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[Frumple]

Eh, they'd be welcome to if someone was actually pursuing perjury charges -- at that point what the reps and dems think is true meaning matters for shit. It would be in the judge's (and maybe jury, lawyers, etc.) hands, then.

[redwallzyl]

totally unrelated but i found this clip of Reagan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJFcpRxju2g

[origamiscienceguy]

Never got a chance to watch the hearings. What's the gist of it?

[wierd]

Re: trump talking in front of congress == perjury

You kids are not really accepting the real takeaway of this:

We have been selecting for this behavior in our leaders for many decades now. Trump is only exceptional in that his lies are easily detected. With the downward slide of our intellectual capacity in this nation over the past few decades, we have selected the ultimate expression of this trend, (Trump), and our leaders, doing basically everything they can to encourage low info voters as a phenomenon, have created the ultimate expression thereof (our voter base), which selected Trump.

If you dont want to see what the next iteration of those two processes are, you need to strongly re-evaluate what a good leader is (They dont lie to you, and really do have THE NATION'S best interests in mind), and need to strongly evaluate the value of leadership that promotes low info voting (Because it does not align with the first thing I mentioned. The nation does not benefit from being ignorant and stupid.)

That is all.

[Frumple]

Never got a chance to watch the hearings. What's the gist of it?

There... was quite a bit of it. I'd recommend finding a transcript, personally. Wouldn't be hard to find.

That said, the very rough, detail stripped gist is that comey pretty carefully said nothing much terribly actionable on its own that nevertheless told us a fair deal about trump's character that you kiiiinda' already knew, if you cared to exert the least amount of critical attention to his actions or history. Buncha' other stuff and details, though. Again, I'd really recommend a transcript, especially over what anyone (including me, here) says summarizes or highlights a particularly important bit. Media et al reaction basically started running at cherrypicking and distortion and has only been speeding up, from what I've noticed, to say nothing of what folks like trump's lawyer or a number of GOP politicians have been trying to do.

Still... suffice it to say, trump certainly didn't come out of that testimony looking better, unless you have a seriously warped sense of character or rather fervent belief comey just spent a few hours lying under oath about stuff often pretty easy to confirm to one extent or another. Maybe no worse, but certainly not better.

[PTTG??]

Re: trump talking in front of congress == perjury

You kids are not really accepting the real takeaway of this:

We have been selecting for this behavior in our leaders for many decades now. Trump is only exceptional in that his lies are easily detected. With the downward slide of our intellectual capacity in this nation over the past few decades, we have selected the ultimate expression of this trend, (Trump), and our leaders, doing basically everything they can to encourage low info voters as a phenomenon, have created the ultimate expression thereof (our voter base), which selected Trump.

If you dont want to see what the next iteration of those two processes are, you need to strongly re-evaluate what a good leader is (They dont lie to you, and really do have THE NATION'S best interests in mind), and need to strongly evaluate the value of leadership that promotes low info voting (Because it does not align with the first thing I mentioned. The nation does not benefit from being ignorant and stupid.)

That is all.

Note that Trump did not win the public election, he won the election among the electoral college.

[wierd]

The popular election margin was PAINFULLY small, PTTG.  Do keep that in mind when reassuring yourself this way.

[Gizogin]

With Trump/Comey dominating the mediaspace, I almost missed that the House just passed a bill to remove or reduce many of the consumer protections in Dodd-Frank, weaken the CFPB, and remove the requirement for financial advisers to actually act in the interest of their clients. Oh, and it loosens rules on home loans. So clearly House Republicans (no Dems voted in favor) must have some pretty solid evidence that we'll never see any of the conditions that lead to the 2008 financial crisis again, conditions which Dodd-Frank was introduced to prevent. It's up to the Senate next, and the general feel is that it won't go through as-is, but still.

[smjjames]

The popular election margin was PAINFULLY small, PTTG.  Do keep that in mind when reassuring yourself this way.

Still bigger than Bush vs Gore in 2000.... In the grand scheme of things, it's painfully small, yes, but compared to Bush vs Gore, it's pretty big.

[SalmonGod]

With Trump/Comey dominating the mediaspace, I almost missed that the House just passed a bill to remove or reduce many of the consumer protections in Dodd-Frank, weaken the CFPB, and remove the requirement for financial advisers to actually act in the interest of their clients. Oh, and it loosens rules on home loans. So clearly House Republicans (no Dems voted in favor) must have some pretty solid evidence that we'll never see any of the conditions that lead to the 2008 financial crisis again, conditions which Dodd-Frank was introduced to prevent. It's up to the Senate next, and the general feel is that it won't go through as-is, but still.

Why would they care if 2008 happens again.  It didn't hurt the upper class.  It never even really ended for everyone else.  The vast majority of the "recovery" went to the upper class, also.  It was all kinds of win for them.  If anything, they would love for it to happen again.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I have to wonder.  As a nation, just how stable is the United States?  I'm not talking in terms of 'until a violent revolution,' just how long until the population gets fed up enough with all the current politician's bullshit to elect out everyone currently in charge, no matter if they are democrat or republican so the slate is cleaned.

[Wolfhunter107]

In that respect, I'd say it's pretty stable. A wave election could knock out a pretty good chunk of Congress, but there's enough "safe" seats that a sizable chunk of the old guard would remain.

[smjjames]

I'd say a little too stable because gerrymandering and other things. However, midterm swings have been extremely consistent, one of the few constants in US politics.

[EnigmaticHat]

The popular election margin was PAINFULLY small, PTTG.  Do keep that in mind when reassuring yourself this way.

3 million votes out of 126 million who voted.  That would be a normal margin of error... for a survey.  Except that such a large survey would have had a lower margin of error than that.  Both times Bush was elected he won by less than Trump lost by.  A more typical number would be about ~8 million more to the winner.  So Trump actually lost by a lot, relatively speaking.  US elections are never that far off to begin with.

Maybe we should select a 10th of the population at random and have them vote by phone.  If our elections are going to be held to the same standards as Gallup they might as well be equally cheap.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

In that respect, I'd say it's pretty stable. A wave election could knock out a pretty good chunk of Congress, but there's enough "safe" seats that a sizable chunk of the old guard would remain.

Okay, a 100% clean slate might be a bit greedy, but what about something like 75%, 60%, or a majority?