Report as Fodder

The Mueller report describes a group of people who were ineptly running a campaign with little knowledge or regard for the rules.

They tried to violate laws, possibly unintentionally, but failed to do so.

They wanted to collude with Russia about dirt on Hillary, but Russia wanted to talk about other issues.

Before the election they simply were to inept to collude, although they tried.  I doubt they came across as trustworthy enough to get what they wanted.

After the election, they seemed to realize they should hide what they tried to do, although as it turn out they were failures as criminals then too.

In addition to the ones who got caught perjuring themselves, there is plenty of evidence that the chief incompetent tried to obstruct justice.

He couldn't get people to do what he wanted.

I'm not sure if the intent to obstruct is enough of a crime to impeach, and I think that ship has sailed.

As idiotic as the ex-mayor of New York is generally, he is right that getting to debate the report is probably a good strategy for them.  They can twist the facts around for their base.

The effort should be on winning in 2020, not spending the next two years providing a stage where it might appear like political theatre.

They live is a twisted reality, we need to impose actual reality.

No Indictment

There are still a lot of unanswered questions related to the Mueller report but the conclusions as provided by the AG indicate that no charges will be filed against the President, at least by the special counsel.

While this is being celebrated as vindication by the President, it is at best a minor hiatus, as we know the Democrat controlled House and possibly the Southern District of New York will continue investigating.

In fact on obstruction of justice the report left that decision to the AG because the evidence could be interpreted either way.  The fact that the AG is not going to prosecute in no surprise, and it is certainly not exoneration since the jeopardy is still intact.

The report did highlight that the Russians did attempt to influence the election, and may have succeeded to at least some extent.  The indictments that have been filed are generally for lying under oath although some are related to the actual election interference.

I suppose the celebration is similar to that of a accused criminal who hears the Grand Jury did not return an indictment.

Its better than the alternative.

How High?

There is a lot of anticipation about the Mueller report concerning how much there was illegal coordination between a Presidential Campaign and a foreign entity.

It has already resulted in a lot of indictment, guilty pleas and some sentencing, but the big question is how high up does it go?

This has more resemblance to some old movies about tying to bring down a mafia boss than it should.

Does anyone really think that the activities were done without the knowledge of the candidate?

The only real questions are was his knowledge of what happened criminal and if so what are we going to do about it?

The last time we had something similar to this, we had a lot more independence in congress and integrity.

Even members of the same party expected a certain type of behavior from our president and presidential candidates and criminal behavior was simply beyond what could be tolerated.

Its not so obvious today.

It seems unlikely that our President would do the honorable thing and resign so it would require that the House indict him and the Senate convict him.

These crimes, if proven, are what many consider "soft" crimes.  Depending on the actual behavior, some will consider it as simply an infraction of rules that might be too restrictive.

Further, in today's political world, having principles isn't all that common.

How a vote will impact you politically is generally the main concern most of them have.  As long as his somewhat rabid base stays loyal voting you conscience is a dangerous thing.

Not even sure it is worth the effort since at this point the more effective strategy is probably to win in 2020.

Congressional Hearing

The testimony of Michael Cohen was interesting overall but not unexpected.

We saw a pretty accomplished "fixer" respond to various attacks on his character with pretty straightforward answers.

What was predictable was that republican after republican tried to attack the previous close associate of the current president as a man of questionable character, which is certainly true, but he was a close associate of the president for that very reason.

Still there is no credible reason that the documents and testimony are falsified.

I don't see that the testimony today is going to change many minds about the situation.  There was already plenty of evidence about the activities of the campaign and while some details remain to be revealed we have plenty of indictments and guilty pleas to see that the group was hardly full of upstanding characters.

Is there sufficient evidence to prove the president was aware of and directing the bad deeds?

Maybe not enough for the true believers but from a common sense point of view, there is plenty.

So No Collusion Just Bad Judgement?

You have to give Nunes credit, he doesn't mind letting everyone know he is a partisan with no pretense at all.

The draft document said that there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians while contradicting an official U.S. intelligence community assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin favored President Trump during the campaign.

"We found no evidence of collusion," Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) told reporters on Monday. "We found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings - but only Tom Clancy could take this series of inadvertent contacts, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a spy thriller that could go out there.

So those scheduled meetings were inadvertent?  Odd how that happens.  Guess you can't expect people to be there just because they said they would.

There's little doubt that the Russians tried to manipulate the election and that certain members of the campaign knew about it, maybe even the dotard himself.  Considering all his other bad traits, its pretty believable that he wouldn't think there was anything wrong in this.  

Not sure it matters much at this point but it is probably a more relevant inquiry than the silly e-mail thing that keeps dragging on about Hillary.

Saying these people exercise bad judgment is sort of a redundant situation.  When did they exercise good judgment?

I guess the people who voted for him might want to think about it, but if you have bought into the argument that he is the victim, you ignore all of this anyway.