President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

According to the Washington Post's reporting, Mitch McConnell was briefed by the intelligence community in September about Russian interference but shut down an attempt to have a bipartisan condemnation of the plot. But now that the election is safely in the bag for his and Putin's puppet, he's making a show of wanting a Senate investigation. Smarmy, duplicitous bastard. In a just world that doesn't exist, he'd be on trial for treason.

McConnell announces Senate probe of suspected Russian election interference: ‘The Russians are not our friends’

 

In the Information Age, expecting foreign actors to not use propaganda in elections is pretty much unenforceable

 

Aside from whether he's right or wrong about the F35 program, I just find it so bizarre that the president-elect is still tossing out off-the-handle tweets. Does he not understand the impact his every utterance now has on real people's lives? Is he gonna keep randomly tweeting like this after he takes office?

 

Absolutely.

 

I kind of hope something really scary happens very early on in his administration, in which no one is harmed and no permanent damage is done, but which finally alerts the American people that they elected an utter buffoon and charlatan.

 

If by "unenforceable" you mean "ridiculously naive" I agree with you ...

 

Today's lesson in Elementary Russian:

Any word that ends in the sound "-tsiya" (the equivalent of "-tion" in English) is of Latin origin.
"fyederatsiya" = federation
"statsiya" = station
"informatsiya" = information

And the negative of Russian-invented words is always preceded by "ne" (not) or "bez" (without), not "dez".

"nekrasivy" = not beautiful
"nedorogoy' = not expensive
"bezopasna" = without danger

 

OTOH, as soon as Trump steps on Mitch's toes, Mitch is going to give the green light to his sneaky plot to have Trump impeached or abdicate the throne.

 

A good rule of thumb with Trump cabinet picks: If they have at some point professed a desire to abolish the position, they're Trump's guy.

To wit:

Rick Perry could be Trump pick for energy, department he couldn't name

 

I have no problems with seeking efficiency in the procurement process. As it turns out, my first project in my new non-newspaper life was to support the F-35, and I'm happy to point out two or three or four things where I want to slap Lockheed on the side of the head and say, WTF?????

It's specifically Trump's marginally informed Twitter opinions coloring the process that I object to.

I am of the opinion the F-35 is a needed upgrade to our country's air power. It will replace several aging air frames and should - in the end - represent a drastic capabilities upgrade. I'm happy to debate the merits of the project with any other decently informed individual.

But Trump starts tweeting out of his ass about the program, and suddenly the Trumpites pile on, and just like that we're bagging the F-35 and dropping trillions of dollars keeping F-18s flying for another 20 years.

 

Whatever the merits or lack of same of the F-35, within the last week the President-elect has picked very public fights with the two biggest companies in the aerospace industry, an industry of importance to both our economy and national security and not least important, one that's beloved by Congress in true bipartisan fashion. That's just weird. Also really dumb, but mostly weird.

 

It might be weird. ... Or it my be just what Putin wants from his boy.