"Just another day in paradise, okay?" April 2017 President Trump and oppo dump thread

http://i.imgur.com/4LMMTL0.png

from old thread, a look forward:

from this piece qualmsley posted in the russia trump poll thread - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/31/the-political-walls-are-closing-in-on-donald-trump.html

Even if he survives, Trump’s leadership in Washington is in tatters. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t fear him. What’s left of the Republican moderates don’t respect him. The Democrats will have nothing to do with him. And his fair weather friend, Paul Ryan, is a disaster as speaker of the House who is fighting harder for tax cuts for the top one percent than for anything in the Trump campaign agenda and making enemies of the Breitbartians in the process.

there are people who didn't see this all coming! fuck those people.

― Not the real Tombot (El Tomboto), Saturday, April 1, 2017 7:13 AM

huh little uptick in his approval rating. maybe just cold forgetting to sign those EOs yesterday

it must really suck to have a fair weather friend fighting harder for tax cuts for the top one percent. how will he survive?

Judge says Trump incited violence at Kentucky campaign rally

A federal judge in Kentucky is allowing a lawsuit by three protesters assaulted at a Donald Trump campaign rally last March to move forward, agreeing with the plaintiffs that Trump's call from the podium for his supporters to "get 'em out of here" incited rally-goers to physically attack them.

The three protesters have sued Trump for incitement, vicarious liability, negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness.

The opinion, from U.S. District Judge David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky, denied most of Trump's motion to dismiss the charges, saying that his angry demand for the removal of the protesters was "particularly reckless."

He cites testimony from one of the assailants—a known member of a white nationalist group—saying he began shoving the young African American woman protester after hearing Trump's call to "get them out."

Though Trump's lawyers argue his words were protected speech under the First Amendment, the court disagreed. "It is plausible that Trump’s direction to 'get ’em out of here' advocated the use of force," Judge Hale wrote. "It was an order, an instruction, a command...Trump’s statement at least implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action.”

The judge did not agree, however, that Trump should be held "vicariously liable" for his supporters' physical assault. Hale noted that the men who attacked the protesters were not employed by the Trump campaign and were not under his direct control during the rally.

Don't overthink smaller than margin or error moves from single polling companies.

I'm glad no one mentions Louise mensch except to laugh at her here. let's have a no more links to The Independent rule on this new thread too.

Still not sure which news sources are considered "OK" here tbh w/y'all
Like I do like The Intercept, but there's nothing but contempt for Greenwald here

Louise Mensch doesn't know who Theodore Herzl is

Theodor*

but still

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/18/louise-mensch-theodor-herzl-zionist-twitter_n_5688177.html

http://entertainment.ie/tv/news/Watch-Donald-Trump-mashed-up-with-Veep-makes-him-sort-of-bearable/391989.htm

I can't say I value Greenwald as much as I did, say, 12 years ago, but the writing of Scahill & Biddle is still quite worthwhile

THis sounds crazy, but all too typical of the current regime
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-repeals-regulation-wage-theft_us_58d9408ee4b03692bea814c9
Is it true that this repeal means that no law along the lines of the repealed one can therefore be passed in future.
Was hoping that whatever damage caused at the moment would be correctable when/if things returned to sanity.
THough the environmental ones might damage the balance in nature, not sure what the labour related ones would mean.

Don't overthink smaller than margin or error moves from single polling companies.

this should be the thread title tbh

HELENA – While Montana’s U.S. House race is one of only two special congressional elections nationwide that could be competitive, national Democratic or left-leaning groups so far have shown little interest in putting money into it.

With just eight weeks left until the May 25 election, no national group has bought broadcast ads on behalf of Democrat Rob Quist, the musician-songwriter and first-time candidate running for the open seat against Republican Greg Gianforte and Libertarian Mark Wicks.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) – the main national party group dedicated to helping Democratic U.S. House candidates – doesn’t mention the race on its website and didn’t return several messages left by MTN News.

It has also has made no independent expenditures on the race.

http://www.ktvh.com/2017/03/quist-doesnt-have-much-support-from-national-dems

Samantha Bee was making a point about the lack of support or at least voting on the Democratic side a couple of weeks back. Was that over the L.A. Mayor?
Would be ridiculous if this current regime were to continue beyond the point it could be stopped because of apathy on the opposing side. But since taht was one contributing factor to begin with, one would hope that any of this regime would be enough of a warning.

one of the most disheartening things about the election to me was how many people I know who didn't vote. everybody's excuse was that, since we live in california, it really didn't matter

They were correct tbh

yeah I guess, but I was kind of disgusted by the apathy

what was also dismaying to me was how many people, even people who would never consider voting for trump, completely bought into all the bullshit smears of clinton as an excuse to stay away from the polls

it's been really hard for me to get over my anger about all of this

fake news! "Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard."

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-ed-our-dishonest-president/

failing LA times! exterminate! benghazi! exterminate!!

They were correct tbh

People in DC line up to vote all the time. People vote in Guam.

We should fine people for not exercising the franchise imho

I agree

Given what the USA is like, fining people for not voting would probably raise a lot of revenue.

Given what the USA is like, instituting a fine for not voting would stir up a lot of support for repealing voting rights altogether.

ballz

we should have a lottery every midterm and federal election -- no taxes for the rest of your life for the lucky winners -- and they should be national holidays, nobody works, school off, too

and they should be national holidays, nobody works, school off, too

yep

if they actually wanted people to vote, they would make election day a federal holiday

Everything should be good and nothing should be bad, that's just my opinion

we should have a lottery every midterm and federal election

I've thought this for a long time. You don't even have to say "no taxes" -- I think one $50,000 purse and 10 $10,000 consolation prizes would be enough.

Voting is comically easy in Washington State, I get a ballot in the mail to fill out at my leisure and can put it in the mail or drop it at a box downtown to save a stamp.

I'm not looking forward to moving back to Michigan where I'll have to make an effort to go out and stand in line to vote on a Tuesday; then again my presidential vote will actually matter now.

yeah, I'm surprised how little absentee voting there is in so many states.

The LA election mentioned upthread was 4 weeks ago. Turnout was 12%.

I've thought this for a long time. You don't even have to say "no taxes" -- I think one $50,000 purse and 10 0,000 consolation prizes would be enough.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra),

I wonder how many religious voters would stop because they're agin' gambling.

We have compulsory voting in Australia. The fine if you don't vote is only $20, and even that's easy enough to get out of (just say you were travelling or something), but it's enough to get turnouts of over 90%.

how are you surviving under that tyranny? i mean, they're basically forcing you to vote! you are a free person floating through the world on a cloud of personal expression, and these altruism-worshipping government overlords force you to document your opinion on elected leaders or pay a small penalty? you should get a gun

Well I can't get a gun, because our freedom-hating government has made that pretty much impossible!

i am so sorry. i can't imagine what it must be like to not be able to kill someone

One thing I've never understood about US elections, and would be a serious disincentive to vote for me, are these gigantic queues where people wait hours and hours to vote. I've voted in plenty of different places in Australia, including densely populated inner city areas, and I've never waited more than 5 minutes to vote. Why is it so hard in the US? The other thing is why have your elections on Tuesday, when everyone's at work? We have ours on Saturday.

as far as I can tell it's predominantly a phenomenon in certain states, those under republican control, who are actively trying to suppress the vote, because more people voting is bad news for them!

Keep bars open and put voting machines inside. Nobody gets served until they vote imo.

as for tuesday voting, yeah idgi

it's not a mystery, imo - they want fewer people to vote

I thought we had established that this had something to do with rural folk not traveling on Sundays

fine ppl all u want if we can all vote by mail like in Oregon

I've voted in plenty of different places in Australia, including densely populated inner city areas, and I've never waited more than 5 minutes to vote. Why is it so hard in the US?

I’ve had to queue ten minutes or more in a densely populated area in the first hour of voting. And I was an election officer last year, and we ended up with 20+ minutes wait by the end of the day, and had to stop handing out out-of-region ballots to clear the queue. But I also voted early at a school, and that took zero queuing at all.

The other thing is why have your elections on Tuesday, when everyone's at work? We have ours on Saturday.

Despite the above, this is legit insane for a country that prides itself on democracy.

The important incentive that Australia does offer to people to get out of bed and go queue is the opportunity to get a hot snag and a squirt of sauce in your face, obv.

There was a more-than-ten-minute queue behind me when I voted in 2013, in the Australian Consulate in San Francisco. But that’s because only two people could have ballot papers at once, and I vote below the line. I imagine US polling places would be burnt to the ground if people had to number that many boxes.

insane for a country that prides itself on democracy.

Also 2013: I nearly got beaten up in a gay bar in Philadelphia on July 3rd for suggesting that democracy was founded in Greece, not Philly

It's all down to the democracy sausage. 95% turnout in-out-sausage.

Also 2013: I nearly got beaten up in a gay bar in Philadelphia on July 3rd for suggesting that democracy was founded in Greece, anything not Philly

Well I might have exaggerated slightly on the 5-minute wait, but I doubt I've ever waited more than 15 mins to vote. I've also voted in the UK in British elections as I'm a dual citizen, and I don't remember any crazy waits there either.

I do wonder why more countries don't have compulsory voting. Ticking a few boxes once every few years is hardly onerous. It makes the vote more representative and it also means huge resources don't need to be wasted on getting out the vote.

Manditory voting sounds like hell. Why would anyone want a forced march of the most ignorant/disinterested/low-information people into the voting booths?

And knowing that you have to vote makes people more likely to actually be engaged with politics, aware of policies, cast votes according to principles, etc. (And if you really don't care, just go into the booth and donkey.)

Admittedly this also works better in a system where you have more than two functional choices in a federal election.

x-post but relevant!

Our idiot voters are more likely to just draw a C&B on the ballot than vote for a Trump.

I'll grant you Clive Palmer, but wouldn't you prefer an elected millionaire tweeting sad poems about how he misses cheeseburgers?

i vote no to forced voting

was always relieved late in life when Mom told me she wasn't voting

So the argument is optional voting weeds out the people you wouldn't want voting anyway? Worked so well in the last presidential election

Actually I think it works the other way round. Compulsory voting shifts things to the centre and away from the extremes. We have Donald Trump type politicians in Australia but they poll 10-15% of the vote, not 48% or whatever Trump got.

white house photographer, it's still kind of a job?

http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/2/15140892/trump-white-house-photographer-shealah-craighead-vs-pete-souza-obama

there's a subtext to this that just seems to infest the entire administration - just winging it, whatever seems like it mostly works, resulsts!!! - so basically everything about how our government runs is now the macrocosm of shit like this amazing moment, whatever's supposed to be going on here

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8261591/17157745_1278383738897730_4999235804013350519_o.jpg

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/848702920128438272

Jared Kushner is in Iraq right now, a senior administration official confirms.

Can he stay there?

ppl who don't vote wd vote the way people who do vote vote, studies have shown

thought we all caught that one

tee hee Gerson's bit in the Post is merciless

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-failing-presidency-has-the-gop-in-a-free-fall/2017/03/30/e0882d62-1581-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html

Heading into last year’s election, Republicans knew that this problem — the tea party predicament, the Freedom Caucus conundrum, the Boehner bog — had to be dealt with. The GOP needed a large and capable leader who could either unite the whole party (at least temporarily) with a bold, conservative vision, or peel off some centrist Democratic support with innovative policy. They needed an above-average president.

What they got is unimaginably distant from any of these goals. They got a leader who is empty — devoid of even moderately detailed preferences and incapable of using policy details in the course of political persuasion.

ppl who don't vote wd vote the way people who do vote vote, studies have shown

again a) if you make more people vote, you get more people thinking about their votes, and especially b) I don't think you can show studies that indicate this wrt preferential voting and proportional representation? bcz if we're fantasising about electoral reform improving the US anyway

if you make more people vote, you get more people thinking about their votes

[citation needed]

regardless, mandatory voting would draw more minority voters into the fold, which would be bad news for republicans.

According to the Center for American Progress, “poll closures and limited voting hours disproportionately affect black voters”. And looking at early voting data, they found that trend was particularly noticeable in North Carolina, where there were 158 fewer early polling places in counties with large black communities and African American voter participation was down 16%.

Our idiot voters are more likely to just draw a C&B on the ballot than vote for a Trump.

surely this would be correctly interpreted by the courts as a vote for Trump tho

i have no data to support this but i don't think the slackers who didn't vote would have gone for trump

he was the exhausting prospect, the weird one

make the voting day a national holiday imo, it works very well in France.

while I am initially horrified by the idea of entering voters into a lottery system, I have decided the time for principles is over and whatever pisses off and attenuates the right wing is something we should do

We have compulsory voting in Australia. The fine if you don't vote is only $20

Nope, its $75 - I know I just got fined for not voting in the fricking local council elections of all things haha :(

But yeah, make voting day a saturday and have BBQs like we do. Make it fun (ish)!

i'm p much 100 percent in favor of mandatory voting. the idea of "low-information voters" ruining our election seems like a moot point after the last election, and making it illegal not to vote (and therefore presumably illegal to interfere with people voting) seems like the only thing that could effectively end the republicans' war on voting.

i know it's hard, but imagine it actually being worse. you can't force people to be informed and i don't buy that the people too lazy/disinterested to go vote now are suddenly going to find the energy to be better informed for something they're not inclined to do in the first place. you're going to have a lot of people just getting it over with and checking off whatever name they recognize. probably the incumbent, or failing that, any professional wrestler that happen to have thrown his/her hat in the ring.

That "fine old American tradition" of letting all fifty states fuck around with having their own voting and elections standards means nationwide mandatory voting will NEVER HAPPEN. As in NOT EVER. Also known as NOT IN A MILLION YEARS.

Wait so even with the system you do have, you dont have a consistent method of placing the votes/who supervises the count etc? Dont you have like a dept of voting or something akin to our Electoral Comission??

I mean we have state and local elections as well as federal, but theres very consistent and very carefully supervised methods. (and it is very simple! Paper forms and pencils, no crappy hackable computers or weird mechanical items)

you dont have a consistent method of placing the votes/who supervises the count etc?

You nailed it!

best to remember that the US has very strong state's rights w/r/t/ most policy, and any unifying national policy is a huge uphill battle. just to take part of my field, for example, the National Electrical Code is currently being adopted in various stages by all 50 different states, some have 2014 code but some don't.

to conclude, the US is a ridiculous patchwork of regulations. Not all the states even keep the same time! Voting laws are totally different state-to-state, just look at the insanely complex primary/caucus processes!

and yeah Aimless is otm for all these reasons. best we can hope for is to adopt vote-by-mail in more states, fight gerrymandering, and push back on voter-exclusion tactics.

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb119/Celtic_12557/nec-map_zpsd53a570f.gif

http://whatzhotandnot.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/vote-or-die.jpg

you're going to have a lot of people just getting it over with and checking off whatever name they recognize.

Thermo otmfm

keep finding back-of-envelope ways to make things perfect in time for Chelsea tho

Yeah, to hell with Dems fighting for voting rights. It's all a sham to help Chelsea Clinton. There's nobody anywhere in the US who is being targeted by voting rights laws, right? They're just lazy, that is all.

Is there any problem in the US where a Clinton isn't the real villain, Morbs?

most of the ppl who are genuinely too lazy/ignorant/disinclined to vote will just pay the $20 fine and not vote

meanwhile, we'll have all the ppl currently being prevented from voting by reactionary, racist republicans + all the ppl who are reasonably well-informed but are "too busy to vote" etc back in our elections

this sounds like a pretty good deal to me, but admittedly it doesn't do anything to STOP HILLARY (AND CHELSEA) which i gather some ppl believe is still the most pressing issue of our day

The people that don't turn out for voting are not necessarily the uneducated.

Lots of people recognise "Whoever wins, it will make no difference to my life" so they vote on the basis of who else needs what's on offer and who should get that support. The rich? The poor? Minorities? At that point, there's a whole bunch who will say whatever, its not worth the trip out and their lives will be more enriched if they don't go off and vote but mow the lawn instead.

All I can say is that compulsory voting works pretty well in Australia and there is no serious opposition to it. I don't think I've even read so much as an op ed piece saying it should be abolished; it's just part of the electoral furniture at this stage. The obligation it places on people is pretty tiny.

If you make voting compulsory you have to provide everyone a reasonable chance of actually being able to cast a vote, otherwise you get sued. Similar to the health insurance mandate. This would cost states and/or the fed govt approximately Big Bucks and a massive overhaul of the entire system, for the better in every way (weekend voting, relaxation of ID requirements, etc) but our country has demonstrated that it's incapable of doing big things anymore so, you know, how many angels can fit on the head of a pin

you can vote over an extended time period by mail in most states, right?... lemme guess, the problem is... disenfranchises transients ?

i don't know, ianal, but i imagine that to survive court challenges you'd need every state to have uniform procedures and you know, good luck w/that

Mandatory voting will still be subject to "prove you haven't already voted", though - the bullshit won't go away as long as it has a hook to hang on.

My understanding of Australia is that most people are pretty happy and carefree, and there's always one person who cares enough for everything, who cares entirely too much - this understanding come to me from Neighbours and Home & Away, which I have only just now reconsidered as pro-suffrage propaganda.

(this is not my actual understanding of Australia, calm down sic)

That saiiiid, while I am fond of a lot of Australians, didn't you have Trump's John the Baptist as your previous Prime Minister?

good mourning!

where's the tax returns?

I think you could sell mandatory voting to republicans if you promised not to stop their voter suppression efforts, so they can make it hard as possible for minorities to vote, then shake em down for fines/prison labour

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/848857910297980928

Never really seen what the problem was with getting the questions early. Thought that was just better research since the end result is just to make a coherent argument rather than know a single factual answer.
& am surprised by the epistemology of somebody getting stuck on that. But that is a weird epistemology anyway, & not sure it's coherent at the best of times.

Just asking!

Yeah, it's strange that people (our president) seem to think she got the answers to the debate questions, as if there are correct answers

I think you could sell mandatory voting to republicans if you promised not to stop their voter suppression efforts, so they can make it hard as possible for minorities to vote, then shake em down for fines/prison labour

I'm glad someone made this argument. We already have so many things that criminalize both poverty and being not-white. We don't need more of them.

Also, that information was released through Podesta hacks. So he is still pushing Russian intel.

mandatory voting will never happen, and tbh instituting it while we still vote on tuesdays w/o a holiday would end up penalizing all the working folks that feel like they can't skip out to vote right now

move all elections to saturday. this is something that could be advocated for at the state level as well as at the federal level, and would probably get bipartisan support as it appears to be pretty innocuous and common-sensical on the face

(nb that probably also means that it might not be terribly effective at increasing voter turnout, esp since many service-economy voters are still working saturday, but it would at least be a step in the right direction. like, i can't see many downsides)

Surely the problem with the debate questions was that it gave Hillary an unfair advantage over Bernie, no?

The tweet is about 'answers'.

"True or False: Lead was found in the water in Flint, MI"

http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2016/11/08/104090081-still.600x400.jpg

xpost: sure, but I was responding to: "Never really seen what the problem was with getting the questions early"

Feels so good to know that the pettiest person of whom I have any personal awareness is still the president. Feels reeeeeeeal good.

trump tweeting about dumb stuff is good, shows how unfocused and incompetent they are

personally i think it would be great if we are sitting here in 2019 and he is still tweeting about hillary and the debate

if he's still in office there is a 100% chance he will be

(this is not my actual understanding of Australia, calm down sic)

I'm that person that cares entirely too much

tbf to our right-wing overlords, they quickly realised Abbott was such a swivel-eyed loon that they knifed him three days short of his second anniversary, and replaced him with someone literally the entire party and voters hate instead

esp since many service-economy voters are still working saturday

And would probably have to work on a federal holiday too!

xpost: sure, but I was responding to: "Never really seen what the problem was with getting the questions early"

― Position Position, 3. april 2017 16:41 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, sorry ;)

But yeah, the assumption was that telling Clinton a debate in Flint would have a question about Flint fatally undermined the Sanders campaign. Which is nonsense, but it was kinda stupid thing to do anyway.

it's a symptom of the panic/entitlement of the ClintonIncDNC operation

one drop in a large bucket

yeah but c'mon that is not why Trump keeps circling back to it

so is benedict donald going to hire tiffany? it's kind of bullshit he hasn't yet, if you ask me

trump doesn't remember tiffany exists most of the time tbf

he still seems to have it out for Marla Maples and by extension Tiffany

imagine being the child donald trump is embarrassed by - what a horrifying psychic burden to carry every day

https://twitter.com/tomkludt/status/848920136623030272

Take it easy, Bill Shine

an eagles where everyone is don or glenn, what a fucking nightmare

well, yeah

And guitar player Joe Walsh is replaced by deranged former congressman Joe Walsh

So Trump has seriously spent the last 3 hours watching FOX News? What does the President do anyway?

ilx is perhaps the only place on the internet where that tweet could spawn a heated 1000-post debate over which member of fox personnel corresponds to which member of the eagles

So Trump has seriously spent the last 3 hours watching FOX News? What does the President do anyway?

you just answered your own question

(calling shoe smith as timothy b. schmidt btw)

btw the "@FBI" in his latest tweet is hilarious to me

uh, shep smith xp to self

btw the "@FBI" in his latest tweet is hilarious to me

if only there was some way the president of the united states could easily reach the federal bureau of investigation

spain is a fake country! "Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia and investigated in Spain for money laundering, has infiltrated the US president’s circle."

http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/03/31/inenglish/1490984556_409827.amp.html

Prez at -16 on Rasmussen poll, including now 58% that voted disapprove

all is going according to trump's 6D-chess plan

Feinstein and Bennet finally both publicly on-board for filibuster of Gorsuch

scott adams just simultaneously microwaved three bags of popcorn in celebration

Hm:

White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel

Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials does not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim.

But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.

@tinyrevolution
US politics used to seem like the Godfather with Bush as Sonny & Obama as Michael but now we're in a weird sequel where Fredo's in charge

P sure it's Chris montisanti tbh

Luca Brasi, surely?

Like Luca Brasi after a serious head injury.

@JoshZ2012
You take care of me? You're my kid brother, and you take care of me? You wiretapped my phones! Your a bad (or sick) guy! Sad!

not surprisingly the only media running that Eli Lake story are sites like Breitbart, Daily Caller, Townhall, etc.

it's kinda funny the game of telephone though where the article said the actions were probably legal and other sources that quoted it added an "il" in front o that word.

Republicans defended their move to block Garland, saying they were worried about Hillary Clinton winning the election.

"If (Democrats) are going to oppose Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States they will never vote and never support a nominee of this president. Because in the end, i think that's really what gets their goat the most," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "We keep hearing about Merrick Garland, but I guarantee if Hillary Clinton had the presidency we'd never hear Merrick Garland's name again, because she would have had the opportunity to pick her own nominee to the Supreme Court."

that....doesn't make sense? You blocked Garland because you thought Hillary might win and then also name a liberal judge?

Apparently my Senator, Bob "Teenage Dominican Prostitutes" Menendez, is wavering re Gorsuch. I called his office to express my discontent. Got voice mail because all the lines were busy. I suspect he'll be a No eventually.

xp

yes, maybe Clinton would have nominated a more liberal justice who would also not receive a hearing from the republican senate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/senate-panel-prepares-to-consider-gorsuch-as-threat-of-filibuster-looms/2017/04/03/129bcd8c-186a-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_gorsuch-1020a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5aa6a228a53c

Senate Democrats secured enough votes Monday to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, increasing the likelihood that Republicans will enact a rules change to ensure his confirmation and pushing the battle into its climactic final act.

Four more Senate Democrats confirmed they will support a filibuster of Gorsuch’s nomination, giving the minority party the requisite 41 votes to maintain their procedural roadblock under pressure from Republicans.

I had Bennett's position wrong upthread fwiw sorry about that

xxxpost yea, I at least understood the "the American people should pick the next SCOTUS judge" internal logic even if the reason itself was abhorrent, misleading and stupid.

I don't get this one at all - "we had to, it looked like Hillary would win and then we could block her nom too and make it very evidence that it was never about Obama being in his last term".....

also doesn't work w/ McCain's comments vowing to block every nominee and "being fine with 8 justices".

*evident

xpost yup so here comes nuclear. wonder how the American people will react to that. have to think it will fall along party lines

Many XPs John Cornyn is a shithead, that's why.

yea and that's one of many stupid things he's said in the last week

how convenient that everyone in the GOP suddenly forgot their plan to block any Hillary nominee for 4 years

wonder how the American people will react to that. have to think it will fall along party lines

interestingly, polling I've seen so far has not shown a lot of support for the Dems move, which makes it even more remarkable that they're undertaking it. But generally I don't think this will have a huge public impact, most voters don't have a clue about arcane Senate rules.

yeah admittedly I didn't even really know the rules very well a few years ago.

if the public is following at all it's wondered why the hell 'majority rules' hasn't been the operating principle all these years.

Jennifer Rubin wrote in today's WaPo that a consequence of the aboliton of this rule will be the parties' nominating radicals to to the bench should they win control of the Senate and White House, as if radicals like Scalia and Gorsuch weren't on or going to be on the bench already.

these Beltway pundits and their fucking myopic centrism

or Thomas, or Alito...

haha yes v otm

xp

haven't seen a single pundit argue that what's really at stake is stripping the illusion of "non-partisanship" from the Court's rep

https://media3.giphy.com/media/Qq75Zq9l1lmDK/giphy.gif

need to make the SCOTUS bench 101 seats, that would stop the bickering I'm sure

How about in every 4-year term the president gets to add two new seats to the SCOTUS, until it reaches a total of 21?

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/neil-gorsuch-wont-fill-the-vacancy-on-the-supreme-court-1791875408

Xp to shakey, Scocca had an interesting take on this back when Gorsuch was nominated

Profound.

Trump called the attack in Russia a “terrible thing” happening “all over the world.”

“Terrible, terrible things happening all over the world. Absolutely a terrible thing,” Trump said during a spray of his luncheon with Egyptian president el-Sisi.

"Especially terrible it should happen in Mother Russia".

Alfred what was the context of that gif

wasn't that during the speech where Obama criticized Citizens United?

yep

was a state of the union.. part two in the series of famous presidential SOTU heckling by right wing fuckboys

It increasingly seems that Turnip is giving up on saying anything that actually references anything to any meaningful extent. I mean, yes, it's all been alphabet soup for years now, but he seems to be dispensing with specifics and referents. Just lots of "we're going to do great things, bigly" and "everything is awful, just terrible" utterances, like an emotionally-vacant dad trying to get his kid to shut up so he can focus on the Knicks game.

So, uh, have we posted this one yet?

The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders and the millennial feminists
-
In this extract from her book, Susan Bordo asks how the most qualified candidate ever to run for president lost the seemingly unloseable election

Contains such bits as:

And as much as I am in agreement with many of his ideas, Bernie Sanders splintered and ultimately sabotaged the Democratic party – not because he chose to run against Hillary Clinton, but because of how he ran against her.

he's going to be so happy when Gorsuch gets confirmed. Finally some "winning"

xp

I say make 'em go nuclear, if they want their pet justice.

Democratic obstruction may look slightly bad to the populace at large, sure. But it doesn't compare to how much howling there would be from the fired-up base if they caved on anything even remotely Trumpian. Cf. 誤訳侮辱 upthread re: Menendez.

that last paragraph of the Scocca article that voodoo chili says it all, I think

*posted

http://www.investors.com/politics/trump-approval-plunges-amid-russia-inquiry-obamacare-repeal-failure-ibdtipp-poll/

notable about this is that his support among Republicans is 74% (14% lower than when this same pollster did their last poll).

i know there's no way, no how, comrade combover gets impeached, of course! but just spitballing here, would it be more likely to happen because of proximity to treason or russian money laundering? i mean, wilbur ross having a controlling stake in the Bank of Cyprus is fishy as fuck

he'd only be impeached if he said he wanted to suck Barack Obama's dick

See, that's just like you liberals, making a mountain out of a molehill. If you'd really listened, what the president was really saying when he said he wanted to suck Obama's dick was that he wants to plug the leaks in the white house, much in the way you might plug the current president's mouth with the penis of the former president. Your problem is that you take him literally when you should be taking him nonliterally.

apropos of nothing, but still u&

https://68.media.tumblr.com/567db4be618802b93a55d024de81e717/tumblr_onungkecnb1tki7xko1_540.jpg

the most qualified candidate ever to run for president

I still have no idea wtf this is supposed to mean when it's trotted out, what even qualifies someone to be the most powerful human being in existence?

'is a democrat'

no. of pussygrabs

are you sure that pic is Nunes and not like...Dwayne Schintzius

marrying Bill Clinton.

it's a stupid thing to say and it doesn't matter but even in the post-wwii era i'm hard pressed to see what made clinton more "qualified" than, like, LBJ or the first bush

Its like an EGOT-- First Lady, Senator, Failed Presidential Candidate, Sec. of State. I doubt anyone else will hit all of those again.

c'mon give melania a chance

and i know no one is really thinking on these terms, but i really don't think hillary clinton was more qualified than, like, george washington or james madison

how was the first Bush qualified other than being chief spook and lapdog to three presidents?

Never mind -- don't answer

xxpost well we're long past the days of having Presidents also being generals in the army

RIP Wesley Clark
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Foratv-admin-wysiwyg%2F2015%2F12%2F03%2Fwesley_clark.jpg&f=1

er
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Foratv-admin-wysiwyg%2F2015%2F12%2F03%2Fwesley_clark.jpg&f=1

huh, shows you how much attention I paid to the primaries back then.

lmaoooo

that dude

Greil Marcus' favorite!

Madonna's too!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.ea4cdfab6191

naturally he wasn't a member of the transition team which is what Prince and the White House are already yammering on about, but damn - and who leaked this?

I always remember Wesley Clark because I have a Rolling Stone cover T-shirt of the Johnny Cash memorial issue, and one of the major cover stories was an interview w/Clark.

ugh Prince, the proverbial bad penny

Eric Garland‏
@ericgarland

IT’S THE BIG ONE. BLACKWATER’S ERIK PRINCE ARRANGED A MOSCOW BACKCHANNEL FOR TRUMP

seems like more nothingburger to me tbh

Eric Garland‏
@ericgarland

IT’S THE BIG ONE. BLACKWATER’S ERIK PRINCE ARRANGED A MOSCOW BACKCHANNEL FOR TRUMP

― Neanderthal, Monday, April 3, 2017 5:03 PM

related to the Education Secretary!

if you want to get deep in the conspiracy theory weeds wasnt there a devos/blackwater connection to that mystery computer in trump tower communicating with alfa bank?

Rather:

https://twitter.com/counterchekist/status/849002421628096512

if Garland says it's important it almost certainly isn't

IT’S THE BIG ONE.

it is considered good form to shout this before all oppo dumps

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8hDMe4UMAAFhx0.jpg:large

this is surely the single, indelible, easily-grasped image which will cause the american public to storm the white house in outrage and not leave until trump's head is on a spike

it's probably not a "omg Presidency over" moment by itself but I wouldn't call it nothingburger. Prince is acknowledging the meeting and suggesting it had nothing to do with Trump, whereas Trump hasn't denied the meeting but has stated Prince wasn't on his transition team.

plus if confirmed that it was done at Trump's behest, it would prove that collusion with Russia didn't stop after the election ended, and that the White House was making back door deals that put the nation's interests at risk in exchange for Russia agreeing to its demands.

I'm just curious as to why it was leaked - are intelligence officials getting impatient with how slow the investigation is going? Presumably this would all come out anyway as they indicated the FBI was already scrutinizing the meeting.

to wade into yesterday's discussion, not in favor of mandatory voting but very much in favor of making voting easier in pretty much any way possible (mail-in ballots, expanding early voting, tomboy's abolish the electoral college 5-year plan, etc)

xpost anything that makes the President distracted from doing shitty things though is fine by me

meanwhile this from January is my definition of "building a castle on sand": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-domestic-conspiracy-that-gave-trump-the-election_us_587ed24fe4b0b110fe11dbf9

tomboy is a tombot* autocorrect typo, not morbsian wordplay xxp

it would prove that ... the White House was making back door deals that put the nation's interests at risk in exchange for Russia agreeing to its demands.

it doesn't prove this at all.

it would prove that collusion with Russia didn't stop after the election ended, and that the White House was making back door deals that put the nation's interests at risk in exchange for Russia agreeing to its demands.

but yes

I'm sorry, this distancing shit these fuckers do holds no water with me when the accused parties they attempt to distance themselves from are within like 1.5 degrees of separation from them. 'Look, this brother of a cabinet member who we've had dealings with in a quasi-official capacity and who now that I think of it I do not even recognize at all was not a part of the official transition team, so case closed.'

@seungminkim

@SenJohnMcCain tells me he'll vote in favor of the nuclear option, but "I believe we will pay a price for this." Still, "I have no choice."

Eliminating the filibuster seems like it could ultimately lead to the end of the GOP. Like if the dems get back in power (which seems decreasingly unlikely), that might be it for them.

what a fucking weasel

uh xp

How so?

Xpost

The forces of reaction will march on

It was a 10 year plan K3vin
Not 5
Numbers matter in electoral reform

Also

Also apparently my phone just pukes and replaces k3vin with nothingness instead of suggesting anything so that joke died for Zing

I don't see the elimination of the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees having any serious effect on party dynamics in terms of who is in power

Thanks for calling out my ninth-grade education, guys, but that makes much more sense. I thought the proposal was getting rid of the filibuster altogether.

Eliminating the filibuster seems like it could ultimately lead to the end of the GOP. Like if the dems get back in power (which seems decreasingly unlikely), that might be it for them.

Well that's (sorta) why they call it the nuclear option, innit? Mutually Assured Destruction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me5U4xrqQ2A

I'm embarrassed that I know what movie that is from

The larger point, I guess, is that GOP success seems to rely almost entirely on aggrieved voters + parlor tricks. Eliminating any of their tricks seems unwise in the long run as their base rushes headlong towards the grave.

(Oh, dem apathy don't hurt none, neither.)

never underestimate the ability of Democratic voters to take a stand about some pointless shit at the worst possible time

so what are the odds the government defaults on its debts coming up because of the sheer incompetence of everyone involved? 50? 60?

Congress isn't gonna go to bat for Trump's nonsense

xp

er no xpost sorry

I dont really trust those idiots either

never underestimate the ability of Democratic voters to take a stand about some pointless shit at the worst possible time

― Neanderthal, Monday, April 3, 2017 6:47 PM (

Fortunately that's not the case re Gorsuch.

i agree w/ that

I don't think there's enough support in the GOP caucus in either chamber for the "poison pills" the Dems are complaining about - they can probably at least swing Collins against the Planned Parenthood thing in the Senate, and there's a whole raft of GOP folks who are not into Trump's wall. So odds are leadership will meet or at least compromise on those demands to avoid a shutdown.

I can just see them fucking it up and having a catastrophe on our hands because nobody seems to understand how anything fucking works anymore

eh I think McConnell and Ryan know how things work in their respective offices. (Ryan can't hold his caucus together but that's a longstanding problem)

susan rice surveillance scandal! obama left the country to escape inevitable prosecution!

This seems of interest. Carter Page again -- back in 2013, it turns out:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/a-former-trump-adviser-met-with-a-russian-spy

haha

https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/848994320883613697

if Garland says it's important it almost certainly isn't

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Monday, April 3, 2017 4:07 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post

don't talk shit about Merrick Garland!

he's been through enough

Democrats should trade a unanimous vote for cloture and confirmation for Gorsuch for the concurrent nomination and unanimous vote for Garland (replacing Ginsburg).

LOL

that would actually be pretty interesting. doubt it would make sense for dems though if they're counting on trump being voted out in 2020. RBG can hold off a few more years prob

RBG for Garland also not such a hot trade tbh

isnt that a west wing episode?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7ENxNjO4E

Meanwhile: http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/California-Senate-approves-sanctuary-state-11047699.php

“The tough talk is all rhetoric coming out of Washington,” de León said. “We are going to be punished or they will strike back at us? We are the great state of California. We don’t grovel or put our hand out so we can get a little budget money so we can buy a police car.”

damn

outic what else needs to happen for this to pass into law

Jerry Brown has to sign it

jared isn't gonna like this

we got him!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.bb6f8e203e50

(not really, i just wanted to pretend that they got him for a minute. but still...more risky business from trump friends!)

Still, "I have no choice."

MAVERICK

thank god for fox news. that's all i can say. holding these crooks accountable!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRHKB7Vmxzk

lol

“[Male-1] wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. ... He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up,” Podobnyy said. “I also promised him a lot ... This is intelligence method to cheat, how else to work with foreigners? You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go fuck himself.”

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8h26toXUAADfcu.jpg

dying at this

lol

These guys are insane and evil: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/with-help-from-pence-house-republicans-suddenly-rekindle-health-care-talks/2017/04/03/88ec08e4-1888-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html?utm_term=.cc875fa61556

gets rid of:

“essential health benefits” requiring coverage of mental-health care, substance abuse treatment, maternity care, prescription drugs and more, as well as a provision that bars insurers from charging the sick more than the healthy.

should be a real vote-winner

But the evil part is that they'd just let it be up to the states if they want to punish their sickest population or not. Meaning there is no ideology behind it. They are just trying to figure out how they can hurt people the most and get away with it electorally. And all of it to create space in the budget for tax cuts for the rich.

As I suspected, Susan Rice is so loathed on the right that her role is now obscuring everything else. Bellwether of Beltway attention span "Morning Joe" led its segment with the Rice revelation as if in relief that they could finally focus on possible Obama White House malfeasance.

Hilarious thing I got on that last Washington Post article was an add in three spots by some drug company shill talking about wanting to protect seniors from drug rationing and the govt causing drug prices to rise.

Seems like Morning Joe was just as busy trashing Erik Prince.

Anyway, finally, the best story:

https://twitter.com/melmason/status/848977938934513664

@cathleendecker has the definitive profile of @DevinNunes and his Central Valley district. Plus, this yearbook pic

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8gsnOcVYAAvPSj.jpg

sources have apparently now come forward to say the Susan Rice unmasking claim is false, but all I can find is a damn CNN video that won't load.

does this work for anybody?

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/04/04/susan-rice-trump-unmasking-allegation-cooper-intv-sciutto-ac.cnn

Well, it's not illegal either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russian-trump-wiretapping-claim_us_58e3365ce4b0f4a923b15827

that's the part that has made me the most apoplectic = even Nunes's orig statement said it was 'probably legal' so we're all sitting around debating a scandal where no law was broken

though the Rice story isn't exactly blowing up anywhere besides mostly conservative media from what I've seen.

xpost thanks

fucking hate the internets xp

blaming obama will have diminishing returns for the right, it already has

It's Obama's fault we can't blame Obama anymore

otm

If Barack's so innocent, why won't he admit he's not?

https://trustworks.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/scarecrow1.jpg

neanderthal a+

Fox really running w this Rice thing. Trump clearly gambling on his strategy of continued obfuscation/misinformation to bury/obstruct/reframe all this Russian stuff, will probably work (at least in the short term) and will definitely shore up support for his base. Seeing as how impeachment is not really a promising or likely option, sticking with my opinion that the more Trump is distracted by this garbage the less effective he will be at actual governing, ie this is all playing into a best-case scenario for us lefties.

once again it's more important to figure out who pulled the fire alarm than it is preventing your house from burning down

responses to your house burning down:

1) figure out who pulled the fire alarm
2) deny that the house is burning down
3) deny that houses burn down
4) tell others not to buy fire insurance
5) actively prevent others from buying fire insurance
6) if firemen arrive, tell them to leave
7) shut down the fire department
8) eliminate all references to house fires and fire departments in primary school textbooks
9) ask the provocative question 'if fire is bad, why can it can create good things, like cooked food?'
10) ban the word 'fire'

Fox really running w this Rice thing. Trump clearly gambling on his strategy of continued obfuscation/misinformation to bury/obstruct/reframe all this Russian stuff, will probably work (at least in the short term) and will definitely shore up support for his base. Seeing as how impeachment is not really a promising or likely option, sticking with my opinion that the more Trump is distracted by this garbage the less effective he will be at actual governing, ie this is all playing into a best-case scenario for us lefties.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:58 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

One of the NYT reporters I follow on twitter keeps saying Rice issue 'raises questions' and I want to fucking kill myself

lol awesome xpost

it does raise questions, that are unfortunately (for Trump) fairly easy to answer

MASK ON,FUCK IT,MASK OFF

Hm hm hm:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/849296361480650753

UPDATE: Top House Intelligence Democrat says documents on surveillance involving Trump transition team available to full panel 'soon'...MORE: Schiff says White House played role 'in selectively and surreptitiously providing' documents to Nunes.

Right on schedule: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/446417/susan-rice-unmasking-trump-associates-allegations

jfc WERE BACK TO BENGHAZI

I also want to point out that daddy Trump and his pride-n-joy Ivanka had a town hall event today - for CEOs.

It's about time a political leader showed how much he understands the gritty daily struggles of the common CEO

all roads lead to Benghazi

xp

the masking/unmasking stuff is also pointless because what did the obama administration do about - nothing. did it affect trump becoming god damn president? no it did not.

Trump is considering a carbon tax?!? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/04/white-house-explores-two-new-tax-ideas-a-value-added-tax-and-carbon-tax-as-leading-proposal-to-raise-revenue-falters/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_wb-taxes-1225pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.0a0472d9dc04

for relief, Crumb-Trump 1989

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/robert_crumb_and_friends_flush_donald_trump_down_the_toilet_1989

something tells me the consideration of a carbon tax will quickly disappear once someone reminds donald trump that carbon is related to climate change. "oh yes! it certainly is related. fantastic job, just the best advice"

yeah, seems like WaPo space filling

By the time Miller and Bannon are done, companies will have to pay penalties for failing to meet their carbon output quotas for the day/week/month.

i'm so tired of these scandals, on both sides

the smokestacks of the vast soylent green factories of trump's america will darken the skies from coast to coast, rendering solar power generation impossible

you know, Tuesday is Soylent Green day.

Ah, Jared:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahallam/jared-kushner-secretly-met-with-muslim-leaders-days-before

On a January day just before inauguration, a handful of Muslim activists and businessmen gathered in New York for a confidential meeting with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and close adviser of President Donald Trump.

Though the transition team was based in Trump Tower, this meeting took place off site, away from the cameras. The goal was a candid talk about what kind of relationship the new administration might forge with American Muslims — a minefield of a topic given Trump’s anti-Muslim remarks during the campaign.

The meeting, which has not been previously reported, went smoothly, but any optimism Muslims left with that day vanished within a couple of weeks as Trump took office and immediately set about turning his anti-Muslim rhetoric into policy.

And so fizzled one of the few attempts at dialogue between Muslim representatives and Trump’s inner circle. Neither side has ever spoken publicly about the talks. This account comes from interviews with six people who have direct knowledge of the meeting and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved.

The Muslims in the room included a prominent imam, a civil rights attorney, the director of a nonprofit that studies violent extremism, and two venture capitalists — one of whom is a partner at Thrive Capital, the firm run by Kushner’s brother Joshua.

every day will be soylent green day in trump's america

hey kids! recycle your friends and family at your nearest soylent green centre in return for health insurance credits or a discount on your college education!

"Jared" with no other information used to mean the gossipy site JustJared, the Subway guy, or the jewelry store. Now it means this particular motherfucker. Will the Kushners also appropriate "Joshua"?

I think this may have been mentioned elsewhere before, but R. Crumb draws the ladies v. good

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee to the lead the Food and Drug Administration, has received significant payments from the opioid industry — while attacking attempts to deter the explosion of opioid pill mills.

The FDA has some of the most significant authority in the federal government to oversee manufacturers of prescription painkillers. Gottlieb is set to appear for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

Gottlieb’s disclosure statements, required under federal law, show that since the beginning of 2016 he has received almost $45,000 in speaking fees from firms involved in the manufacture and distribution of opioids.

“Our country is in desperate need of an FDA commissioner who will take on the opioid lobby, not one who has a track record of working for it,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University, reacting to this information.

Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, the maker of a highly addictive generic oxycodone pill, paid Gottlieb $22,500 for a speech in London last November shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Prosecutors have charged that the firm ignored red flags and supplied as many as 500 million suspicious orders in Florida for its oxycodone product between 2008 and 2012. Mallinckrodt reached a tentative settlement this week, agreeing to pay $35 million while admitting no wrongdoing.

The Healthcare Distributors Alliance, a trade group for the largest opioid wholesale distributors in America, also retained Gottlieb as a speaker last September.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/04/scott-gottlieb-opioid/

dr scott gottlieb, yesterday:

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/5/5e/Dr._Riviera.png/revision/latest?cb=20120509073411

Spicer blaming Obama for the gas attack in Syria

THANKS OBAMA

that's never going to end, is it

The latest attempt to erase coverage for ppl w/ preexisting conditions

Late Monday night, word emerged that the White House and the group of conservative lawmakers known as the Freedom Caucus had discussed a proposal to revive the bill. But the proposed changes would effectively cast the Affordable Care Act’s pre-existing conditions provision aside.

The terms, described by Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the head of the Freedom Caucus, are something like this: States would have the option to jettison two major parts of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance regulations. They could decide to opt out of provisions that require insurers to cover a standard, minimum package of benefits, known as the essential health benefits. And they could decide to do away with a rule that requires insurance companies to charge the same price to everyone who is the same age, a provision called community rating.

The proposal is not final, but Mr. Meadows told reporters after the meeting that his members would be interested in such a bill. To pass the House, any bill would need to find favor not just with the Freedom Caucus, but also with more moderate Republicans. It would also need to attract the support of nearly every Republican in the Senate to become law.

The ability to opt out of the benefit requirements could substantially reduce the value of insurance on the market. A patient with cancer might, for example, still be allowed to buy a plan, but it wouldn’t do her much good if that plan was not required to cover chemotherapy drugs.

The second opt-out would make the insurance options for those with pre-existing conditions even more meaningless....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/upshot/freedom-caucus-health-care-pre-existing-conditions.html?_r=0

Trump blaming Obama for today's gas attack in the Oval Office.

Why are GOP-ers so seemingly hellbent on making themselves un-reelectable?

wrt health care, I'm afraid these morons may have decided that they're more likely to get something passed if they make it utterly shameful
i am not sure that's wrong exactly

No, that seems absolutely spot-on. It didn't pass the first time because it wasn't inhumane enough to inspire consensus. Never underestimate the lack of fucks the GOP gives about people.

The support for the previous bill was 17%. We can do better/worse. Lets shoot for zero!!!!!!!!!

The ability to opt out of the benefit requirements could substantially reduce the value of insurance on the market. A patient with cancer might, for example, still be allowed to buy a plan, but it wouldn’t do her much good if that plan was not required to cover chemotherapy drugs.

this makes the typical lib error of defining benefit and value _unidirectionally_. In the real economic world, they are multi directional. In this case, there is a real benefit in the _economic value_ of the transaction that takes place. that money flowing to the insurer is crucial to freedoms and liberty. also, to shareholders and the indentures tied to those companies. really the biggest loser here is the chemo drugs companies, but we can maybe create a subsidy to them for being LOCKED OUT of the market. Hillary would have wanted it that way.

(

Why are GOP-ers so seemingly hellbent on making themselves un-reelectable?

it wasn't that long ago that folks were confidently asserting the republicans had poisoned the electoral well for themselves for at least a generation, tbf

and then uh

When the proportion of support among representatives is the inverse of the support among their constituents, it almost (almost) feels like democracy is failing.

josh marshall otm http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fantasy-trumpcare-league

We're seeing a slow but now steady stream of stories suggesting that Trumpcare may not be dead after all. They're working on it in the background, making progress, getting ready for even more winning.

Put me down as quite skeptical.

Rather than seriously contemplating a new legislative push to repeal Obamacare, this sounds more like a collective GOP effort to moonwalk away from the massive failure to repeal or even prune back Obamacare after promising they'd kill it for seven years.

Consider some problems.

Let's say the White House really does cut a deal with the Freedom Caucus. It's not clear that even allows a bill to get out of the House. Presumably that deal makes the bill more draconian. There were probably enough GOP moderates to sink the bill last months. Those changes would likely up that number. It's doubtful such changes would make the final product more appealing for them. In any case, do those folks in swing districts really want to revisit this at all? It seems very hard to figure how you get a bill out of the House (which of course is why it died in the first place). And the Senate always seemed much harder than the House. I doubt very much that it has gotten any easier.

The political, ideological ground also seems to have moved. The upshot of the failure to repeal seems to have solidified the assumption that millions of people should not lose their coverage. You'd think that was obvious. But Ryan and company were making a big play for choice and having more options not to have insurance and a lot of similar gobbledygook. My read of the fallout of repeal's failure is that it is now assumed that millions or tens of millions of people losing their care is not okay. That was implicitly the case already. The dynamics of repeal made it explicit.

The fact that Trump and the GOP whiffed on repeal is deeply damaging for the GOP and for Trump, as I noted here. This seems far more like an effort to build a legend the upshot of which is that that whiff never happened. Repeal is still happening. They're working on it. Don't you worry. Like I said, it's like they're trying to moonwalk away from the fail.

anything that is radical and draconian enough for the freedom caucus is going to fuck over GOP moderates and they won't go for that

THIS JUST IN, GOP moderates respond to new Trumpcare proposal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMXb7PEIIYc

marcos otm, obviously everyone should stay vigilant but stories that the GOP is "working" on health care aren't scary to me, i'll wait until there's at least some document or at least some GOP plan of action before I do anything other than roll my eyes.

as much as they wanted to claim the CBO is fake news when those reports came out that 25 million or whatever huge number of people will lose insurance over the next few years it was hard for any of them to stand behind it. anything that satisfies the freedom caucus is going to sound worse than the previous shitty bill did

I agree that it's hard to see how such a thing passes, but it was hard to see many things in recent months.

Trump blaming Obama for today's gas attack in the Oval Office.

― The Godzilla/Globetrotters Adventure Hour (Old Lunch), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:16 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I definitely misread this

No, I think you read it correctly.

Man, it'd be awesome if the near future of the federal government was just a locked groove of Turnip swatting away Russia allegations and Congress putting forth increasingly-unpopular iterations of health bills that never pass.

@BraddJaffy

Trump's statement today blames Obama for not acting after his red line. But at least 4 times, Trump tweeted at Obama not to attack in Syria.

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/849345481780146176

surely the fact that Russia is Assad's daddy has nothing to do with this position... .. .

so with this Susan Rice thing, it has been apparent throughout that whenever Trump has attempted to, on his own or through a proxy, run interference on the "fake news" being reported by him, that it's akin to kicking a hornet's nest. somebody else from intelligence leaks another story about Trump in retaliation (in one case, someone from the FBI).

You'd think Trump would realize that every time he thinks he has successfully parried an attack, his offensives result in having to go on the immediate defensive, because there's a lot of dirt out there and the intelligence community is getting sick of his attacks on them.

But no, on he goes. There may never be the bombshell story we want, but the dude is going to keep spending his time on damage control. I wish I could get paid as much as he did to tweet (and then donate my salary to someone besides who I promised to donate it too)

should say "fake news" being reported *about* him, not "by him"

I never assume that Trump will realize anything.

^^^ He might as well have "if they hit me I must hit them back" tattooed on his forehead.

funny thing is allowing a special prosecutor would probably be in his best interest if Russia is truly all smoke, no fire, cos it removes the partisan noise, but Trump really would be stupid enough to start a forest fire over absolutely nothing because he can't bear for his name to even be associated with bad news in the press, regardless.

its hard being the world's dumbest man

Someone as easily manipulated as Trump is just snack food for the CIA and the IC in general. They make their living at that stuff.

watching Fox flail due to the O'Reilly scandal is just extra chocolate puddin'.

gross that so many women had to experience that shit before anybody took notice.

Bill O'Reilly's falafel lawsuit was filed more than a dozen years ago. You'd think it might have been a clue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JtBk0umKo&feature

fucking dickhead gets booed and then makes threats lol

sorry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JtBk0umKo&feature=

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JtBk0umKo&feature=

loool fuck me

the boo'ing wasn't as bad as it should have been. quickly drowned out by trained seal clapping.

Trump blaming Obama for today's gas attack in the Oval Office.

― The Godzilla/Globetrotters Adventure Hour (Old Lunch), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:16 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I definitely misread this

― Evan, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 7:39 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wish both Evan and I misread it. Too soon for jokes bruv.

the fact that he still brings up the whole "nobody thought I would get 270" thing at every single speech is so fucking pathetic

he's including himself. one of the days his face will change and he will whisper meekly "help me!"

is he still seeing his insane quack doctor or is he now required to see WH-approved physicians? just imagining him asking his doctors about their voting record

thought I would get 270" thing at every single speech is so fucking pathetic

― frogbs, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 8:33 PM (thirty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hear you, and this is def not against you because you rock, but the fact that the whole world, from politics to loltwitter etc can't get past saying how pathetic he is is really getting me down lately. There is no weapon that won't bounce off his great Moron Shield. He still seems untouchable in his idiocy and it's driving me insane.

(Autocorrect messed up quoting you, sorry Frogbs)

trump also uses the election to discredit the media. 'they didnt predict I would win therefore they are wrong about everything'

xpost i am with you on that. this is as good an argument for fatalism as any. God just wanted this dude to be President for some reason.

if trump's presidency isn't proof of the non-existence of god then i dunno what is

god has a plan!

it's was god's will

if trump's presidency isn't proof of the non-existence of god then i dunno what is

― stanley weebeard (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 4:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

despite what I just said, this is otm

and its also used to discredit his approval polls..."oh you mean the same polls that said Hillary was DEFINITELY gonna be president? those polls?"

xps All presidents appear somewhat untouchable to those who violently disagree with them. First, you can't win the office without broad public support. Next, your party rallies behind you because you are its head and you occupy an office of vast power. Last, there is a tradition of deference to the presidency that is hard to penetrate (although it is currently weaker than it has ever been in my lifetime).

Man, it'd be awesome if the near future of the federal government was just a locked groove of Turnip swatting away Russia allegations and Congress putting forth increasingly-unpopular iterations of health bills that never pass.

― The Godzilla/Globetrotters Adventure Hour (Old Lunch), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:41 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it really does feel it's going to be this for a while, at least until some kind of crisis or catastrophe happens. i'm certainly freaked about that and how badly trump will fuck it up

North Korea?

ha I was thinking about that last night and wondering if Trump would attempt his own "Nixon goes to China" moment by buddying up to Kim Jong Un. "Hey he's not such a bad guy! We have a lot in common, and he's really just a fabulous person!"

I can see it happening. Maybe.

They could tour abandoned factories together, and then blow up some of their favorite political opponents with missile launchers.

There is a god, but He's a complete asshole.

Trump and Kim Jong Un have pretty much the same core values so I can see them getting along pretty well

There is a god, but He's a complete asshole.

― been there, not done that (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 4:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reminds me of a certain Christopher Durang piece

the right would not have allowed Nixon-going-to-China in 2017

House Freedom Caucus would have submitted articles of impeachment

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CW2Q_33VAAAk3tK.jpg

Trump and Kim Jong Un have pretty much the same core values

They both inherited successful family businesses.

xpost http://www.universityprimetime.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/crying.gif

xps All presidents appear somewhat untouchable to those who violently disagree with them. First, you can't win the office without broad public support. Next, your party rallies behind you because you are its head and you occupy an office of vast power. Last, there is a tradition of deference to the presidency that is hard to penetrate (although it is currently weaker than it has ever been in my lifetime).

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 8:43 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yeah, but this isn't about 'agreeing' or not 'agreeing' with him. It's about the obvious fact that America has a, quite frankly, incompetent idiot for president. From this side of the ocean it's all moans and groans about Trump, and complete befuddlement. The ascii shrug emoji finally met his maker. The sad fact is, as you say in some way, he had a huge (YUGE!) backing. Which says a lot about the America we are trying to understand, didnt know this is America in 2017. But I'll leave you Yankees be cause I know it's first and foremost hard on you guys.

/Trump and Kim Jong Un have pretty much the same core values/

They both inherited successful family businesses.

they're both fat cunts with terrible hair

the NK "pleasure squad" thing is like a Trump fever dream

Whomp whomp

https://www.axios.com/trumpcare-revival-talks-falling-apart-ahead-of-pence-meeting-2344729578.html

Attempts to reach a deal this week on health care are unraveling fast, with conservatives already blaming House Speaker Paul Ryan for blocking the White House bill, and leadership sources saying that's nonsense and that the Freedom Caucus is making unreasonable demands that are losing net votes.

The Freedom Caucus and conservative group perspective: The bill's text is changing for the worse, and it no longer looks like some of the Obamacare regulations will be waived. Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare's ban on charging sick people higher premiums. Conservatives also want to know what leadership has to say about the "medical loss ratio," or the Obamacare regulation limiting how much of insurers' revenue can be profit.

They're also not happy about the accusation that getting rid of the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums would nullify its protections for pre-existing conditions.

A Freedom Caucus source: "We've never ever wanted to go after pre-existing conditions. That's spin (well a lie) meant to undermine us. Pence said he supports our plan of reforming, and funding changes to high risk pools, specifically to deal with pre-existing conditions."

Etc. etc. etc.

moarpopcorn.gif

Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare's ban on charging sick people higher premiums.

oh noes, poor conservatives

Being a pathological crackpot and loon is a pre-existing condition.

Well yeah, but this isn't about 'agreeing' or not 'agreeing' with him. It's about the obvious fact that America has a, quite frankly, incompetent idiot for president. From this side of the ocean it's all moans and groans about Trump, and complete befuddlement. The ascii shrug emoji finally met his maker. The sad fact is, as you say in some way, he had a huge (YUGE!) backing. Which says a lot about the America we are trying to understand, didnt know this is America in 2017. But I'll leave you Yankees be cause I know it's first and foremost hard on you guys.

― On Some Faraday Beach (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 8:56 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unfortunately theres no surprise that an empathy free loudmouth idiot is in charge of this country. we get the leaders we deserve, etc.

Well yeah. The dark never came to a more bright light.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/politics/donald-trump-border-wall-construction-companies/index.html

Then again there's all this

http://fusion.net/right-wing-billionaires-are-buying-themselves-a-new-con-1793960357

I've been amused at how Tillerson has been prodded into saying things today re Syria.

i'd be all for a new constitution if it made a permanent top income tax of 75%, taxed capital gains as regular income, stripped corporations of personhood, and guaranteed social security and medicare for all, birth to grave. i don't think the mercers / kochs want that though

he's probably like 'fuck it ask jared I'm barely even the secretary of state over here'

Too soon for jokes bruv.

― On Some Faraday Beach (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:30 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The half of me that disagrees with you is using every japery in the book to distract the other half from throwing himself under a train. I laugh to keep from imploding.

w/r/t Trump & Kim Jong Un:

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/02/Trump_and_Rodman_2009-CC-640x480.png

Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that he wouldn't be surprised if the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election led to multiple associates of President Donald Trump getting put behind bars.

Castro made the stunning comment after Blitzer asked him whether he has seen any "hard evidence" that Trump associates had worked to collude with Russian government officials in any way.

Castro did not directly answer that question but offered his "impression."

"I guess I would say this — that my impression is ... I wouldn't be surprised after all of this is said and done that some people end up in jail," Castro said.

A somewhat surprised Blitzer asked, "Really?" He subsequently asked Castro how high his "suspicion" went.

"That is yet to be determined," Castro responded, adding he could not divulge any additional information at the time.

"If I was betting, I would say yes," he continued. "My impression is that people will probably be charged, and I think people will probably go to jail."

Put Tillerson back on the plane, I guess:

https://twitter.com/AP/status/849396125253734400

BREAKING: South Korea says North Korea has fired a missile into the waters off its east coast.

don't they do that all the time

Pretty sure, yeah. But if you wanted to do even more of that, now seems like a great time.

NBC's Lester Holt was drooling 20 minutes ago.

Thank you for that image, no really.

NP Old Lunch, I hear you. Stay strong <3

You know it has to be tempting for Putin to just go ahead and take the rest of Ukraine. It is not a member of NATO, they are already under sanctions, makes the US look weaker and Germany/France and others will most likely spin their tops and do nada.

I am sure Putin has calculated the potential costs and benefits of further territorial expansion in Ukraine and elsewhere and he will recalculate them periodically, according to how the international winds are blowing. The present weakness of the Trump administration could be seen as an opening for him, but given the repeated and vocal encouragement Trump has offered Putin, he might prefer a strong Trump to a weak one.

Meanwhile:

https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/849379600614514688

White House just told activists to expect new text of health care law at an 8:30 meeting tonight, per source familiar. Offered compromises.

Per an Axios guy:

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/849400196937256960

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/849400302331719681

So... this looks like a train wreck. Per an influential conservative: "Not a compromise. A full retreat and surrender."....Source continues: "If the text is what I have heard it than it is a total surrender to moderates who don't want to repeal Obamacare."

They made their Procrustean bed and now must lie in it. As I recall, if your feet hung over the bottom of the bed, Procrustus removed them to make you fit. If your head hung over the top, same deal.

And if you were too short, you were stretched to fit.

it's almost like the GOP sat up in a hospital bed, fresh after a severe heart attack, and then said "y'know that was fun, can we do that again?"

"I am confident that we need to look at the text to make sure that this works," said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows.

sentences that end much differently than they began etc etc

Tillerson's statement on North Korea is...something:

"North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment."

wow Trump's even rationing the statements about foreign countries now

Kristen Gillibrand says "fuck" in an interview and hints that she's running for president: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/kirsten-gillibrand-progressive-champion-2020-run.html?mid=nymag_press

xpost "you can make two more statements about Syria, one about Iraq, NK has to wait until next week sorry them's the rules"

Chomsky talked to Amy Goodman this morning on Democracy Now. On the Russia thing:

So why are the Democrats focusing on this? In fact, why are they focusing so much attention on the one element of Trump’s programs which is fairly reasonable, the one ray of light in this gloom: trying to reduce tensions with Russia? That’s—the tensions on the Russian border are extremely serious. They could escalate to a major terminal war. Efforts to try to reduce them should be welcomed. Just a couple of days ago, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, came out and said he just can’t believe that so much attention is being paid to apparent efforts by the incoming administration to establish connections with Russia. He said, "Sure, that’s just what they ought to be doing."

So, meanwhile, this one topic is the primary locus of concern and critique, while, meanwhile, the policies are proceeding step by step, which are extremely destructive and harmful. So, you know, yeah, maybe the Russians tried to interfere in the election. That’s not a major issue. Maybe the people in the Trump campaign were talking to the Russians. Well, OK, not a major point, certainly less than is being done constantly. And it is a kind of a paradox, I think, that the one issue that seems to inflame the Democratic opposition is the one thing that has some justification and reasonable aspects to it.

unfortunately its also one of the few issues that this slippery fuck is being called to account for..

also Gilibrand said fuck a couple times in that interview

"When I first meet Gillibrand, it’s two and a half weeks after the inauguration, and she is rattled. “I have had so many anxiety dreams,” she says. “Constant anxiety dreams.” She describes waking in the middle of the night, fretting over a friend’s daughter who’d tried to sell her Girl Scout cookies: “Oh my God, I’ve got to fucking order those cookies. I’m terrible! I didn’t respond properly! So at three in the morning I’m typing out this email,” pretending to have a Girl Scout cookie emergency."

maybe trump was criminally pally with russian mob money launderers, noam

who is Chomsky?

is Chomsky taking the piss

is this maybe Kyle Chomsky or maybe Artemis Chomsky

xxpost to self (Life is much easier when you ignore whatever Chomsky says about politics)

Meanwhile:

"People of Earth..."

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/GTY-melania-white-house-portrait1-ml-170403_v4x3_31x13_1600.jpg

"improving relations with Russia vs being accused of colluding with Russia and in return removing sanctions levied against them. Nope, don't see a difference" - Norm Chompsky

Chomsky defends Trump, I think we've seen everything now

it's not that surprising. he doesn't care about the integrity of our electoral process, which he doesn't think has any integrity to begin with. also he thinks US interventionism is the chief global problem, which means trump's isolationist tendencies -- sporadic as they might seem -- would appeal to him

"us Democrats really need to back off the Russia shit" is the latest bit of liberal concern trolling, kind of glad for once the Dem Congress isn't listening to it

(ok he's not a 'crat but w/e)

xxpost However, his reasons for preferring isolationism vs Trump's are very, very different. the latter is all about cynical, selfish self-preservation.

yeah of course

but like, chomsky believes previous admins' global involvements were equally cynical and selfish

he's chomsky

I'm also kind of really getting over this whole "omg we're becoming as bad as the GOP w/ this Russia shit" narrative that is emerging, as if the liberal views on Russia are some homogeneous bullet points and don't have a wide range of variance. Yeah, we have the Maxine Waters's of the world flapping about "impeachment" every five minutes which doesn't help, or a flurry of dumb Rick Wilson tweetstorms, but as far as our actual Congress goes, few of them have advocated for anything beyond just an impartial investigation without Nunes-ian theatrics. I'd say the most pot stirring might have been Schiff's statement that he has seen more than "circumstantial evidence" regarding collusion, which to be fair, he's seen more intelligence reports than the rest of his non-Intel committee peers have at this point.

Obsessing about Russia doesn't make us like the GOP. What would make Democrats like the GOP is having multiple, bipartisan investigations run on Russia, being told "there's nothing here", and continuing to demand more investigations.

xpost Can't believe I never knew Morbs's last name before.

Anyone who truly believes Trump is an "isolationist" as opposed to a nativist needs a slap across the back of the head.

ok

The man saber-rattles nearly constantly and has relaxed the rules of engagement to allow for increased civilian casualties in theater. Which is those policies is "isolationist?"

i was just saying that his claims to want to withdraw from the world wouldn't freak out someone like chomsky as much as a mainstream person. he doesn't think the practical consequences of that would necessarily be worse than our previous paradigm. there is no ideological affinity between trump and chomsky duh

but there is a sexual affinity

CNN's word of the day--think the panel on there has said it 30 times the past 10 minutes.

https://img.discogs.com/WJAag-g2hrQoUgsGKjJpQiOgOAQ=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-702522-1404414168-2731.jpeg.jpg

https://vimeo.com/208473044

it's not that surprising. he doesn't care about the integrity of our electoral process, which he doesn't think has any integrity to begin with

For fuck's sake, he told everyone it was a moral duty to vote for Hillary.

yeah to stave off global warming

like, he is not pro trump.

but he is not especially disturbed about russian propaganda influencing an election that he already sees as a kind of weird sideshow masking the machinations of the real power brokers

the grounds on which he argued people should vote hillary were purely pragmatic

and erotic

and in return removing sanctions levied against them

yeah i bleeve this is called 'horse trading' in realpolitik

if the return for removing sanctions is something deemed in the national interest, then ok, I got no problem there. if the horse trade is for something in trump's interest or those in his administration, against the national interest, then fuck that noise. that isn't realpolitik. that's just collusion with a foreign power against the national interest.

When I saw that weird shot of the First Lady, this came to mind.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e3/51/02/e35102e7005e5a2ee0b762acd3461582.jpg

if the thing he traded for was a coordinated propaganda campaign carried out by Russia that was designed to undermine his political opponent and help him win the election, and the basis of that propaganda was illegally hacked material, where would that fall on your scale?

xp

why is there a spiderweb behind Melania?

picture was taken in front of muppet babies window

nepotism is kind of a factor of life?

Sanctions are almost always bullshit; they usually just kill children. The last time I can recall them doing demonstrable good was against South Africa in the '80s.

What kind response should the US make to Russia taking military action against Ukraine?

What are approprate promises for a political candidate to make to a foreign power in exchange for that country intervening in the election?

As for health care, from that Axios guy again:

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/849480391316692992

What I'm hearing from all sides: the meeting went terribly. Lots of talk. Nothing resolved. No clear path to passing this.

"us Democrats really need to back off the Russia shit" is the latest bit of liberal concern trolling, kind of glad for once the Dem Congress isn't listening to it

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, April 4, 2017 9:12 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because if congressional dems are known for one thing, it's being held hostage by the left wing of its party?

Sanctions are almost always bullshit; they usually just kill children. The last time I can recall them doing demonstrable good was against South Africa in the '80s.

This isn't really the case with the Russia ones as they mostly just cut certain Russian companies off from borrowing internationally and prevent a handful of individuals from doing business with the US and EU. The only real shortages (like the alarming lack of Parmesan in Moscow) are due to a tit for tat import ban. They arent really doing much to affect the Russian economy as the companies affected can borrow freely from domestic banks with excess liquidity. They are symbolic but not very effective. The Trump camp has also said they are staying in place until Crimea is returned to Ukraine.

To clarify that slightly, the theory behind them is probably more that they would be effective in targeting specific people (like Arkady Rotenberg) who are thought to be close to Putin and who would, in turn, put more pressure on the levers of power, than in significantly impairing the economy as a whole. Again, this doesn't appear to be working though.

The idea of Erik Prince trying to use sanctions as a bargaining chip to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran makes a certain amount of political sense in the abstract, and might even be true, but it's not that much of a chip. It wouldn't be a surprise, if that was the play, for Russia to opt for a relationship with a politically stable, reliable partner over a volatile one led by an unpredictable lunatic.

who is Chomsky?

I believe this is a misprint; the comments were actually from former tween star Anna Chlumsky:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/12/14/article-0-0063CB0400000258-11_306x423.jpg

https://twitter.com/RudawEnglish/status/849290117869174784

^ Jared Kushner and Trump's former bodyguard / head of WH security, Keith Schiller, meeting with the President of Iraqi Kurdistan. Schiller appears to be wearing an Adidas tracksuit.

even Nivea is getting on the alt-right bandwagon!

https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/pri_35387062.jpg

scott seward, that's nothing compared to Ivory (ahem) calling itself 99 44/100ths pure.

Racist soap, what is the world coming to

lol

xpost

Anna Chlumsky is core character in one of the best TV shows on television for the past 5 years I'd say she's not just a former tween star

sure, but why does she love Russia so much?

Our president:

On the eve of the scheduled vote on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, an American economist, Eswar Prasad, said he dropped in on Chinese colleagues who were gaming out Mr. Xi’s economic proposals for Florida.

Mr. Prasad said he was surprised to find that the Chinese economists were obsessed with tracking Mr. Trump’s fortunes in the congressional vote. For example, they knew exactly how many votes the Freedom Caucus had mustered, he said.

“They were saying they wanted the vote to go Trump’s way because then Trump would be less tempted to take it out on China,” said Mr. Prasad, an economist at Cornell. Mr. Trump suffered a big legislative defeat, the opposite of what they hoped for.

http://www.booooooom.com/2017/04/04/someone-is-photoshoppping-images-of-donald-trump-wearing-really-long-ties/

lol they're treating him like a literal 5-year old

i meant to say it before but good thread title, silby. the "okay?" is the best part of the quote

Completely 100% unprompted side thought here but I've been getting really annoyed lately when I see people on the web projecting their clickbait-headline-simplistic fantasies onto pictures of politicians they hate. I fantasize about Trump's demise every single day but when I see people comment on a picture of one of these villains scowling or looking vacant about how "defeated" they look or how "you can see they know they're fucked and everything they believe in is crumbling"... You could take a still of a video of somebody ordering ice cream and find a moment where their face is transitioning during a covert fart and do that. Trump has a dumb face and terrible posture whether or not he's angry that things aren't going his way. Stupid sensationalized clickbait headlines (with photos) and the pacing/editing of reality show narratives are making people think that real people actually pantomime overt emotions based on the success or failure of things they're associated with.

Noooo, that's the best! And the very best was that video that put the music from Veep underneath it. Really made them seem miserable.

If people want to project, it's much better to project about feelings than facts, imo.

We all want these idiots to fail but to keep pretending they're having these devastating epiphanies based on photos of them looking bored or gassy is just kind of pathetic to me.

this ain't exactly unique to the Trump admin. how many times was that Obama frowny face photo re-appropriated?

I actually saw a thread where someone posted a pic of Obama with grumpface, someone (incorrectly) noted that Obama's lips were purple in the pic, a third person (correctly) ascertained that purple lips can be due to cyanosis, and then a fourth person said "omg could that be caused by opiate usage"?

i heard propecia abuse turns the skin orange

Right! I'm not saying it's unique to "our side" at all but I do want "us" to be better than that.

xxp

Being pathetic is not that bad! There are much worse things to be.

Anna Chlumsky is core character in one of the best TV shows on television for the past 5 years I'd say she's not just a former tween star

This role also makes her far more qualified for political office than Trump.

https://behappy.me/being-pathetic-is-not-that-bad-there-are-much-worse-things-to-be--frederik-b-lamp-1286373

a+

brb, buying 100 tote bags

I want our side to be worse than theirs, more dishonest, more ruthless

I'm not saying it's unique to "our side" at all but I do want "us" to be better than that.

Well, we're not, so dry your eyes and get the fuck over it.

it's much better to project about feelings than facts, imo

Fred are you actually Donald Trump?

Charles Pierce:

Precisely what "tactical advantage" worthy of the name are the Democrats giving up here? If they strike the deal that Fred's people want them to strike, retaining this vague "tactical advantage," they will get in return two things: 1) a completely worthless promise from Mitch McConnell whom, in this context, they should not trust as far as they can throw the Capitol dome, and 2) the "retention" of their right to filibuster the next genius produced by Heritage and The Federalist Society as long as they pinky-swear not to exercise that right. This is the kind of thinking that makes me wonder if the WaPo editorial board has been drunk or asleep since the election of Bill Clinton.

I'm not saying it's unique to "our side" at all but I do want "us" to be better than that.

Well, we're not, so dry your eyes and get the fuck over it.

― Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Violent J (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, April 5, 2017 11:15 AM (two minutes ago)

insert photo of me looking completely defeated

"I'm not saying it's unique to "our side" at all but I do want "us" to be better than that."

Yeah, sure, but...no. Harrass and insult and mock them forever 24/7. Be a better person to, like, puppies and babies.

Exactly. Being polite and playing by the rules will ensure we continue to lose.

Eh, that wasn't my point sorry.

Mock them all you want, but don't pretend to yourself that every single image of a republican frowning is them "realizing they're a TOTAL failure"

Love that pic with the Pierce piece Alfred linked to.

http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/17/14/980x490/landscape-1491401069-ap-17095482071357mod.jpg

I hope next Merkley grabs a guitar and sings Elvis Costello's "No Action."

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-05/bannon-removed-from-national-security-council-role-in-shakeup

President Donald Trump reorganized his National Security Council on Wednesday, removing his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, and downgrading the role of his Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, according to a person familiar with the decision and a regulatory filing.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was given responsibility for setting the agenda for meetings of the NSC or the Homeland Security Council, and was authorized to delegate that authority to Bossert, at his discretion, according to the filing.

Under the move, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, are again "regular attendees" of the NSC’s principals committee.

Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, was elevated to the National Security Council’s principals committee at the beginning of Trump’s presidency. The move drew criticism from some members of Congress and Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

well thank God Bannon's gone from it at least

Gotta sting a little

Further fun:

https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/849647733556346880

NEW: Bannon's role on NSC was to look over Gen. Flynn's shoulder, a White House official said.

He never went to meeting.

Roger Stone vs. Jared Kushner

There are at least a few plausible explanations for Roger Stone’s latest odd move. One is that Donald Trump has cut off Stone, leaving him to fend for himself in the Russia scandal, and that Stone believes Kushner is the one who convinced Trump to hang him out to dry – so he wants revenge on Kushner. Another is that Stone simply believes Trump is giving too much power to Kushner in general, and is trying to manipulate his old friend Trump into reining Kushner in. Perhaps Bannon even pushed Stone into making the accusation, because Bannon wants to shift the power back from Kushner to himself. It’s also possible Stone has merely snapped under the pressure of FBI investigation.

Meanwhile, the Trump trollbot army of Utah! Or in Utah or something.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/from-utah-with-love

And some interesting fun here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/the-battle-for-breitbart-after-bannon

And less than 100 days into Trump’s administration, a few competing visions are already manifesting themselves. Several people working in conservative journalism, and who are familiar with the inner workings of Breitbart, told me that a fissure is opening between two high-ranking editors. Marlow, the level-headed protégé of the late Andrew Breitbart, and the site’s editor-in-chief, is largely seen as trying to professionalize the organization. Boyle, the site’s pugnacious, cannonball-like political editor, who has called explicitly for a war against Trump’s enemies in the White House, is less concerned with cooling the rhetoric. “I think that Alex Marlow saw Breitbart as more of a tabloid for working people across the country, like the national New York Post,” said Scarry. “Boyle, probably just by the nature of his job, was really more focused on disrupting Washington and effecting policy changes on the Hill. Bannon had this 30,000-foot view and wanted Breitbart to have some say in the shifting culture in America.”

Without Bannon to serve as a moderating influence between Boyle and Marlow specifically, or, to be more accurate, an overpowering influence, the site has already begun to change. “Bannon used to let me write whatever I wanted, but it’s much more controlled now,” right-wing agitator Patrick Howley said to Buzzfeed when he left, adding afterward that Bannon was a “classy barbarian.” Lee Stranahan, an on-again, off-again reporter for the site, recently quit over what he saw as “micromanaging.” “Bannon was smart and had done stuff,” he told The Daily Caller, saying he “was happy to work for him.” The new leadership, on the other hand, was going to involve “a degree of micromanagement I was not comfortable with.”

xxpost One of the only upsides of having a pack of mad dogs running the country (and hovering on the periphery) is that a mad dog will bite anything. There isn't ultimately any loyalty among any of these fuckers.

Hell, not even an xxpost, it turns out. It kind of applies to most stories about right wingers.

FWIW, Rick Wilson had been muttering for the past couple of days something was going to go down, is saying it's the Bannon/NSC news, and linked back to a piece of his last week on Nunes and his sources, specifically this section:

But Cohen-Watnick has powerful friends in the White House. Both Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner weighed in to save Cohen-Watnick’s job. There’s a twist to this story that is unnoticed so far. They obviously went to McMaster first. Reporting indicates they then took their appeal to the president himself, who intervened personally on behalf of a relatively unknown 30-year-old aide who was only in the White House because of a man Trump was forced to fire.

What justified this level of protection and intervention? The pieces seem to click together easily. Bannon needed Cohen-Watnick to stay in place in the National Security Council, with the concomitant level of access to intelligence, in order to support the political pushback on the growing Russia story. The coverup and political pushback Bannon has personally led is fraught with danger, with obstruction of justice on the low end of the risk scale. That Bannon, Cohen-Watnick, and Ellis apparently worked together to loop the hapless Nunes into Bannon’s scheme was too dumb by a mile.

We'll see, I guess.

Completely 100% unprompted side thought here but I've been getting really annoyed lately when I see people on the web projecting their clickbait-headline-simplistic fantasies onto pictures of politicians they hate. I fantasize about Trump's demise every single day but when I see people comment on a picture of one of these villains scowling or looking vacant about how "defeated" they look or how "you can see they know they're fucked and everything they believe in is crumbling"... You could take a still of a video of somebody ordering ice cream and find a moment where their face is transitioning during a covert fart and do that. Trump has a dumb face and terrible posture whether or not he's angry that things aren't going his way. Stupid sensationalized clickbait headlines (with photos) and the pacing/editing of reality show narratives are making people think that real people actually pantomime overt emotions based on the success or failure of things they're associated with.

― Evan, Wednesday, April 5, 2017 3:15 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this type of thing is more annoying imo, it's like a venn diagram of things i won't click on:

Fight Trump
12 hrs ·
LOL! Louis C.K. delivers Trump the worst blow ever..

EPIC! Louis C.K. Just Gave Trump A BRUTAL Label And Colbert’s Crowd Lost It
The famous comedian hit the nail squarely on the head.
OCCUPYDEMOCRATS.COM

otm, I hate all clickbait articles that have headlines like "This snarky comment totally ends the GOP as we know it!!!!"

Bannon's stock dropping legitimately good news to me

Marlow, the level-headed protégé of the late Andrew Breitbart, and the site’s editor-in-chief, is largely seen as trying to professionalize the organization.

My wife went to posh elite LA high school Harvard Westlake with this butthole. Another So. Cal arch conservative like Miller. shrug.

xp silby otm, good news

Good piece by PAreene: http://fusion.net/the-long-lucrative-right-wing-grift-is-blowing-up-in-t-1793944216

Lots of understandable random Twitter speculation on a variety of fronts happening among journalists and NeverTrump conservatives re Bannon. The couple of things that catch my eye from the outside are speculation that any Bannon-encouraged pro-Assad/pro-Russian signs in Trump foreign policy as such are now 'inoperable,' as they say, plus more along the lines of the whole Cohen-Watnick shenanigans already noted. Again, who knows.

I'm not saying it's unique to "our side" at all but I do want "us" to be better than that.

Well, we're not, so dry your eyes and get the fuck over it.

― Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Violent J (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, April 5, 2017 11:15 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's essentially political lolcats

maybe the real story about trump-russia is trumps unflinching loyalty to a unorganized conspiracy theory believing fucking moron like Flynn where all these countermeasures had to be allegedly put in place to babysit his stupid ass. the president is surrounded by yes men and fools.

Glenn Thrush just now:

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/849660157042851841

Exclusive interview with @realDonaldTrump by @maggieNYT and me in the Oval -- news was made. More to come soon...

Sure loves to talk to that 'failing' NYT crew a lot.

news was made, the president shit in his hand and flung it at us

re the Merkley photo: is that the first time George Shiras has come up in any form since the 19th century?

I believe he once appeared in a taco in Las Cruces.

Uh...nice try, guy:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8qbOpEXoAAZbyv.jpg

news was made, the president shit in his hand and flung it at us

pretty much:

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he thought that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who were mentioned on intercepted communications and that other Obama administration officials may also have been involved.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in the Oval Office, declining repeated requests for evidence for his allegations or the names of other Obama administration officials. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

He declined to say if he had personally reviewed new intelligence to bolster his claim but pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”

When asked if Ms. Rice, who has denied leaking the names of Trump associates under surveillance by United States intelligence agencies, had committed a crime, the president said, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”

Ms. Rice has denied any impropriety. In an interview on Tuesday with MSNBC, she said: “The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false.”

Mr. Trump criticized media outlets, including The New York Times, for failing to adequately cover the Rice controversy — while singling out Fox News and the host Bill O’Reilly for praise, despite reports this week that the veteran conservative commentator settled five lawsuits filed by women claiming sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior. The president then went on to defend Mr. O’Reilly, who has hosted him frequently over the years.

“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” said Mr. Trump, who during the interview was surrounded at his desk by a half-dozen of his highest-ranking aides, including the economic adviser Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, along with Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled,” said Mr. Trump. “Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

I think the stuff about O'Reilly is more notable. (And obvious.)

witness the power of this fully de-operational national security council

nice to have a black woman to blame all of the GOPs problems on again. we ride!

“Do I think? Yes, I think.”

YOU LIE

Also, I love the 'surrounded at his desk' detail. They were probably all going "Oh god, what will he say."

xp to ned: yeah, he's setting himself up for a fall when hard evidence or trial comes through for o'reilly but when has that ever stopped him

i cannot wait for this dude to go full late period howard hughes after his administration ends

"biggest biggest biggest biggest biggest...."

xpost Don't need those last four words there, I think.

“Do I think? Yes, I think.”

I would say there's the May thread title, but I know he'll say something even stupider before then.

I guess I'd personally prefer that he waits until after he's ejected from office before moving into his 'collecting jars of his own feces' phase.

pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”

This 'pledge' against the future means nothing to him but a way of getting something he wanted at the moment he made it: to stop them asking more questions along this line. I'm sure it worked, too.

Quite a shift from wiretapping.

that Pareene piece from above is very good, thanks for sharing

don't like this. when these assholes make a concerted effort to go after someone like Rice with outrageous charges I think it does change the narrative for a lot of the country. Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush are not helping with headlines like "Trump Says Susan Rice May Have Committed a Crime"

kinda thinking this is the last Trump is gonna mention about wiretapping, he almost certainly ordered everyone close to him to find some story that remotely, somehow supports his theory (even if it's something mundane and completely legal) so he can whine about it endlessly and talk about how he was "vindicated", that once again Trump was right and the fake news was wrong, blah blah blah blah *shoots self in head*

xpost It does, but it also reminds me of his threats to sue accusers -- and the NYT, FWIW -- back in October. That fizzled to nothing for any number of reasons. Question here is, if Rice basically says 'prove it' and says she'll go to court, what then?

FEEL THE GREATNESS:

International travel to the US dropped 6.5 per cent in the eight days following the president’s proposed travel ban on January 27 when compared to the same period in 2016, according to travel data company ForwardKeys. Online searches for flights to America also dropped by 17 per cent the same week, said flight app Hopper. And the president of Dubai-based airline Emirates, Sir Tim Clark, confirmed in March that the travel ban, which sought to stop nationals from seven mainly Muslim countries from travelling to the US, immediately triggered a drop in bookings from Dubai by over a third.

All this has resulted in an estimated loss of $185 million in business travel bookings from January 28 to February 4, as calculated by the Global Business Travel Association. The drop-off in tourism is predicted to result in 4.3 million fewer visitors this year, which adds up to a staggering loss of $7.4 billion in revenue for the US.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/trump-slump-travel-ban-muslims-us-tourism-holidays-foreign-visitors-a7666461.html

from Pareene piece, for fanboys like Shakey:

“I supported single payer since before you were born,” says Nancy Pelosi, who has the legislative and leadership record of someone who may support single payer but clearly doesn’t actually expect it to happen in our lifetimes.

keep tiltin at those windmills

Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush are not helping with headlines like "Trump Says Susan Rice May Have Committed a Crime"

― Dan S, Wednesday, April 5, 2017 12:00 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes. There may be an implied 'can you even believe this fucking guy?' but leaving it implicit essentially closes the case for far too many people. I guess I'm saying that the media pretty much has to hand-hold people at this point.

Once again Dr. Bore-bius does a close reading and picks out the REAL enemy, Democrats.

xpost
that NYT headline is just wrong, and dangerous. it's also too reminiscent of some of their ridiculous headlines during the campaign which validated his lies

this type of thing is more annoying imo, it's like a venn diagram of things i won't click on:

Fight Trump
12 hrs ·
LOL! Louis C.K. delivers Trump the worst blow ever..
EPIC! Louis C.K. Just Gave Trump A BRUTAL Label And Colbert’s Crowd Lost It
The famous comedian hit the nail squarely on the head.
OCCUPYDEMOCRATS.COM

― nomar, Wednesday, April 5, 2017 12:19 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed nomar but it's disappointing when people talk/think that way without having an incentive to get clicks out of it

Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush are not helping with headlines like "Trump Says Susan Rice May Have Committed a Crime"

THIS RAISES QUESTIONS

I see they've now amended it, to "Trump Suggests Rice Committed Crime, Citing No Evidence"

how stupid are these reporters not to know the distinction? or is it an editorial decision

excellent question

both sides do it, do u see

Flynn's kid is sad:

https://twitter.com/mflynnJR/status/849660748204654592

Fact 1: Flynn/Bannon most loyal to DJT (both out at NSC)

Fact 2: McMaster wont say "Radical Islam"

Is WH serious abt defeating our enemy?

we need a literary theorist to dig down deep and give us a semantic study of the GOPs fascination with the use of magic words. who will volunteer?

there've already been a lot of majors shitting on the Rice story, such as New Yorker, New Republic, Don Lemon.

The conservative papers (Breitbart, Federalist, NRO, Mediaite, PJ Media, Faux) are the only ones I see really see running with it. and that's kind of how it was when he made the first wiretap tweet, although some of the orgs like Fox were a bit more reticent on that one.

I don't see this gaining traction beyond the margins. The best thing Rice could do is just say "sure, subpoena me, I'll show up" and let them fall on their faces. This is not a thing Trump actually wants to come to actual greater scrutiny, although he *is* an idiot so....

Trump apparently now saying all sorts of belligerent things about Syria and Assad at a presser.

xpost I mean generally speaking, when you have to try three different attempts to get your initial story to stick, and the third go-round involves entirely different details than your initial claims, you're generally flailing

Thus:

https://twitter.com/KatiePavlich/status/849674038750392321

"I now have responsibility and will carry it proudly." -POTUS on response to Syria/chemical attack

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/849674144119738368

POTUS on Syria CW attack: “It crossed a lot of lines for me”

(That apparently in response to:)

https://twitter.com/DavidRutz/status/849674594428608513

reporter asked Trump if it crossed a "red line" with him

"I do not like the gas attack
I wouldn't like it in Iraq
I wouldn't like it on a plane
I wouldn't like it in a lane"

all kinds of fucked up that the civilians of Syria have to rely on this shitbird to protect them. already seen Trump doesn't give a shit about civilian body counts.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/207794/six-partisan-bias-news-media.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles

shit like this, man.

Trump already showing cracks in his isolationism over this Syria thing, huh

thread title making me sing phil collins in my head, is there no end to the horrors this administration can inflict

^^^hate this thread title so much

http://wlrn.org/post/florida-sheriffs-challenge-department-homeland-security

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/04/04/every-story-i-have-read-about-trump-supporters-in-the-past-week/

Alexandra Petri wrote a fun thing

Each morning he arrives at the Blue Plate Diner and tries to make sense of it all. The regulars are already there. Lydia Borkle lives in an old shoe in the tiny town of Tempe Work Only, Ariz., where the factory has just rusted away into a pile of gears and dust. The jobs were replaced by robots, not shipped overseas, but try telling Lydia that. (I did, very slowly and patiently, I thought, but she still became quite brusque.) Her one lifeline was an Obama-era jobs training program, but she says that she does not regret her vote for Trump and likes what he says about business. She makes a point of telling me that she is not racist, but I think she probably is, a little...

I...wouldn't call that fun.

@adamjohnsonNYC
liberals: Trump is a uniquely dangerous, unhinged mad man
also liberals: Why is Trump not pushing harder to start war a w Syria & NorthKorea

Game recognize game?

Strawmanism recognize strawmanism.

I can never figure out if these guys don't know there's already been a war going on in Syria for quite some time, or if they just don't care about people dying unless they're American...

Or that we may in some cases have treaty obligations that apply.

Minor details!

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/17-tweets-expose-donald-trump-hypocrisy-blaming-obama-syria-gas-attack-idlib-1084542694

The US is not at war with the Syrian government. Whether there is a case for starting one is up for debate.

Perceptive as always.

Trumps about to find out what backing down over 'red lines' is all about. You want to be the guy to help start WW3?

However I am worried hes going to blow some shit up just to prove his dick is bigger than Obamas

That Petri thing is fantastic. They should fire Fred Hiatt and make her the editorial page editor.

Fun fun:

https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/849694590680653826

Fox News chief WH correspondent @johnrobertsFox on Bannon’s removal from National Security Council

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8q4baYUIAApZv_.jpg

Trump as Mama Rose in Gypsy!

Some general 'hms' in this story on Bannon/NSC:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/bannon-ousted-from-national-security-council-236908

In recent weeks, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has asked searching questions – sometimes for hours – of inside and outside advisers about the White House's performance and complained about Bannon in particular, according to people who have spoken with Kushner. Kushner, a onetime New York Democrat, and Bannon, a hard-right nationalist, have clashed as Kushner has told people that Bannon’s desire to deconstruct the government, is hurting the president.

One person familiar with Kushner's thinking says Kushner believes Bannon is more of a problem than Reince Priebus, the chief of staff.

“Big fight is between nationalists and the ‘West Wing Democrats,” one senior administration official said.

is our jareds paying attention to whats been going on the last two fucking years

Well you know.

Anyway: I long figured it would come down to a Jared v Bannon scenario and that Bannon would lose, if push ever came to shove. Not saying this IS what's happening -- doesn't feel like a final reckoning or anything -- but combined with what frankly reads as Trump abjectly going "Oh you do it" to his son-in-law on any number of fronts, it makes sense.

Meanwhile, amusing:

https://twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/849700957889974272

WOW. This defense of the core of the ACA by the Republican chief deputy whip is remarkable.

Said defense:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8q-bboUMAAbDSR.jpg

Please tell me his last name really is "HcHenry."

Give me pre-existing condition coverage or give me death!

Anyway: I long figured it would come down to a Jared v Bannon scenario and that Bannon would lose, if push ever came to shove. Not saying this IS what's happening -- doesn't feel like a final reckoning or anything -- but combined with what frankly reads as Trump abjectly going "Oh you do it" to his son-in-law on any number of fronts, it makes sense.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, April 5, 2017 7:21 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially since trump is a narcissistic sociopath with no true friends whose only loyalty is to his family (as they are a reflection of himself)

Anyway:

https://twitter.com/DanaBashCNN/status/849702590745108480

Senior admin official tells me hcare talks 2.0 won't lead to a deal/bill before recess. Congress will go on break w/ out acting.

Tax reform next, everyone!

Please tell me his last name really is "HcHenry."

― Lauren Schumer Donor (Phil D.), Wednesday, April 5, 2017 3

I've predicted Bannon would be first out of the WH cabal since the inauguration, standing by that

xxp

i hear they call him HcHenry behind his back because well you know

http://i.imgur.com/X8xnrQB.png

I kinda love this:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/chris-collins-moderates-didnt-know-obamacare-protection-for-sick-customers-faced-chopping-block/article/2619448#.WOVN_2LJPMM.twitter

When asked about whether Republicans would be able to reach a deal on healthcare, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, replied, "Cautiously optimistic may be a little strong."

"I thought this would be the easiest thing to do," he said. "I'm surprised we've been this incompetent."

Are you now.

well. there you have it, i guess.

"I'm surprised we've been this incompetent."

another candidate for May thread title

And on a sillier note:

https://twitter.com/thetomzone/status/849010868402741248

actual photo of jared kushner expertly negotiating an end to the war in iraq

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8hKtbmUMAA_euN.jpg

"I thought this would be the easiest thing to do," he said. "I'm surprised we've been this incompetent."

srsly, no-one knew health care could be so complicated. NO-ONE

"Now watch me as I destroy medicare"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCm9788Tb5g

Maybe they just wanted to troll everyone:

https://twitter.com/shaneharris/status/849734968377057281

Office of the Strategic Initiatives Group. You know, the one the White House said didn't exist.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8rdcchXgAAnVip.jpg

Elsewhere:

https://twitter.com/LACaldwellDC/status/849734633768062976

Spotted: former speaker John boehner walking into leader MCCarthy's office.

"Sucks to be you!"

"Yeah yeah..."

'I left like 30 bottles of wine in here and I need them right now.. for a friend.'

And they must all be brimming with confidence now, I'm sure:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-takes-lead-role-on-tax-plan-1491428468

The Trump administration, stung by its failure to advance a health-care overhaul through Congress last month, is trying to lay a stronger foundation for a tax-code rewrite by taking a lead role in shaping the legislative push, according to interviews with several senior administration officials.

Despite the ramped-up effort, no consensus has emerged yet among senior White House advisers about either the shape of the tax plan or the strategy for building a coalition on Capitol Hill. Administration officials are courting Democrats, but the two parties face wide fissures that could be difficult to close.

The whole thing is a portrait of mass confusion and dysfunction.

Oh HERE'S some Alfred bait:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/bannon-mcmaster-national-security-council-236921

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster quietly slipped out of the White House grounds last week to seek the counsel of one of his aging predecessors, another three-star general who ran the National Security Council in a time of political turmoil and congressional probes.

McMaster's session with 92-year-old Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, was the clearest indication yet that McMaster, who took the reins of the NSC in February after his predecessor Mike Flynn was ousted, intends to radically depart from the approach taken by Flynn and President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who was removed from his seat on Wednesday.

"The clearest indication yet"

the MAVERICK keeps on MAVERICKIN'

On one side is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who says that once Democrats filibuster Judge Neil Gorsuch, the GOP’s unilateral response to confirm him on a simple majority vote will take senators “back to what was the tradition in the Senate” for confirming Supreme Court justices.

It will be, McConnell says, a good thing for the Senate.

“Look at the Senate through the long history of the body, the practical effect of all this will be to take us back to where we were,” McConnell, 75, told reporters Tuesday.

On the other side is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the fiery 80-year-old who sees this move as the next step in the inexorable slide to crushing the chamber’s bipartisan traditions. He thinks senators who view this as a good step are, well, not fully in command of their faculties.

“Idiot, whoever says that is a stupid idiot, who has not been here and seen what I’ve been through and how we were able to avoid that on several occasions,” McCain said Wednesday, recalling past efforts to defuse these judicial confirmation wars. “And they are stupid and they’ve deceived their voters because they are so stupid.”

Even so, McCain will support McConnell’s move to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for reaching a final vote on approving Supreme Court justices to lifetime appointments.

Another success from the Secret Service:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/politics/secret-service-agent-prostitute-maryland-hotel/index.html

The police responded to a call from the hotel manager who became suspicious of activity in one of the rooms. The source said this was not a sting.
The agent was arrested and was charged with solicitation. He then self-reported his arrest to the Secret Service, the source said.