More winning, I for one am getting sick of it now

[Marshall]

Before the election he was a radical liberal. Now he's suddenly a Republican lite.

[voice]

yeah and rep bloke was a great guy when Trump was stumping for him the other day, now he's a looser who was never 'one of us'

[jimboky]

If Lamb made anything clear in his campaign, it's that he most certainly will vote with Trump on occasion. On guns, for one thing: Lamb opposes a ban on assault weapons, such as the AR-15 he was shown firing in one of his campaign ads. He supports the president's trade policies, too including the new tariffs. He pooh-poohs single-payer healthcare. He's as "pro-military" as a person could be. (He is also "personally opposed" to abortion, though he says it should be legal.)

Lamb, for all his fresh-faced charm, ran and won as a Trump Democrat – a flashback to the "Republican Lite" candidacies the Democrats specialized in during the Clinton '90s and '00s. He was so reluctant to criticize the president that NBC reporter Kacie Hunt made it her mission on Tuesday to ask him about Trump and try to extract something. Lamb wouldn't rise to the bait:
www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-democrats-should-worry-about-conor-lambs-victory-w517866



I'm sure Trump, and myself would rather have a Republican win, however Lamb may be the next best thing, if he is to retain some credibility he must vote with Trump, at least some of the time, Trump is proposing a Phase 2 on Tax reform, wonder how Lamb will vote?

[flatandy]

He said he'd vote work with Trump where he could. I'd hope that's true of all Democrats. But Trump visited Pa-18 twice to support Saccone, so Trump clearly was working against Lamb.

Lamb's position on guns is not Trump's. Lamb, like almost every Democrat from rural areas, is in favour of the second amendment. The Democrats are not unified on their position on guns. But even Lamb wants universal, effective background checks which are anathema to the NRA and most Republicans. The Manchin-Toomey proposal is very much opposed by the Republican establishment and by Trump.

Lamb is in favour of a women's right to choose. He's fully in favour of the ACA. He's in favour of unions, of Medicaid, Social Security. He's massively opposed to the Trump tax cuts.

He's pretty mainstream Democrat (way to the left of Manchin, for example), for someone who's winning in far right, voted 20% for Trump, territory.

I imagine you'll see a bunch of Democrats like this standing across the rust belt and mid-west. People in the Jon Tester, Joe Donnely, Heidi Heitkamp, Clair McCaskill style. You'll see lots of far more left wing candidates in places like New York city, or in San Francisco: places where the competition is going to be about the primaries.

But this is a hilarious line of attack from Republicans. Republicans have, for the last 3 decades, been massively freaked out by RINOs. They are totally hung up on all their candidates being completely pure on the touchstone issues. So now they're trying to project that on to Democrats - thinking that Democrats also feel a need for every member of their party to agree on every single thing. The Democratic party has always been a fairly broad church with a wide range of opinions, and having candidates who actually represent their districts rather than having fealty to some theoretical manifesto seems absolutely obvious and is actually why you should have representatives from districts at all.

[jimboky]

meanwhile the Dems still saying Hillary won and Hillary is blaming everybody except the Easter Bunny

You know that the election still isn't official,,, right? there are/were last I heard still enough uncounted votes to give it to Saccone, unlikely but possible,

[flatandy]

Last I heard, there were 200 votes outstanding and a lead of 700. Not that it's a big deal, who actually won. The big deal is that there was a shift of 20% to the Democrats, despite Trump twice visiting to campaign for Saccone, despite the Republicans running like crazy on their tax cuts. This is the kind of result that could eat all the way into the Republicans gerrymandered advantage, and they seem to have little defence. They should be getting very worried for November.

[jimboky]

You do know that every district has been gerrymandered, either by Reps or Dems, right?

hope but doubt that the dems are planning on running on repealing the tax cuts, they might get the chance though, Trump announced that he wants Tax cut 2, that could happen just in time for the elections

[voice]

not actually true, more and more dem states have been introducing non partisan commissions to draw electoral boundaries, so its down the voters to choose their representative, not the other way round, and you get away from the absurd position where a state gets a 50/50 vote split, yet the Reps have got 90% of the seats cos of the undemocratic gerrymander.

[flatandy]

There's an interesting thing about Gerrymanders, though. They're built assuming not much shift in the voting. So they create lots of 55-60 R/40-45 D districts assuming everyone votes party lines. That usually means these seats are safe. They then pack the remaining Dems into a couple of 90% Dem districts. The thing is, with enough of a swing, all the 55% R districts vote Democrat, and the Reps have cracked all their voters into these districts, meaning that the Reps might end up with no seats despite having a 35-40% turnout. It won't happen often, but with a big enough wave the gerrymander can work against the Republicans.

[voice]

This is quite funny, Trump admits to just lying and making sh*t up and actually knowing feck all about complex stuff

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43418892

At a private fundraiser, he reportedly said he insisted to Mr Trudeau the US had a trade deficit with Canada, though he had "no idea" if it was true.

Mr Trump maintained in a tweet the US does have a trade deficit with Canada.

But the US Department of Commerce says the US ran a $2.8bn (£2bn) trade surplus with Canada in 2017.

[Marshall]

That incident pretty much sums him up.

"I don't know jack-sh*t about the subject I'm about to launch into but I'll just state as reality what I want it to be. And if anyone calls my bluff I'll double down, because I'm smarter than them all anyway."

[voice]

its staggering how much the GOP and voters on the right are just giving him mulligans on everything, they are taking hypocrisy to epic levels.

[Marshall]

Absolutely, and if the orange meathead colluded with Russia they should all be complicit for refusing to even consider the red flags (nice pun there).

One noteworthy GOP congressman has stood up to his BS: Jeff Flake.

[voice]

Flake keeps voting for his policies though, so he's not standing that tall.

[Marshall]

Stormy Daniels' lawyer says some of the goings-on with Trump took place while he was president (and was physically threatened to keep silent about it).

www.cnn.com/2018/03/16/politics/stormy-daniels-trump-allegations-cnntv/index.html

[voice]

6 more waiting in the wings trying to see if they can get their gag order. I did see something interesting that its possible for them to be brought before congress to answer questions so as to get round the gag orders, don't know how much truth there is in that mind.

[flatandy]

The Stormy Daniels thing is only vaguely interesting, on its face. It's basically just salacious.

But Trumpy getting his end away with a pornstar is just not a big deal. It's certainly not a big deal if he did it before he was President. Even if it carried on while he was Prez, it's not really much - it was a consensual relationship, and started before he had much power. It's much less of a big deal than Clinton was with Lewinsky, and that wasn't much of a thing either.

If there is a story here, it's related to the hush money, which could be illegal campaign finance stuff. But mostly, the Stormy story is just entertaining dirt.

[voice]

The vindictiveness continues, fired for political reasons and in such a way to try and ruin him

www.cnn.com/2018/03/16/politics/andrew-mccabe-fired/index.html

CNN)Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe late Friday, less than two days shy of his retirement, ending the career of an official who had risen to serve as second-in-command at the bureau.

McCabe had more recently been regularly taunted by President Donald Trump and besieged by accusations that he had misled internal investigators at the Justice Department.
McCabe had been expected to retire this Sunday, on his 50th birthday, when he would have become eligible to receive early retirement benefits.
But Friday's termination could place a portion of his anticipated pension, earned after more than two decades of service, in significant jeopardy.
The origin of his dramatic fall stems from an internal review conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. That report -- the details of which have not been publicly released -- is said to conclude that McCabe misled investigators about his role in directing other officials at the FBI to speak to The Wall Street Journal about his involvement in a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation, according to a source briefed on it.
CNN reported on Wednesday that the findings in Horowitz's report on McCabe were referred to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, staffed with career officials, who recommended McCabe's termination. McCabe, accompanied by his lawyer, tried making a last-ditch effort Thursday to avoid the firing, meeting with officials at the deputy attorney general's office at the Justice Department for several hours while Sessions was traveling, but to no avail.
Horowitz's office is continuing to investigate how the Justice Department and FBI handled sensitive investigations leading up to the 2016 presidential election -- including the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server -- and a more global report is expected this spring. That closely watched report, which Trump has derided as "already late," could prove devastating for former and current top officials at the Justice Department and FBI depending on the findings, as the President has sought to weave a narrative of biased "deep state" holdovers from the Obama administration determined to undermine his presidency.
While former FBI officials say a lack of candor is a death knell for an agent's career, Sessions' decision to fire McCabe presented unique political complications.
Trump often used McCabe as a political punching bag on the campaign trail given his wife's purported past ties to Clinton -- going so far as heckling Sessions over the summer for failing to fire McCabe -- despite the fact that Trump had interviewed McCabe just weeks prior about serving as FBI director after he ousted James Comey. In December, Trump made a cryptic reference to McCabe's approaching retirement, tweeting: "FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!"
The full implications of McCabe's firing on his pension remain to be seen, but he could potentially stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Retirement benefits for federal employees are based on several variables in employment history, but McCabe's salary is not public and the FBI declined to release it to CNN

[Deleted]

"less than two days shy of his retirement"

That is vindictive. Don't swim with sharks.

[auldhippy]

Mar 16, 2018 22:53:36 GMT flatandy said:

The Stormy Daniels thing is only vaguely interesting, on its face. It's basically just salacious.

But Trumpy getting his end away with a pornstar is just not a big deal. It's certainly not a big deal if he did it before he was President. Even if it carried on while he was Prez, it's not really much - it was a consensual relationship, and started before he had much power. It's much less of a big deal than Clinton was with Lewinsky, and that wasn't much of a thing either.

If there is a story here, it's related to the hush money, which could be illegal campaign finance stuff. But mostly, the Stormy story is just entertaining dirt.

Times, they are a a changin, literally between the umpteen accusations of molestation (unsued) & a life history of serial infidelities we are approaching Harvey Weinstein levels of predation. He's losing women voters daily.