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 d-usa wrote:
It's not a goalpost change. I've asked "has he condemned these acts on Twitter" a while ago as well.

I also don't think his anti-semetic alt-right supporters will hug their Jewish neighbors if Trump tells them to stop being mean to Jews on Twitter. But I'll believe that Trump is willing to stop pandering to that group if he takes the 10 seconds to go "bad nazis" on their platform.

It's almost as if I explained all that, weird.

For what it's worth. Here is my goal-post moving:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

I am sure that was just a mistake right?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

In a Republican controlled Congress that has routinely turned a blind eye to Trump's Russian affairs? Good luck with that.

 jmurph wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

In a Republican controlled Congress that has routinely turned a blind eye to Trump's Russian affairs? Good luck with that.

The odd thing is, and it's mentioned in the report, Sessions met the Russian officials in his role as part of the senate armed services committee.

Perfect alibi in my book, so it's odd he never mentioned it, and this would not be a story, if he had referenced it.

Very strange, unless something else is going on...


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 Vash108 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

I am sure that was just a mistake right?

Well, he'd better handle the next part better.

From the article:

"It also makes it likely that he will recuse himself from the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia, and strengthens calls for a special and fully independent prosecutor to take over the investigation.
The FBI director, Jim Comey, is leading the inquiry. Comey reports to Sessions, whose role grants him the power to influence the depth of the investigation and decide on whether criminal charges are ultimately brought against any individuals.
There is certainly precedent for the US attorney general to recuse him or herself from investigations if there is any whiff of conflict of interest or impropriety."

Democrats will be watching this like a hawk.

The odd thing is, and it's mentioned in the report, Sessions met the Russian officials in his role as part of the senate armed services committee.

Perfect alibi in my book, so it's odd he never mentioned it, and this would not be a story, if he had referenced it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-spoke-twice-with-russian-ambassador-during-trumps-presidential-campaign-justice-officials-say/2017/03/01/77205eda-feac-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?postshare=8441488419989396&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.179f58e61b9e

The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year. The other lawmakers on the panel did not respond as of Wednesday evening.

“Members of the committee have not been beating a path to Kislyak’s door,” a senior Senate Armed Services Committee staffer said, citing tensions in relations with Moscow. Besides Sessions, the staffer added, “There haven’t been a ton of members who are looking to meet with Kislyak for their committee duties.

I stand corrected. The plot thickens.

For the record, IF there is anything going on between Trump's people and the Russians, it will probably be a dodgy business deal that went wrong (Trumps plans to build a dozen golf courses in Siberia or something )

rather than something out of the Manchurian candidate or Putin controlling the White House.

None the less, it still stinks to high heaven and the American people deserve answers ASAP.

That's not the accusation. What has been revealed is that one he spoke with Russia's ambassador at a Heritage Foundation event in July, and again with the same ambassador in his office at the Congressional Building in September. Neither of these seem to have been related to his role on the Armed Services Committee. These things probably didn't jump to mind when asked about communications between the Trump Campaign and the Russian state, and the extent of the conversations has not been stated by anyone as while Sessions stumped for Trump he was not himself part of the campaign and to my knowledge no one ever asked him if he had personally had any communications on the campaign's behalf. He offered up such a statement himself, but nothing reported thus far makes it clear if that was a lie or a dichotomy he drew between talking to someone for the campaign or talking to someone in another capacity.

A smart man would have gotten ahead of this story, but I don't really consider the average politician to be that smart so...

Of course none of those other senators were working as an advisor to a presidential candidate who subsequently may have benefitted from Russian actions either.

Nothing to see here!

 jmurph wrote:
Of course none of those other senators were working as an advisor to a presidential candidate who subsequently may have benefitted from Russian actions either.

Nothing to see here!

Yeah. This wouldn't amount to much if not for you know... the continued piling on of yet another series of communications between Trump and Friends (trademark pending) that had thus far gone unmentioned. This is what, the third accusation now?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jmurph wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

In a Republican controlled Congress that has routinely turned a blind eye to Trump's Russian affairs? Good luck with that.

The odd thing is, and it's mentioned in the report, Sessions met the Russian officials in his role as part of the senate armed services committee.

Perfect alibi in my book, so it's odd he never mentioned it, and this would not be a story, if he had referenced it.

Very strange, unless something else is going on...

What is going on is loss of context (the actual questions he answered and his actual answers).

“Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”

“No,” Sessions responded.

That and the verbal question directly related to Trump campaign contacts with Russians, Sessions (we should assume honestly) answered he did not know of any and did not have contact with them in that context.

No proof he lied about that at all is given.

None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

And questions will keep getting asked, regardless of their relevancy. I'm waiting for them to go all out and ask him to answer when he stopped beating his wife.

 CptJake wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

And questions will keep getting asked, regardless of their relevancy. I'm waiting for them to go all out and ask him to answer when he stopped beating his wife.

Did we ever get that Birth Certificate?

 sebster wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
But that's not how federalism works. Sure, some states may totally screw things up. But that's a problem for the state's voters; it doesn't give the feds automatic jurisdiction. There are certain cases where failure by the state government may trigger federal intervention, but the policy that was originally offered was one that preempts state action in the first place regardless of how well a state may be handling the lands. The feds don't have jurisdiction over these lands unless granted by federal statute. Keep in mind that this only affects a corner case where the previous admin had interpreted the law as giving the feds authority. This admin is taking a more restrictive reading.

You're right that federalism does give states the power to screw things up individually, the risk of that doesn't automatically justify federal involvement. But where this gets complicated is when one state's screw up has knock on effects for other states, or for the whole union.

I have next to no knowledge of US water resources and protections, I'm really seeing this through an Australian lens. But here state disfunction produced an absolute need for federal oversight. Not because state governments are evil or incompetent, but because they are only concerned with themselves. But rivers flow through many states, and wetlands can support ecologies that can be hundreds of miles away. A screw up in one state can be disastrous in another state or across a whole region. That means federal involvement is needed.

That doesn't mean the feds need to have active agents in every state, of course, work can be done with state environmental authorities. But an overall regulatory framework that sets a bare minimum level of protection needs to come from the feds. And that's what the Clean Water Act is, of course. The only question then is exactly what is included in the scope of the document.

And on that again you're right, Trump is taking a much more restrictive reading. If that's a problem for people, well probably they should have voted for the person who could have beaten Trump.

The Federal govt has jurisdiction over all navigable rivers dating back to 1824 when it was ruled that the interstate commerce clause gave the Feds jurisdiction over the waterways that were then vital for commerce. Therefore, the EPA has jurisdiction over navigable rivers as a Federal agency. The Clean Water Act extends this Federal jurisdiction to all waters with a "significant nexus" to "navigable waters." The issue that has come up is that under the Obama administration the EPA extended that jurisdiction to cover minor bodies of water that weren't previously believed to have met that "significant nexus" standard and the Trump administration is trying to undo those regulations so that those minor bodies of water go back to state control for environmental oversight instead of Federal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigable_servitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act#Waters_protected_under_the_CWA

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Wonder if Frazz and whembly will be ordering a copy?

Nope... I'll get it from some of the torrent sites.

Ain't giving gak to that yahoo.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

....and thus the Lefts crazy conspiracy phase begins.....

 Sasori wrote:
As I mentioned, there are some things out of the speech I would like to see. I'd love to see 1-trillion in infrastructure, especially if we can start getting some of those bullet trains. Where are we going to get the money though.

And as I mentioned, there isn't a trillion being spent on infrastructure. There's a trillion planned as tax breaks to people building infrastructure. It's almost certain much, possibly most, will go to projects that were going to happen anyway. Most infrastructure right now is on power generation and distribution, and that's profitable enough without the tax break.

What's needed is maintenance, and tax breaks can't encourage maintenance.

I'd love to see a 54 billion increase in defense spending, but where are we going to get the money.

There's actually some trickery in Trump's announcement on defence. See, defense spending has actually been curtailed in recent budgets. What Trump is doing basically is adding back the money that had been pulled out. While he is announcing a $54 billion increase in defence, it's actually pushing total defense up to $603 billion, which is about 3% more than the 2015 expenditure, just ahead of inflation.

So basically Trump is restoring defense to what it was. The strange thing is that Trump still wants to build another 30 boats to put the navy back over 300 vessels, he wants an overhaul of the nuke program, he wants new infantry divisions. But to do this he's giving defense the same money that they used to have when they couldn't do those things.

I'm not sure if Trump is playing smoke and mirrors on this, or if he himself is genuinely confused about the whole matter.

 CptJake wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jmurph wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Looks like Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting Russian officials.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign

Is that not grounds for impeachment?

In a Republican controlled Congress that has routinely turned a blind eye to Trump's Russian affairs? Good luck with that.

The odd thing is, and it's mentioned in the report, Sessions met the Russian officials in his role as part of the senate armed services committee.

Perfect alibi in my book, so it's odd he never mentioned it, and this would not be a story, if he had referenced it.

Very strange, unless something else is going on...

What is going on is loss of context (the actual questions he answered and his actual answers).

“Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”

“No,” Sessions responded.

That and the verbal question directly related to Trump campaign contacts with Russians, Sessions (we should assume honestly) answered he did not know of any and did not have contact with them in that context.

No proof he lied about that at all is given.

How could there be proof? If he did discuss Trump's possible Russian support with the Russian Ambassador, both he and the Russians would be very careful to destroy all records of the conversation.

But proof isn't needed. The pattern of events is enough to raise suspicion of possible links between the Russians and Trump's administration.

 jasper76 wrote:
[They're not just the policies he ran on. They're the policies he got elected on, and opponents of Trump's policies are not currently in any kind of strong position to make demands. There was a moment for that in the ballot box, and it has come and gone.

Winning an election doesn't make the policies okay.

And I have no idea where you got the idea Democrats have no power to stop Trump's policies. Trump is the least popular president in history at this point in his administration, he is no position to champion any of his reforms. This leaves Democrats with a lot of power to attack his policies and get Republicans facing re-election to flinch, and drop their support. And of course there's the hard power option - you only need to 51 seats in the senate to filibuster, and Democrats have 48.

I mean, do you think Republicans spent one second tutting about how Obama won on his policies, so they better let them through? And they got proper spanked, they didn't even have the 41 seats needed to filibuster. But they just committed to a co-ordinated attack on the Democrats healthcare reform, scared the based back in to line and turned things around in two short years.

 sebster wrote:

 Sasori wrote:
As I mentioned, there are some things out of the speech I would like to see. I'd love to see 1-trillion in infrastructure, especially if we can start getting some of those bullet trains. Where are we going to get the money though.

And as I mentioned, there isn't a trillion being spent on infrastructure. There's a trillion planned as tax breaks to people building infrastructure. It's almost certain much, possibly most, will go to projects that were going to happen anyway. Most infrastructure right now is on power generation and distribution, and that's profitable enough without the tax break.

What's needed is maintenance, and tax breaks can't encourage maintenance.

The government is collecting over $35 billion in excise taxes a year from fuel that is supposed to be used to maintain roads and bridges. If Congress and state legislatures aren't using that gas tax revenue to fund road/bridge maintenance they need to be held accountable for that neglect.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/fe10.cfm
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwaytrustfund/

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah. This wouldn't amount to much if not for you know... the continued piling on of yet another series of communications between Trump and Friends (trademark pending) that had thus far gone unmentioned. This is what, the third accusation now?

Sessions, Flynn, Page and Manafort all have been revealed to have had suspicious contacts with the Russians. Three of those four were forced to resign. And the intelligence community has stated Russia worked to support the Trump campaign. And there's that dossier going the rounds that alleged Trump had been compromised by Putin (and while speculative, a lot of its accusations are now being slowly confirmed). And Putin's response to Obama's sanctions was almost certainly co-ordinated with Putin (through Flynn).

I don't think we know exactly what the relationship is, but at this point it's almost impossible to claim there isn't some kind of clandestine relationship of some sort. I mean, has any president before ever lost three people over connections to a hostile foreign power during the campaign and administration?

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

....and thus the Lefts crazy conspiracy phase begins.....

.... so, when are we going to see the pieces on 'Democrat Overreach' or 'Democrat Pounce'????

 CptJake wrote:

“Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”

“No,” Sessions responded.

That and the verbal question directly related to Trump campaign contacts with Russians, Sessions (we should assume honestly) answered he did not know of any and did not have contact with them in that context.

No proof he lied about that at all is given.

You talk about context, and then you use the most vague Sessions quote about Russia. Be honest. Use this quote; “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

That's not some vague 'no'... that is 'I did not have communications with the Russians'. Except for the multiple times he spoke directly with their ambassador. This is called lying. This is fething obvious.

 whembly wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
None the less, a lot of unanswered questions still remain unanswered.

....and thus the Lefts crazy conspiracy phase begins.....

.... so, when are we going to see the pieces on 'Democrat Overreach' or 'Democrat Pounce'????

Probably only after we see 5-7 "investigations" into the same person looking for the answer they want, instead of the answer they get.

 Easy E wrote:
....and thus the Lefts crazy conspiracy phase begins.....

Except we've already seen three Trump personnel resign when their connections to Russia were exposed, and now a fourth caught lying. Trying to claim it is a crazy conspiracy to suggest Trump has connections to Russia is head in the sand stuff.

Prestor Jon wrote:
The government is collecting over $35 billion in excise taxes a year from fuel that is supposed to be used to maintain roads and bridges. If Congress and state legislatures aren't using that gas tax revenue to fund road/bridge maintenance they need to be held accountable for that neglect.

Except the US needs about $200 billion a year to repair, restore and replace aging assets. $35 billion is a nice start, but you need the other $165 billion.

 whembly wrote:
.... so, when are we going to see the pieces on 'Democrat Overreach' or 'Democrat Pounce'????

When the accusations stop being verified.

While I would hesitate to go down the rabbit hole of what these Russian connections mean and what relevance they may ultimately have, I am both dumfounded and yet not at all surprised by how the same elements that wanted to throw Hillary in prison over emails and how tenuous connections through a foundation to foreign meant she was almost certainly on the take for them and even treasonous, are seemingly completely nonchalant, or even defensive about the *third* allegation of inappropriate communications with Russia from the Trump administration and how it means nothing or is completely false.

Very interesting indeed.

Hey... I'm all for having a special prosecutor to look into this. Seriously, I'm cool with it and I've even emailed both my Senators to do so.

But, it's fething rich with the amount of defense thrown up on Hillary's malfeasance, these same people are jumping on Sessions for this and calling for his resignation. When the fething AG Loretta has an impromptu visit with the husband of a person under FBI investigation ON A FETHING AIRPLANE.

Sorry... you don't have any credibility. Just own your partisan nature and just say 'I don't like him, so I'm looking for any excuse to Bork him'.

At least you'd be honest and consistent.

 Vaktathi wrote:
While I would hesitate to go down the rabbit hole of what these Russian connections mean and what relevance they may ultimately have,

I understand not wanting to speculate, but lets just lay out what's happened at this point. I mean honestly, Trump had his long string of positive comments about Putin, Putin's hacks were found by the intelligence community to be planned to hurt Clinton and thereby aid Trump, there was strong circumstantial evidence that Trump co-ordinated with Putin in responding to Obama's sanctions, three Trump personnel have resigned with connections to Trump and now a fourth has been found lying about his own communications. Then we can add in all the circumstantial stuff, like the Trump campaign appearing to know ahead of time when new leaks were about to be made.

The least convoluted answer is that Trump and Putin have co-ordinated on some level. It may have been as simple as having a shared goal of wanting Clinton to lose. But what would require an immense amount of imagination at this point is finding some kind of story in which all of the above was just coincidences.

I am both dumfounded and yet not at all surprised by how the same elements that wanted to throw Hillary in prison over emails and how tenuous connections through a foundation to foreign meant she was almost certainly on the take for them and even treasonous, are seemingly completely nonchalant, or even defensive about the *third* allegation of inappropriate communications with Russia from the Trump administration and how it means nothing or is completely false.

Very interesting indeed.

Sessions is the fourth. There's enough now that we're actually starting to forget Trump personell who've resigned over connections to Russia

But yes, it is interesting how the burden of proof can shift when it's the red team who are being accused.


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 whembly wrote:
Hey... I'm all for having a special prosecutor to look into this. Seriously, I'm cool with it and I've even emailed both my Senators to do so.

But, it's fething rich with the amount of defense thrown up on Hillary's malfeasance, these people are jumping on Sessions for this and calling for his resignation. When the fething AG Loretta has an impromptu visit with the husband of a person under FBI investigation ON A FETHING AIRPLANE.

Clinton and Lynch* met, it was obviously inappropriate. Everyone outside of the Clintons would get that, but as I and countless others have said many times, the Clintons just don't understand why boundaries and ethical guidelines exist.

The thing is, though, Lynch herself was understood the boundaries, and was not happy with what happened. She knew she'd had been placed in a position where she been seen to be compromised, and so she stepped back from placing any oversight on the investigation. It is likely this is what caused Comey to start wandering off the reservation, not just in going public with the ongoing investigation, but also in deciding it was up to him to decide if there was evidence of a crime - that call should have come from Justice.

So that gives us two differences. The first is that we have one compromsing event, compared to four. And the actions of the compromised parties with Clinton and Lynch there was no mutually beneficial behaviour, while with Trump and Putin we have a bizarrely mutually complementary relationship, and even actions taken by one party to help the other win office.

It really should be very fething obvious how different these things are.



*Why are you using her first name? Hillary and Donald I kind of get because they're in the primary spotlight, but a former attorney general? Should we start calling him Jeff?

 Vaktathi wrote:
While I would hesitate to go down the rabbit hole of what these Russian connections mean and what relevance they may ultimately have, I am both dumfounded and yet not at all surprised by how the same elements that wanted to throw Hillary in prison over emails and how tenuous connections through a foundation to foreign meant she was almost certainly on the take for them and even treasonous, are seemingly completely nonchalant, or even defensive about the *third* allegation of inappropriate communications with Russia from the Trump administration and how it means nothing or is completely false.

Very interesting indeed.

There is absolutely a very troubling connection between the Trump campaign and Russia which should be independently investigated. I think the big difference between Trump's Russian connections and the Clinton Foundation is that what made a lot of the news in regards to Hillary was people and media outlets calling attention to decisions made by the State Dept when Hillary was SecState and then inferring a connection between those decisions and donations to the Clinton Foundation that could be construed as a possible quid pro quo arrangement. It seems fairly clear that Putin/Russia preferred Trump winning over Hillary Clinton and it certainly seems possible that Putin/Russia may have done things to help the Trump campaign but so far it doesn't look like Trump has done much to help Russia in return. We're missing the other half of the quid pro quo arrangement and if that were to materialize or even the appearance of a reasonable possibility that Trump was acting to benefit Putin/Russia I think you'd see a lot of Republicans who weren't enthusiastic Trump supporters start voicing concerns loudly and publicly about a Russian connection. It's going to be difficult for Trump to do something that helps Putin/Russia that doesn't also go against US interests because there really isn't much common ground. We don't share the important economic connection with Russia that we do with China. Russian interests pretty much diametrically oppose US interests in regards to geo politics, economics and resource control. Anything that Trump does that helps Russia is going to be very hard to justify from a US perspective.


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 sebster wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The government is collecting over $35 billion in excise taxes a year from fuel that is supposed to be used to maintain roads and bridges. If Congress and state legislatures aren't using that gas tax revenue to fund road/bridge maintenance they need to be held accountable for that neglect.

Except the US needs about $200 billion a year to repair, restore and replace aging assets. $35 billion is a nice start, but you need the other $165 billion.

In 2014 governments spent $165 billion on highway maintenance and $65 billion on mass transit maintenance with about 25% coming from the Highway Trust Fund. The fuel excise taxes aren't replenishing the Highway Trust Fund fast enough to allow the Trust to meet its obligations of maintenance spending so from 2008-2014 Congress transferred $65 billion from the general fund to the Highway Trust. Congress needs to either raise the fuel taxes (which can be regressive) or find additional revenue to send to the Highway Trust Fund. The Federal, state and local govt collect about $2.5 trillion in income taxes annually so finding the billions to achieve $200 billion in infrastructure maintenance spending shouldn't be difficult.
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50298-TransportationTestimony_1.pdf

It's important to discuss the issue of the necessity of infrastructure maintenance and keep it in the news and on the public's mind but it's troubling to me how the other part of the story, what the governments are doing with the money that should be spent on infrastructure instead of spending it on infrastructure is getting glossed over. Before the governments start looking for new revenue streams to fund infrastructure maintenance I want to see an explanation as to why we're not spending our current revenue on infrastructure maintenance.

 whembly wrote:
Hey... I'm all for having a special prosecutor to look into this. Seriously, I'm cool with it and I've even emailed both my Senators to do so.

But, it's fething rich with the amount of defense thrown up on Hillary's malfeasance, these people are jumping on Sessions for this and calling for his resignation. When the fething AG Loretta has an impromptu visit with the husband of a person under FBI investigation ON A FETHING AIRPLANE.


Sorry... you don't have any credibility. Just own your partisan nature and just say 'I don't like him, so I'm looking for any excuse to Bork him'.

I've done nothing of the sort, hence why I started out with this line

While I would hesitate to go down the rabbit hole of what these Russian connections mean and what relevance they may ultimately have

I havent said anything on how Sessions should resign, how true or dangerous the accusations are, or anything else.

All I've done is comment on it being awkward for Trump's administration and how there seem to be double standards when it comes to treasonous accusations from some groups. That said, I also wasnt intending to call out anyone specifically, which I get the sense from these personal attacks that you think I am.

At least you'd be honest and consistent.

well, I'm trying to be, I didnt care roo much about Hillary's emails or Benghazigate, I'm not too concerned about these Russia connections yet as we have zero idea what these contacts consisted of and they could be entirely overblown, but just remarking on the...awkward nature of them for this administration (mostly just how they cant seem keep their gak straight and manage a crisis regardless of the truth of the accusations) and the vociferous nature of the responses in some instances and the passive nature of others.