The problem with having glass balls is, even if they are huge, they are so easily crushed.

@1 you understand you’re asking someone to go to jail, right?

See, it’s compartmentalized. Nobody but Mueller and maybe three or four deputies have access to the full report. It would be really, really easy to trace the leak and they would go to jail.

I guess you could hope that a new president gets elected and pardons you. But the was things are shaping up it looks like Trump is getting re-elected. So nobody outside the Democrats in the House is going to leak it - and they won’t get the unredacted version anyway.

Nah. America is fucked. Trump won’t see any justice until 2024. And he’s going loot this country four ways from Sunday before that. Then, just as the knives come out, I predict he will croak before 2026.

"Allegedly, what Barr communicated to the public was a lot softer and more watered down than what's in the initial report."

mild

shock

@3: Your jaded and defeatist predictions will all come true if they continue to be popularized.

@3 There is an unprecedented (in modern times) progressive surge going on in the country so your pessimism is quite misplaced and frankly defeatist. Sure, there is the chance of Democrats running another corporatist that could likely lose to Trump, but everything points the other way so far.

Bernie Sanders raises more than $18 million in first quarter, outpacing all other Democratic 2020 hopefuls

the democratic socialist candidate hauled in $18.2 million from 525,000 individual donors.

Shakir said most of the donors were younger than 39 and 20% of them were new contributors.

The average contribution was $20, Shakir said — less than the $27 figure Sanders made a point of repeating at rallies during his failed 2016 bid for president. Shakir said 88% of the donations came from people giving $200 or less.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-bernie-sanders-18-million-first-quarter-2020-20190402-jdgncni7qffnhkfk7mtxxgwgai-story.html

@3 - let's hope for LONG before 2026.

Cool about Molly Moon!

The Stranger should do the same thing. I don't need to know what y'all's salaries are, but you all should.

@12 HaHaHa, not in a million years

Enjoy giving all your tax dollars to Amazon, Bellevue. I'm sure they'll treat you well.

@8 said surge will probably bring millions of new voters to the box if Democrats play their cards well, especially youth (Sanders leads by double digits among millennial by) but also many who are disenfranchised from participating in elections. The conditions are right for leftwing ideas that are by definition populist, It could be historic, professorhistory

6 - 'Oh, if only they were rich black homosexual actors cozy with the Obama administration'
Well aren't you green with envy, Missy Thing?

17 So sweet with your concerns! We'll "stay off yer grass" grampa, don't worry!

Robert Muller is a lifelong Republican. The FBI was founded explicitly with the intention of prosecuting Leftists, not political Right demoogues. In fact, for the first 50 years the agency existed, they never brought a single case against the Klan or any other fascist outfit. It wasnt until LBJ put pressure on Hoover to investigate the KKK that anyone at the FBI- or the Justice department more generally- considered even the most heinous acts of violence such as lynching to be criminal.

Why did you make this man, who works for a reactionary agency, and belongs to the same political party as the POTUS, to indict Trump?

Why is this guy your white knight?

Muller is not the Superman you've made him out to be. He isn't coming to your rescue. He never intended to. This bizarre narrative you've spent months agonizing over, where this is the guy who will jail your Manchurian Candidate POTUS, is bullshit.

Oh, and pelosi isn't playing 14 dimensional chess, either. The lady's not for turning.

@7:

You-all keep saying that, and yet we're still here - and not likely to be going anywhere, given that people younger than your no-doubt crotchety old self are far more liberal as a group than previous generations. My only wish for you is that you live long enough to see your reactionary, xeno/homo/gyno-phobic ideals fade away into irrelevance and ridicule.

@5 popycock. Reality is reality.
Trump is not getting impeached. That was never, ever going to happen.

And you can see in here by the leftist cranks that if the democrats don’t nominate a unicorn they will again form the usual circular firing squad. It’s already forming. They learned nothing from 2016. They are not getting a unicorn this time either. Because unicorns don’t exist. No matter who gets nominated they won’t be perfect enough. They will be too old, too white, too male, too elitist, too corporatist, it will always be something. The same stupid fractures are forming in 2019 that formed in 2015.

I’m telling you right now that unless the left gets its shit together and, yes, holds it’s collective nose and votes for any soggy potato with a D stamped on it then it’s a sure bet Trump will win.

It’s a fact in sociology that ideological extremists almost always double down on mistakes and never admit mistakes. I have yet to hear one Stein voter or Bernie voter who sat out the general express a splinter of regret. So. Prepare.

It’s not defeatism. It’s math. The electorate is on a razors edge.

But I would love to be wrong.

@17 you’re confusing the Midterms with the presidential election.

And there was a blue wave in the midterms. They took the house, man. They won a historic 40 seats!

You can’t minimize that without looking like a complete dumbshit.

But Presidential elections are an entirely different animal. The electoral math hasn’t changed.

The only way the democrats will win in 2020 is if the the far left rallies around whoever the Democrats nominate and if most of the 80 million eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2016 get out and vote.

And even then the electoral map- being rigged in favor of the flyover Dumbfuckistans still looks pretty red.

You can be smug about that. I guess. But another 4 years of Trump and this country is done. You included, matey.

@22: Could you please describe exactly how America will abruptly end if Trump wins in 2020?

If you could avoid vague doomsayings and focus on details and dates, it would really be appreciated.

As a side note, on average the party in the White House loses about 30 seats in Congress. Considering how the GOP actually gained senate seats, the "historic blue wave" was pretty standard operating procedure and fell pretty well in line with historical averages.

For perspective, the Dems lost almost 70 seats in 2010, but Obama won again in 2012 easily, and only lost about 25 or so seats in 2014.

@21 you clearly didn't learn that being anti-Trump wasn't enough. Bernie ideas are mainstream. Suck it.

America should end. Electing Trump was basically giving up. I mean look at that creepy fascist troll Kip in here. That's the future. This country burned its bridges, and the Democrats aren't going to save us from that. The damage Trump has already done would take a few generations we don't have to undo. Once a country starts electing people without real solutions out of simple fear of the enemy, it's over.

@ Republicans gained Senate seats only because the electoral landscape was heavily in their favor: Democrats were defending 24 seats vs. Republicans' 9. But nationally, Democratic senate candidates actually got many more total votes (53 million to 35 million). That would have been a blue wave under most other scenarios.

The above comment #26 was a response @23. Dammit, I wish the Stranger would let us edit after posting, if only for a couple of minutes.

Regarding Molly Moon's, good on them. Wage transparency should be the law, as it is with public sector employment. There's no way to really get a handle on the gender and racial wage gaps without it.

"the left in its crosshairs"

is this before or after we "wade out over your heads into the deep waterr"

smells like fire and brimstone (at the hand of a rifle) in here

dude is creepy

29: He makes Ted Cruz look like Mr. Rogers.

@23 You and I have very different definitions of "America." A better question is: what is America to you?

And by done I mean the hegemony you enjoy both economically and institutionally will be pretty much over. They only thing you have left is throwing our weight around militarily. That. And. The idea of an American "lifestyle" of owning a home and a car and sending your kids to college without crushing debt will be only for an ever shrinking few (70% of average earner Americans can no longer afford a home now! https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/4/1/1846863/-In-70-of-the-country-the-average-person-can-t-afford-to-buy-a-home).

America as I knew it is already halfway done. All the negative trends are accelerating and indeed are being institutionalized by the Republican party under Trump. Another four years and they will take decades to undo and by then the world will out pace us.

All the institutions have been entirely undermined. Wealth transfers to the upper 6% of American is accelerating. Unless you are born to the wealthy families in the top 20% upward mobility is stuttering to a crawl. Healthcare costs are still spiraling out of control and there is no fix in sight healthcare related bankruptcies are exploding. Bubbles are forming in half dozen economic sectors. Regulations for clean air and clear water are being dismantled. Voter suppression is on the increase. We are surrounding out nation in walls both real and metaphorical and restrictions on what it is to be a citizen will continue.

These things are all facts. They are measurable. You might think they don't matter. But I do.

@31 I'd vote for any democrat over Trump but i'd much prefer one that actually acted on the situation you describe in your comment (plus climate change ;) because one that doesn't takes the chance of not being elected over Trump (like Clinton). I am not what so unicorny about that, but you seem to be an expert on the matter.

@34 "I am not sure what's so unicorny about that"

33: Keep clinging to your fairy tale, ahistorical golden age.

"it is the child born out-of-wedlock that will bring down American civilization..."

HAHAHAHA. "out-of-wedlock?" HAHAHAHA.

Oh. Your not kidding? Nobody is taking your bullshit seriously when you have president with three children from three different mothers - all of whom he cheated on with the others. HAHAHA.

Hey! It's weird how northern europeans and Germans have some of the world highest un-married households and yet the highest standards of living in the world. And yet countries with higher rates of marriage have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and poverty. Buh...buh... uh... how can that be!?

You know I remember when it was the teenage out-of-wedlock crisis brought on by permissive attitudes on S-E-X that was the big bug-a-boo. But then teen birth rate dropped to all-time low. Whoa. how did that happen with all the lib-ruhl sex!

Lordy, lordy. Nice to see those goal post keep getting shoved around by you hypocritical moral fuddy-duddies on the far right.

One of those glass balls would make a FANTASTIC weed lounge. At the very least a gigantic Starbucks. Come on Seattle, make it so.

Professor History, you are brilliant but depressing. My kind of human.

@31: Well that is a fun fantasy you have, and it comes through very clearly how mad you are that America exists, but I kind of asked for some kind of details, not just your angry little fanfiction.

You literally said the wealthiest and strongest nation on the planet was going to cease existing in five years.

Take me through your timeline, don't just vomit up a bunch of nonsense. If you truly believe America is ending, surely you have some semblance of a timeline. Unless of course, you are just angry and bitterly whining.