views, Ms. Winick said she believed that the project’s initial theory was that, “If you filed bankruptcy, you must be cheating.”

“Liz was from a more conservative place,” Ms. Winick said. “And she was somebody who had worked very, very, very hard all her life. And she had never walked away from a debt. And I think she kind of started with the view — let’s see what people are doing and how they’re cadging on their debts and screwing their creditors.”

That was the conventional thinking of the day, promoted in a study by Purdue University researchers that was being widely circulated on Capitol Hill as evidence the 1978 bankruptcy law needed to be toughened, Ms. Warren said in the interview.

But when she and her colleagues analyzed the study, she said, they concluded not only that its methodology was flawed, but that it had been funded with a sizable grant from the credit industry.

“That’s where it starts to shift for me,” Ms. Warren said. “Once we figured out that this was a bought-and-paid-for piece of credit industry advertising, now I was a little more neutral.”

[y66]

From A G-7 Fiasco to Remember by the Editorial Board at Bloomberg:

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Although Group of Seven summits rarely produce much of value, they can generally be relied on to avoid making things worse. This weekend’s gathering in Biarritz, France, was a notable exception. With concerns about the global economy mounting, and security and environmental challenges demanding fresh purpose and clarity from the U.S. and its allies, the summit only compounded the risks.

There’s no mystery about who to blame: an American president who has made chaos his method of government and renounced the global leadership role that all his modern predecessors, much to the U.S.’s benefit, were eager to discharge.

Disarray was the summit’s only constant. First, in off-the-cuff remarks to reporters, President Donald Trump suggested that he was having second thoughts about the policy that he’s proud to call a “trade war.” Clarification followed: An official explained that the president was only wondering whether it might have been better to make tariffs against China even higher. Then, on Monday, Trump said China had called U.S. trade officials asking to restart the talks; Beijing seemed puzzled by the news.

“I think [the other governments] respect the trade war,” the president had remarked Sunday. How could they not?

Earlier Trump had “hereby ordered” (in a tweet, of course) “our great American companies … to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Because the president lacks the authority to hereby order any such thing, another clarification was required. The president said he could declare a national emergency and this would provide all the powers he would need — you know, should he abruptly choose to decouple the world’s two largest economies and thereby engineer a global slump.

Turning to other business, the U.S. president missed few chances to contradict either himself or his summit partners. Should Russia be readmitted to these meetings, for instance? France, Germany and the U.K. are wary; Trump says he likes the idea. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe deplored North Korea’s latest missile tests, saying they violated United Nations Security Council resolutions. President Trump said, “We’re in the world of missiles, folks, whether you like it or not.”

Perhaps finding inspiration in the U.S. example, French President Emmanuel Macron added a little Trump-like disarray of his own, springing a visit to Biarritz by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on the rest of the group. (Zarif met with Macron but not the other leaders.) French officials said the G-7 had asked the French president to pursue the possibility of dialogue with Iran. The U.S. demurred, but “I can’t stop people from talking,” Trump said.

Indeed you can’t. That’s the problem with grandstanding and fomenting confusion. Such antics are apt to catch on.

Global economic momentum is fading, not least due to Trump’s fondness for trade wars — and bear in mind that if a new recession is the result, central banks will lack the means to respond effectively. Global measures to combat climate change remain woefully insufficient. Global safety and security have been compromised by the rapid decay in conventions and institutions of international cooperation.

What’s truly remarkable is that all of these challenges are the result of deliberate acts of U.S. policy. The summit couldn’t have put everything back together — that’s the work of years, starting with a different U.S. president — but it could have offered some respite. Instead, the planet’s most powerful politician has dug the world into an even deeper hole.

[johnu]

This could have been posted in the Climate Change topic, but it's a bigger story than climate change.

Scoop: Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S.

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Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" according to one source who was there. "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" the source added, paraphrasing the president's remarks.

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into that." Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.

The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the room added. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we do with this?'"

OMG

Thankfully nobody mentioned the trade war and nuclear weapons in the same meeting.

[y66]

From Trump’s Grifting Mocks the Rule of Law by Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg channeling johnu at the BBO Water Cooler:

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It’s hardly a surprise at this point that Donald Trump is using his presidency for personal profit. In the most recent example, he’s been floating the possibility of hosting the Group of Seven summit at one of his golf clubs next year, complete with high-profile presidential endorsements of the supposed virtues of the site. As Greg Sargent says, this is the “one bedrock principle, one unshakable constant in Trump’s conduct, from which he will never waver.”

That Trump is using the presidency for personal gain is bad. That he’s willing to at least encourage the appearance of flat-out bribery – suggesting that he’ll favor those who stay at his hotels and otherwise enrich him – undermines the idea of constitutional government.

Perhaps worse is the blatant lawlessness. Trump’s job, of course, is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” And yet he proceeds as if the emolument clauses of the Constitution simply don’t exist. For the president to get away with this kind of thing just because he can promotes contempt for the entire concept of the rule of law.

And then there’s the example Trump sets. Why should any other elected official or government employee avoid conflicts of interest when the president flirts with them constantly? It’s not surprising that an unusual number of high-level officials in this administration have left office after scandals. When the president exploits his public position for personal gain so openly, the clear implication is that only a chump would miss a chance to do the same.

Trump, of course, claims that he’s losing money on the presidency. Who knows? That could even be true. But given that he’s the first president since before Richard Nixon to hide his tax returns, there’s little reason to believe him. Even in the unlikely event that the presidency is a net loser for Trump, that still doesn't excuse the constant advertisements for his personal businesses. And it certainly doesn’t excuse behavior that mocks the rule of law.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-August-27, 07:51, said:

From Trump’s Grifting Mocks the Rule of Law by Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg channeling johnu at the BBO Water Cooler:

Individual-1 using the power of the presidency to promote his private business is another example of a high crime and misdemeanor that should result in impeachment and removal, but it seems there is no political courage left in the US Congress.

And, for those keeping score on recession risks, the 2yr-10yr treasuries yields inverted again today, 8-27-19, 1.53-1.49. https://www.youtube....h?v=CtGxusvUT3k

[y66]

From Frank Bruni at NYT:

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Donald Trump’s presidency has baffled me, enraged me and above all saddened me, because I’m a stubborn believer in America’s promise, which he mocks and imperils.

But last week his presidency did something to me that it hadn’t done before. It absolutely flattened me.

I woke up Saturday, made my coffee, shuffled to my computer, started to glance at the news and suddenly had to stop. I couldn’t go on. Trump had yet again said something untrue, once more suggested something absurd, contradicted himself, deified himself, claimed martyrdom, blamed Barack Obama, made his billionth threat and hurled his trillionth insult.

That was all clear from the headlines, which were as much as I could take. He had commandeered too many of my thoughts, run roughshod over too many of my emotions, made me question too many articles of faith.

I was sapped — if not quite of the will to live, then of the will to tweet, to Google and to surf the cable channels, where his furious mien and curious mane are ubiquitous. What I was feeling was beyond Trump fatigue and bigger than Trump exhaustion. It was Trump enervation. Trump enfeeblement.

And within it I saw a ray of hope.

Until now it has been unclear to me precisely how Trump ends. His manifestly rotten character hasn’t alienated his supporters, who are all too ready with rationalizations and fluent in trade-offs. They’re also unbothered by many of his missteps, because he has sold those to a cynical electorate as media fables and rivals’ fabrications. He’s so enterprising and assiduous at pointing the finger elsewhere that many voters have lost their bearings. Defeat is victory. Oppressors are liberators. Corruption is caring. Mar-a-Loco is Shangri-La.

But Americans of all persuasions recognize melodrama when it keeps smacking them in the head, and he has manufactured a bruising degree of it. They’re not keen on Washington or politics, so they don’t care for the way in which fevered discussions of both have become so pervasive as to be ambient.

They’re woozy and wiped out, and they can’t lay their depletion on the doorsteps of frustrated Democrats and Fake News. The president’s tweets speak for themselves, in both volume and vitriol. The president’s thunder is deafening without any amplification by CNN or MSNBC.

The turnover in his White House and the bloat of a Trump-administration diaspora can’t be dismissed as the detritus of disruption, the flotsam and jetsam of an unconventional management style. They’re what happens when you place a cyclone at the Resolute Desk. Everything splinters and screams, and you can’t find a safe space.

“Even Trump’s Supporters Are Getting Tired of His Daily Drama” was the headline on Jim Geraghty’s Monday column in National Review, which sometimes travels fantastically creative routes to reach the sunny side of Trump. Geraghty wrote that the publication’s editors “are exhausted with presidential tweets, from asking whether Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell or Chinese leader Chairman Xi is the bigger enemy, to ‘hereby ordering’ private companies to look for alternatives to operations in China.”

He linked to a lament by the conservative writer Rod Dreher, who, he noted, “is exhausted from the president behaving like ‘a clown who refuses to meet with the prime minister of Denmark because she won’t sell him Greenland.’”

Notice a theme? Apparently weariness with Trump’s wackiness does something virtually unheard-of in the United States circa 2019: It transcends partisanship.

Trump’s instinct and strategy are to conquer by overwhelming. But there’s a difference between wearing people down and wearing them out. He’s like the last seasons of “House of Cards” — a riveting spectacle devolved into a repellent burlesque, so unrestrained in its appetites that it devoured itself.

I wouldn’t be surprised if voters consciously or subconsciously conclude that they just can’t continue to live like this and that four more years would be ruinous, if not to the country as a whole, then to our individual psyches. By the time Election Day rolls around, they may crave nothing more electric than stability and serenity. That wouldn’t be a bad Democratic bumper sticker. It’s essentially the message of Joe Biden’s campaign.

According to Morning Consult’s tracking poll, Trump’s approval rating in vital swing states has declined significantly since he took office. Take Wisconsin: His approval rating in January 2017 was 47 percent, and his disapproval rating was 41, for a net plus of six percentage points. Now his approval has fallen to 41 while his disapproval has climbed to 55, for a net minus of 14.

Maybe that reflects voters’ economic worries. I suspect it’s just as much about their exhaustion. They’ve binged on Trump and now they’re overstuffed with Trump, and if Democratic candidates are smart, they’ll not dwell on his mess and madness, because voters have taken his measure and made their judgments, and what many of them want is release from the incessant drumbeat of that infernal syllable: Trump, Trump, Trump.

They’d like a new mini-series with a different cast, and Democrats aren’t giving them that if they keep putting Trump’s name above the title. On Saturday and then again on Sunday, I turned the whole damn show off and fled to the park for fresh air. I pray that’s some sort of omen.

[johnu]

There have been far too many WTF moments during the Manchurian President's 2 1/2 years. This latest one may be the last straw before the House starts impeachment.

Trump Offers Pardons To Aides Who Will Fast-Track Wall Before Election Day: Report

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President Donald Trump reportedly told officials in his administration that he would pardon them if they had to break any laws to get hundreds of miles of his border wall built before the next presidential election, according to a report Tuesday night in The Washington Post.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” the president has allegedly told aides worried about his instructions to seize private land through eminent domain, flout environmental rules or push through billion-dollar contracts.

The Criminal in Chief has self incriminated himself. For the sake of this country, maybe he will self deport himself to his motherland Russia so the USA can immediately get back to business.

Another story about this:

‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day.

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The president has told senior aides that a failure to deliver on the signature promise of his 2016 campaign would be a letdown to his supporters and an embarrassing defeat. With the election 14 months away and hundreds of miles of fencing plans still in blueprint form, Trump has held regular White House meetings for progress updates and to hasten the pace, according to several people involved in the discussions.

When aides have suggested that some orders are illegal or unworkable, Trump has suggested he would pardon the officials if they would just go ahead, aides said. He has waved off worries about contracting procedures and the use of eminent domain, saying “take the land,” according to officials who attended the meetings.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” he has told officials in meetings about the wall.

[Winstonm]

I think the most hideous thing he has done, the most impeachable, is to promote at the G7 summit Doral Golf Course as a candidate for the next G7, which the US is hosting. If he somehow manages to weasel his way into getting that done, he should be impeached, removed, and shipped off to Elba.

[Zelandakh]

Winstonm, on 2019-August-28, 06:21, said:

I think the most hideous thing he has done, the most impeachable, is to promote at the G7 summit Doral Golf Course as a candidate for the next G7, which the US is hosting. If he somehow manages to weasel his way into getting that done, he should be impeached, removed, and shipped off to Elba.

I think you miss the point Winston. Even if he does not actually hold the conference at his resort, just by announcing it he has gained the benefit of millions of dollars' worth of free advertising through his position as POTUS. I would hope that this is against the rules. Democrats should stop shrieking about what might happen in the future and start impeaching for what has already happened and continues unabated.

[barmar]

johnu, on 2019-August-28, 03:56, said:

Trump Offers Pardons To Aides Who Will Fast-Track Wall Before Election Day: Report

Luckily the President can only issue pardons for federal crimes. They'd probably have to violate some state laws as well to achieve what he wants, and he can't do anything about that.