quote:

Originally posted by 12131:


President Trump has accepted Nikki Haley's resignation as UN Ambassador, according to two sources briefed on their conversation. The timing of her departure is still unclear.

That's a bit shocking.

Looks like we'll find out what's going on soon enough. President Trump will be making an announcement shortly in the Oval Office with Nikki Haley.

Life is shocking. Everything is shocking. We'll know the reason for this, this morning, so how 'bout we wait a few minutes to find out?

I sense a change in DTs demeanor. I suspect he feels he has turned a corner as far as being comfortable as president. He seems proud of what he's accomplished for America - and he should be.


He was formidable when he won in 2016, he's more than doubly so now. Is he really only less than two years in? Thanks DT. 6 more years.

Tucker just reported that the creepy porn lawyer challenged Donald Trump Jr. to a three round, MMA fight.

What a perfect opportunity for Hannity to pick up the challenge! He has been seriously training in MMA for years-- trains two hours every day.

Wouldn't that be a hoot to watch....

I know, I know. And I feel a bit ashamed of myself for even saying so.

And yet....

Watching Avenatti's arm snap like a wishbone in an armbar.... Okay, I'm a bad person-- bad dog!

How Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Finally United The Right Under Trump

Trumpism is now the unregretted tattoo that altered the Republican coalition, making it edgier, more rugged, and more relentless in pursuing its policy objectives.

National Review
Brad Todd

It is not hard to imagine a President Jeb Bush nominating Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is difficult, however, to imagine Bush sticking with Kavanaugh through the fire his confirmation process became. That difference is why Republican enthusiasm for the midterm elections, which had been lagging, now is on steroids and might stay that way.

Until the Kavanaugh proceedings, Trump’s style of leadership via chaos thrilled a slice of the GOP coalition and exasperated another. Even as his approval ratings remained high with Republican voters at large, his angst rating among Republican donors, elected officials, and conservative thought leaders remained equally high. With Kavanaugh confirmed, the case for that angst has waned.

Trumpism is now the unregretted tattoo that altered the Republican coalition, making it edgier, more rugged, and more relentless in pursuing its policy objectives.

Confronted with a liberal self-styled “resistance” movement—whose very name reeks of the virtue-signaling that galls the right—Trump responded in kind. Left-wingers march in the streets and chase prominent conservatives out of restaurants; he bows his back and marches Kavanaugh onto the bench for a lifetime. Liberals feel better for a weekend; pragmatic conservatives get to feel vindicated for decades. Good trade.

Trump not only refused to rescind Kavanaugh’s nomination when the confirmation process got rocky—as both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had done with flagging nominees—he barnstormed the country and held campaign rallies in jam-packed basketball arenas rallying his coalition behind Kavanaugh. After playing nice for a handful of surprisingly diplomatic days, enabling a judiciary committee hearing to fairly hear the allegations against Kavanaugh, Trump retrieved his megaphone from its holster and unleashed on the judge’s liberal Senate and media antagonists.

Conservatives who may have been privately uncertain on how to proceed in the face of the allegations found the light in the flames of Trump’s heat. The consensus on the right became clear: this was not a competition of memories between two middle-aged professionals who grew up privileged at boozy teen parties in suburban Maryland. By last Saturday’s confirmation vote, this episode was not even predominantly about Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford; it was a tectonic struggle between the voters’ chosen Republican government and the ruthless Democratic minority seeking to topple it by any means necessary.

Trump, aided by a perfectly timed “Braveheart” speech from Sen. Lindsey Graham and a bold stand in the gap by Sen. Susan Collins, united the right. Few would have predicted any of the three of them capable of achieving that unification. Graham and Collins had long been collaborators with Democrats on judicial appointments, even voting to confirm Barack Obama’s first two Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Trump is not a native of the ideological right, and some conservatives have long questioned whether he adheres to any ideology. His speech announcing his candidacy for president in 2015 used 6,000 words, and not one of them was “conservative.” For pragmatic deal-makers of his ilk, ideology is for chumps.

President Trump has become more conservative than even Candidate Trump, much less Businessman Trump, ever was. It is plausible that the thermo-nuclear Democratic opposition to his presidency has radicalized the president himself as much as his ascendance enflamed his antagonists. But whenever the transformation or whatever the reason, the American right is now not only winning, but may even get tired of winning, as he famously predicted.

Evangelicals who pragmatically embraced the thrice-married playmate-chaser got not just a similarly conservative replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, they got in Neil Gorsuch the judge who had already ruled on the circuit level in the Hobby Lobby case—the modern gold standard case on religious liberty.

Gun rights advocates like the National Rifle Association, which had backed Trump’s campaign to the tune of $30 million, did not just get in Kavanaugh a justice who is likely to uphold the Second Amendment status quo, but one who as an appellate judge already crafted the legal template for the future expansion of current gun rights precedent.

Foreign policy conservatives who backed Trump similarly must cheer the most pro-Israel and anti-Iran policy the United States has had in its history. The administration’s three most prominent foreign policy faces—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, and National Security Advisor John Bolton—could not be more in sync with the hawk-ocracy if they had been picked by Trump’s incessant hawk critic Bill Kristol.

Supply-side economic conservatives are ebullient about the tax relief Trump jammed through Congress in 2017, giving America its lowest corporate tax rate in the history of corporate tax rates.

Populists, whom Trump brought into the Republican Party, have gotten their dividend in the form of a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement that will re-set the norms of future trade negotiations with other partners.

Conservatives who stuck with Trump were often derided by those who didn’t for making a “deal with devil,” but in his first two years, whatever deal was struck has undeniably been paid. Our modern binary political system is ill-suited to incrementalism and compromise. It’s a lesson that Trump’s give-no-quarter style is slowly teaching the rest of his reluctant Republican team.

A policy assessment of Trumpism’s first two years is inarguable, but its politics were complicated from the start and remain so. The president’s willingness to gin a non-stop soap opera in Washington drives the golfing suburban men in his coalition crazy. His insensitive rhetoric and zeal for senseless confrontation cause suburban Republican women social misery at the yoga studio.

The polarization Trump engenders, pitting rural and industrial America against its bourgeois bubbles, has consequential math and may cost the GOP a string of governorships and its majority in the House, while sparking a perpendicular net gain in the Senate.

The price for Republicans of enduring Trump’s cringe-worthy moments can be high, but the product that has to date come with that price—a more muscular GOP every bit as willing to match the gladiator tactics of Democrats like Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Bernie Sanders—is one many conservatives are increasingly content to pay.

The completion of Kavanaugh’s confirmation on the eve of the midterm elections is a gift to Republicans even bigger than one justice, even a justice the cements a 5-4 conservative majority on the court. It’s the gift of common purpose.

If you were a Never Trumper Republican who longed for the predictable and polite days of Bush-ism, you now must confront the reality that Trump and only Trump was tough enough to beat back the loony left on this occasion. And if you were an Only Trumper who loved him because you disdained the fecklessness of cocktail party pachyderms, you now must admire the fortitude shown by Mitch McConnell’s patrician Senate majority.

Trump’s insensitivity will continue to consternate his allies. But after Kavanaugh, both wings of Trump’s coalition now must admit they are in this together, that their Democratic opponents’ ferocity can be met only with even greater vigor. The collective Republican walk through the smelter of this Supreme Court confirmation has finally made Trumpism about something bigger, and more important, than Trump.

Link

quote:

Our modern binary political system is ill-suited to incrementalism and compromise. It’s a lesson that Trump’s give-no-quarter style is slowly teaching the rest of his reluctant Republican team.

You can not accommodate nor compromise with evil. You can either surrender to it or harden yourself to the reality that it must be defeated, over and over again, because true evil never dies.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
The completion of Kavanaugh’s confirmation on the eve of the midterm elections is a gift to Republicans even bigger than one justice, even a justice the cements a 5-4 conservative majority on the court. It’s the gift of common purpose.

Yes, indeed, and it's time- IT IS TIME- for all the Never-Trumpers to climb on board the Trump Train, where many of us- myself included- have been riding for more than three years.

Wake up, open your eyes, and get on board. Your country needs you.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
If you were a Never Trumper Republican who longed for the predictable and polite days of Bush-ism, you now must confront the reality that Trump and only Trump was tough enough to beat back the loony left on this occasion. And if you were an Only Trumper who loved him because you disdained the fecklessness of cocktail party pachyderms, you now must admire the fortitude shown by Mitch McConnell’s patrician Senate majority.

For me, the past sins of McConnell, Grassley, Graham, it's water under the bridge. They woke up and smelled the coffee and showed up to play in the big game. Perhaps in the past few weeks, they realized what it is like to walk in Trump's shoes.

quote:

And if you were an Only Trumper who loved him because you disdained the fecklessness of cocktail party pachyderms, you now must admire the fortitude shown by Mitch McConnell’s patrician Senate majority.

It’s OK to be tough and uncompromising on firmly held principles.

Wonder what happened to Russia, Russia, Russia? Because Trump now owns Rosenstein who owns Mueller which means Trump has them both by the short hairs. Good article from The American Thinker.

Trump, Declassification, and Leverage
By Mark Wauck
There's a reason why President Trump has not unilaterally declassified the documents exposing perfidy against him: leverage. As the whole Russia hoax is beginning to come into some sort of global perspective – quite literally, as we'll see – the extent of the advantage he now maintains by holding back declassification as a threat outweighs the benefits of transparency. Recent posts by observers who write from widely varying perspectives give us the ability to discern the current state of play.

Let's start with the domestic front of the Russia hoax. Sundance at Conservative Tree House has an excellent post up: "President Trump and DAG Rod Rosenstein – "No Collusion", No Immediate Worries..." The overall theme is one that's dear to Sundance's heart: leverage. The state of play is this: the congressional investigation has progressed to the point that it's clear beyond cavil that the entire Russia narrative is, in fact, a hoax and fraud – both on the American people in general and on our legal system. This is to say real criminal liability exists for the key players who developed the plot against Trump. John Solomon summarizes what Congress has discovered in succinct fashion:

There is now a concrete storyline backed by irrefutable evidence: The FBI allowed itself to take political opposition research created by one party to defeat another in an election, treated it like actionable intelligence, presented it to the court as substantiated, and then used it to justify spying on an adviser for the campaign of that party's duly chosen nominee for president in the final days of a presidential election.

And when, nine months later, the FBI could not prove the allegation of collusion between Trump and Russia, unverified evidence was leaked to the media to try to sustain public support for a continued investigation.

But Sundance spells out very specifically where the greatest risk – and therefore the greatest leverage – lies:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein created the special counsel under fraudulent pretense. That origination material (Ohr 302's, FISA pages, origination EC, and Page/Strzok messages) is now a risk to the Deputy AG.

There are many other players, in addition to Rosenstein, who are at serious risk. But from the perspective of leverage, Rosenstein is the key because he created the special counsel part of the hoax and because – as a result of A.G. Sessions's recusal – he remains in charge of the special counsel operation. Rosenstein can exercise as much or as little control over Mueller as he wants. Trump's threat of declassification of the "origination material" gives Trump complete leverage over Rosenstein and therefore over Mueller.

Trump's leverage ensures that Rosenstein will very much want to restrain Mueller. If Rosenstein wants to restrain Mueller, Mueller will be restrained. This may explain why we are now seeing key members of Mueller's team leaving and returning to their old jobs. The importance of this is that Mueller has posed the greatest threat to the Trump administration, the greatest annoyance. That threat is now defanged for the immediate future. If Mueller steps out of line, boom! Declassification. By putting declassification on hold, Trump maintains his leverage. And Congress continues to investigate and slowly reveal the truth.

The benefits of this leverage via threat-of-declassification extend well beyond the Russia hoax to other practical political matters. I believe we saw that at play in the Kavanaugh nomination battle. Rod Rosenstein, as DAG, directly supervises the FBI director, Christopher Wray. To say the FBI acted with alacrity and efficiency in exposing the machinations behind the accusations leveled at Kavanaugh would be an understatement. But consider: Sundance himself was distinctly alarmist during the Kavanaugh hearings, alleging a plot of Deep State FBI-DOJ insiders to torpedo the nomination. As we've seen, however, exactly the opposite occurred. The FBI leaped to Kavanaugh's defense, and I attribute that to Trump's leverage over the DOJ-FBI through Rosenstein.

How will this play out for the midterm elections? Will Trump at some point declassify that crucial "origination material"? While Trump stressed that his hold on declassification doesn't change his commitment for transparency sooner rather than later, I believe that the Kavanaugh nomination has given Trump and his newly committed GOP allies the issue they need for the midterms. Polling has repeatedly shown that Supreme Court nominations are a hot-button issue for Republican voters, and it has the advantage of being readily comprehensible. Trump used his leverage to get his nominee confirmed while energizing "normals" for the midterms. After the election, declassification could play a significant role in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Let's turn to that global perspective now.

Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.com has a blog post up that complements Sundance's "leverage" perspective quite nicely: "The Final Truth of Russia-gate: As the hoax unravels, the real story of 'foreign collusion' comes out." Raimondo focuses on the role of foreign "allies" in the plot against Trump. As on the domestic front, there were multiple players: Australia, Ukraine, Estonia, Israel. The key player was undoubtedly the U.K. Without massive intelligence involvement by the U.K., the entire Russia hoax would likely never have gotten off the ground. Here, Raimondo encapsulates that involvement sufficiently for our purposes (much more could be said):

This entire episode has Her Majesty's Secret Service's fingerprints all over it. Steele's key role is plain enough: here was a British spook who was not only hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump but was unusually passionate about his work – almost as if he'd have done it for free. And then there was the earliest approach to the Trump campaign, made by Cambridge professor and longtime spook Stefan Halper to Carter Page. And then there's the mysterious alleged "link" to Russian intelligence, Professor Joseph Mifsud, whose murky British-based thinktank managed to operate openly despite later claims it was a Russian covert operation.

It was Mifsud who orchestrated the Russia-gate hoax, first suggesting that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails, and then disappearing into thin air as soon as the story he had planted percolated into plain view. Some "Russian agent"!

Leverage, anyone? Declassification would expose all these foreign players, but the heaviest hit by far would be against the U.K. and its Australian poodle. And so we learn that "key allies" "begged" Trump not to declassify that "origination material." Raimondo notes:

Trump's decision to walk back his announcement that the key Russia-gate intelligence would be declassified tells us almost as much as if he'd tweeted it out, unredacted. For what it tells us is that public knowledge of the contents would constitute a major break in relations with at least one key ally.

Yes, Trump smoked them out and got them begging for mercy, as reported by the major media in all too transparent detail. Trump ends up with all the leverage he needs over "Her Majesty's Government" for as long as that leverage is useful.

Well played, Mr. President!

Link

Hope this is the right place for this. Hillary said dems will only be civil when they re-take control. She's the gift that keeps on giving!

https://www.realclearpolitics....d_or_the_senate.html

Well, certainly, I would love to see us return to civility. Listening to one another, working out our differences. That is not the Republican party that exists today, and that is certainly not the administration that we have in power right now. When the Republican Senate denied the right of President Obama to have his nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, heard -- AMANPOUR: I think you even wrote that they stole a justice from the Democratic party. CLINTON: Well, I think they did. I mean, to keep a Supreme Court seat open for a year, to deny a distinguished jurist, they could have voted him down. They could have said, "Well, for ideological reasons, philosophical reasons, we're not going to vote for him." But no, they stonewalled. And that was such a breach of Senate ethics and the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to advice and consent on nominations, that you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That's why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.

^^

Regarding lastmanstanding's post above about the possible declassification of documents being leverage on Rosenstein and Mueller - why not just declassify the docs. and be done with it? So you've got leverage to keep them in line for what? What harm could come from releasing the incriminating items and crushing the false accusations and lies once and for all?

quote:

Originally posted by marksman41:
Regarding lastmanstanding's post above about the possible declassification of documents being leverage on Rosenstein and Mueller - why not just declassify the docs. and be done with it? So you've got leverage to keep them in line for what? What harm could come from releasing the incriminating items and crushing the false accusations and lies once and for all?

If what the article says is true in regards to what these documents reveal about the major players then it becomes when you want to spend the leverage you hold. Don't forget the FBI gave the White House additional documentation after the Kavanaugh last background check on supposed witness intimidation/tampering by the Ford camp.

No doubt this was done by Rosenstein giving Wray direction on not to fuck around with this investigation. In other words play this right.

Had Trump not had this leverage would the result been the same. We will never know.

Trump as always is playing the long game. The declassification will come at the right time most likely after the mid terms. In the meantime as the article states the investigation by the congress is slowly turning more rocks over revealing even more.

Right now Trump is winning why not hold on to the leverage. The Mueller investigation is fizzling out on it's own he don't need the leverage to end it. It may prove to be much more valuable down the road.

Is the Fed trying to make the GOP look bad before the election?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...rong-despite-selloff

McConnell, Grassley, Graham all realize how serious it has all become. As it gets even more extreme, the never-trumpers will come around. Everyone will need to go one way or the other.

That's where we are now.

Trump Rally, Erie, PA

Screen grab of outside crowd of supporters who couldn't make it into the arena.



Twitter video shows even more people:

https://twitter.com/realDonald.../1050189312904581120

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
McConnell, Grassley, Graham all realize how serious it has all become. As it gets even more extreme, the never-trumpers will come around. Everyone will need to go one way or the other.

That's where we are now.

You better decide which side you're on
This ship goes down before too long
If Left is right then Right is Wrong
You better decide which side you're on

The high times, they are a-changin'

...and more rapidly than I thought possible.

White House to unveil federal cannabis reform 'very soon,' says GOP lawmaker

Ya hear that, Barry? You and Mooshelle gonna be able to spark it up in public real soon, brah!!

2 minute timelapse video from outside the President Trump's rally last night in Erie, PA




Link to original video: https://youtu.be/uDCiva_VoTg