US Politics, February 2020. They want to kill your cows.

In this fast-paced and exciting 'post-exonoration' edition of the US politics thread, we all get to die a little inside.

first for the worst

Good Mooooing!

Presidential politics has murdered US politics. The Senate is now the president's rump. The House is located in a dying mini-mall.

Can we not talk about the president's rump, please? I have plenty of nightmare fuel already.

C'mon guys, all Moodles wants to do is zoomazoomzoomzoom

you can't talk about trump without rump

Nooooooooo!

Mooooooooo!

Get out the whey

The Democratic Party has finally begun to fight dirty like a real Resistance™ movement...against Bernie Sanders.

— Jeffrey St. Clair (@JSCCounterPunch) February 3, 2020

good morning to Bernie Sanders and to everyone who plans on voting for Bernie Sanders

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) February 3, 2020

I just realized that the Democratic SOTU response is being broadcast from the high school three blocks from my house.

Is the mascot delivering it?

Herr Arschgeige's Super Bowl gaffe was mildly amusing, but the number of people who have emerged that thought the KC in both states is the same city are much more rewarding.

I never thought the leopards would eat my face

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/its-sickening-2016-trump-voter-turns-on-the-president-after-his-wife-gets-deported-to-mexico/

things only matter when they happen to me personally. never change, conservatives.

I saw my first Trump campaign ad during the Super Bowl, with a weeping older black woman thanking Trump for releasing her from prison. He's a regular progressive hero!

i thought that commercial was v strong

alice marie johnson, that is. It is a good ad, just not for Trump. I wonder where AMJ actually stands on this election?

the number of people who have emerged that thought the KC in both states is the same city are much more rewarding.

They're not legally the same city, but they are physically, so it's a reasonable way for non-residents to think of 'em. It's cute and fun that two states share a city!

I mean purely legally, in this case. though i'm aware they're both part of the same metropolitan area

They're not legally the same city, but they are physically

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81TGiXq4iRL.jpg

nothing like a good 'love child' blurb

I've found they're never quite as good.

lol nothing matters

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's job approval rating has risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took office in 2017.

The new poll finds 50% of Americans disapproving of Trump, leaving just 1% expressing no opinion. The average percentage not having an opinion on Trump has been 5% throughout his presidency.

Trump's approval rating has risen because of higher ratings among both Republicans and independents. His 94% approval rating among Republicans is up six percentage points from early January and is three points higher than his previous best among his fellow partisans. The 42% approval rating among independents is up five points, and ties three other polls as his best among that group. Democratic approval is 7%, down slightly from 10%.

The 87-point gap between Republican and Democratic approval in the current poll is the largest Gallup has measured in any Gallup poll to date, surpassing the prior record, held by Trump and Barack Obama, by one point.

The Jan. 16-29 poll was conducted in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will likely result in the president's acquittal. The poll finds 52% of Americans in favor of acquitting Trump and 46% in favor of convicting and removing him from office.

In addition to possibly reflecting sentiment regarding his impeachment, Trump's increased approval rating may also result from other issues, including:

The recent military action in Iran. More Americans in the new poll approve (53%) than disapprove (45%) of the U.S. military action that resulted in the death of a leading Iranian military general. Iran retaliated but, despite fears of escalation, no further military action has been taken by either side.
Foreign trade. During the poll's field period, Trump also signed the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The economy. Americans' confidence in the economy is higher than at any point in the past two decades. Similarly, national satisfaction is the highest in nearly 15 years.

Sixty-three percent of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the economy, up six points from the prior reading in November. It is the highest economic approval rating not only for Trump, but for any president since George W. Bush enjoyed stratospheric job approval ratings in the first few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Trump's ratings for handling foreign affairs (47%) and foreign trade (50%) are also his best to date.

I guess Pelosi's political genius has peaked

the rest of the article goes on to say that the gop is more popular than it's been since 2005, it's very encouraging

I maintain my belief that a disproportionate number of people just want to be dead and are willing to do whatever they can to hasten that without having to take any direct + immediate action toward that end.

i still take 538's word for this, which shows his approval ticking upward but he's still around 43-44%

which fwiw is higher than he’s been since winter of 2017

Yea, never overreact to one poll. Gallup also skews right, though 49% is much higher than he's been in a while.

Also Trump has had several temporary bumps that never last, much as his dips don't last

Also the poll ran from 1/16 - 1/29. Polls ran only last week by other pollsters look quite diff

I think the lesson here is that if he reins it in just a touch and tries flying under the radar just a little bit (as he seems to have done at least since the impeachment trial started, at least relative to his usual tack of cranking it to eleven), he doesn't tend to stoke quite as much fervent hatred among his constituents. Thankfully, Trump has never met a lesson that he didn't stubbornly flip off.

Wait til he either debates or refuses to debate

I wish the fact that he's consistently his own worst enemy actually mattered. He could've come into office, put his head down, been an incurious bag of shit in relative privacy, and probably coasted to an easy second term. Instead, he spends four years being an amalgam of every intolerable human quality every single goddamn day and...isn't exactly a shut-out wrt reelection.

It's pretty depressing having the few ppl I know who are ""independents"" say "yeah Trump is obv a dumb piece of shit...but my 401k has been doing well"

Somebody kidnap all mutual fund managers for ten months

After much deliberation, I have decided that I will not use my presence at a state ceremony to normalize Trump’s lawless conduct & subversion of the Constitution.

None of this is normal, and I will not legitimize it.

Consequently, I will not be attending the State of the Union.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 4, 2020

good. she's awesome.

good decision. the right is going to lose their minds

of course, the proper way to register opposition to the president is to attend and shout "YOU LIE!" in the middle of the proceedings

aoc otm imo fwiw

Massive booing through the whole speech would be pretty cool.

aoc fucking rules

I'm thrilled she's not going, but not in a million years would I click and read the replies to that tweet.

Wise decision

how many times will OG say "socialism" tonight?

there's got to be at least a 50% chance that he has an utter brain meltdown and let's the speech devolve into nothing but ad libbed inanity

The other scenario is that he monotones his way through it like he's being forced to stay on message

Pressley out too:

Ayanna Pressley is boycotting SOTU pic.twitter.com/GknxipIgru

— Alana Abramson (@aabramson) February 4, 2020

Meanwhile, the Democrats' guests include Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee and one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims.

There's at least one other person blowing it off, but I can't remember who.

oh, you're probably thinking of people itt who will be proud to not watch this tonight. way more than one

as a true patriot i plan on facing the other way from the screen as the president talks

i, on the other hand, will finish a job interview, fix myself a manhattan and get ready to hatewatch

i’m going to see poppy

i mean, he's dead, so

sotu = shit on the union

don't look, at the pulpit
i excreted something, awfulonit

i'm really into the song puns today, what else do we got

I would bet Tlaib isn't showing up either

Tlaib of all people should be loudly disrupting the speech.

GET HER OUT OF HERE, OUT OUT GET HER OUT

I am now going to rewatch George Cukor's classic Holiday with Grant and Hepburn

okay it’s on me for turning it on but tf is this “freedom unifies the soul” nonsense

First headline I came across, from CNN: 'Will Trump gloat tonight? Dems are in chaos and he's about to be acquitted'

Am I wrong for feeling that pretty much every ''''journalist'''' with a nationwide reach needs to be immediately jettisoned into the airless vacuum of space, if only to encourage the prospective journalists of the future to think twice about being useless muckraking douchenozzles whose only apparent goal is to spray gasoline on the last smoldering remnants of civil society?

otm

yep.

otm

the only moment worth remembering is Pelosi ripping up the speech at the end

the extent to which journalists cover politics like they're sportswriters is so fucking disgusting

the anger seemed to be leaking out of her pores

not surprisingly, Fox is one of the few networks that is only focusing on Trump's handshake snub and pretending the 'rip' didn't happen

disgusting

otm, but the business side of journalism will always rewards this behavior. it is simple to produce in large quantities, attracts a good sized audience of sensation seekers who don't want to think hard about politics, and is a low risk for alienating advertisers.

Just absolutely neurologically tip-top. The healthiest president in history.

"He direderd the December dersalt" pic.twitter.com/wZ0Dy5OsCR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2020

he's just old

pelosi is that old, she fucks up in the same ways all the time.

they're all fucking old

generally, you don't get to be a leader in this country unless you're about to die. you peak in power and then you make no sense and die

sometimes, you even make no sense and then peak in power long afterwards, it hardly matters

trump not shaking the hand and then pelosi ripping up the speech was like

trump: yaaargannn!

pelosi: ....torrrsssssaaalll!!

trump *DEVASTATED* pelosi!!

pelosi *HUMILIATED* trump!!

one wiffleball to the shin and either one's leg would shatter

Pelosi is not clinging to the podium to forestall physical spasms that she knows are a frequent occurrence, which coincide with her inability to form words. She's also not constantly snorting because she has to rack up to make it through an hour or two's public appearance.

(I don't want people as old as Pelosi or Bernie or Warren to be in government generally! But there's a difference between being old, and being so medically *checks legal diagnostic terms* shitfucked that offsiders scream at children to clear the room as soon as you lose physical control of your tongue at a prayer breakfast)

Anyway I know we're way too jaded to bother paying attention to insanely fucked up things this administration does anymore*, but as well as giving Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal Of Freedom on live TV during the State Of The Union Address today, Trump also excluded Customs & Border Patrol from FOIA requests

and the National Archives have approved ICE to destroy all records from 2017, and

It’s not just ICE. The Department of the Interior and the National Archives have decided to delete files on endangered species, offshore drilling inspections and the safety of drinking water. The department even claimed that papers from a case where it mismanaged Native American land and assets — resulting in a multibillion-dollar legal settlement — would be of no interest to future historians (or anyone else).

Virtually all the papers of the under secretary of state for economic growth, energy and environment are also being designated as “temporary,” despite the incredibly broad responsibilities of that office — from international aviation safety to foreign takeovers of American firms.

Archivists have a tough job even when they are adequately supported. They somehow have to predict what records future historians will judge to be truly significant. But now the State Department is cutting archivists completely out of the process: Instead, it will start using machine learning algorithms to separate the “historic” from the “temporary.” Going forward, it is not even planning to turn these records over to the National Archives — a clear violation of the Federal Records Act.

Karl I've never seen Pelosi slur words or seem me disoriented like Trump does frequently, do you have examples?

current CNN headline:

Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union
Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union
Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union
Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union
Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union
Trump makes dazzling, divisive reelection pitch in State of the Union

looks like someone who got purposefully excluded from yesterday's press lunch is angling to get invited to the next one. simply outstanding.

Sorry to self-c+p but

pretty much every ''''journalist'''' with a nationwide reach needs to be immediately jettisoned into the airless vacuum of space

Am I wrong for feeling that pretty much every ''''journalist'''' with a nationwide reach needs to be immediately jettisoned into the airless vacuum of space, if only to encourage the prospective journalists of the future to think twice about being useless muckraking douchenozzles whose only apparent goal is to spray gasoline on the last smoldering remnants of civil society?

“dazzling”

All issues of asslicking, barely-concealed partisanship aside, I definitely take issue with that descriptor, as well. Trump has never been 'dazzling'. 'Vajazzling' maybe but never 'dazzling'.

'The president's rhetoric at times had a quality not unlike a splay of garish genital rhinestones.'

grab em by the vajazzle

So we're onto rimming

it will start using machine learning algorithms to separate the “historic” from the “temporary.”

lmao I would love to hear someone describe to me how this works holy crap

But now the State Department is cutting archivists completely out of the process: Instead, it will start using machine learning algorithms to separate the “historic” from the “temporary.” Going forward, vernacular can only be created for temporary materials (with the help of vernacular specialists) and can't be replicated or used for reproducing the original language.

As an aside: After a long hiatus and a lot of fightback (including from native-speakers), the (two-year-old) "Minority Title" initiative has now abandoned its "one language, one picture" claim, instead focusing on "ancient materials and databases on the historical importance of a particular language."

And so an entirely new language for the US

When in doubt, ask Transformer.

this seems like a plum contract for some vastly overvalued software company founded by the coked-out scion of an inbred republican dynasty, can't wait to see what their algorithm decides is worth preserving for future generations

Breaking: Contents of the National Archives to be replaced wholesale with printouts of Trump tweets.

Pressley and AOC boycotting >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Pelosi's sour grapes-looking speech rip

don't care really

Karl I've never seen Pelosi slur words or seem me disoriented like Trump does frequently, do you have examples?

not slurring, but just the typical things that happen as people get really old. but that wasn't even my point. i was really drunk last night (big surprise - this whole fucking world BLOWS for everyone except for people with rich families who can afford to take subsidized vacations on a monthly basis to get away from living hell, so all one can do is take yourself out of it whenever possible) and failed to make my point, which was that this whole obsession with trying to prove trump's impending/current dementia is MADDENING and COMPLETELY USELESS. i don't even care if it's true or if it could be true, it's just the spectacle of being so completely OWNED by the dumbest people and a venal corrupt political party that all we can do is maybe just hope that the president has actually lost his mind and maybe people will realize that and cart him off to a hospital or whatever. it's just sad, this is the crap we're left with, it's pathetic

He direderd the December dersalt.

Goost my Japenese spice and hent mee your day,

Ween me that, both I and oure love gon,

Nedels, mee dat thou tel, thou hast never saide."

"Yea, he hende her and drew mee,

In the best of werkes, lefte my cryes."

"Thou madest 'cause that the Queene

Was gone away fro this place,

The pestilence deepe, and at home,

And to thee hou sheeldid be,

Where'es we cannae set his knave a-qu

sorry. i'm just mad at myself. i did poorly in a job interview last night, in an attempt to find some other shitty job that will pay marginally better than my current one so i try to dig myself out of shitdebt mountain.

it's hard to pivot from that back to susan collins

the obsession with trump's dementia really does drive me batty though

don't care really

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 5, 2020 8:56 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

idk, the fact that people are just talking about Pelosi ripping up the speech seems fine to me? Trump's approval is at an all-time high, he's about to get acquitted, the economy is peaking yet again, the Iowa shit was a disaster for Dems, it's not a bad thing that people are focusing on a BrEaCh Of Decorum instead

I agree with your point and also as applied to rest of the desperation that fuels resistance-porn discourse.

xps

Pelosi ripping the speech annoyed me. Not her fault—she did try to impeach him, but that failing it felt like an empty gesture, aimed at exciting #resistance idiots on twitter

it was her version of killing soleimani

IDC that much about the speech rip either.

Obsession with Trump's "dementia" is just another flavor of obsession with his "stupidity" "unfitness" "indecency" or whatever, as though there's some invisible, objective arbiter of presidentialness and if only we can make a strong enough case the judgment will be rendered from above. So long as Trump helps the Republican party and their goals more than he hurts them, he will have their unwavering support. Some resistance folks just CANNOT stop banging their head against this wall though, it's like a reflex.

speech rip will accomplish precisely nothing

like most of Grancy's career

FWIW, I don't mean for those quotation-marked things to all be in the same category. I think the reflexive "haha he misplaced Kansas City" tweets are a lot worse and more harmful than, e.g., reminding people of his abhorrent behavior towards women, which should be repeated. It's just the expectation that if only we can find the right "he went too far" item it will somehow flip enough "decent conservatives" to chang ehte political winds that makes me lose it.

ah now morbs i'll be sarcastically clapping while we drown in seawater

ahh yes, only actions that singlehandedly bring down the throne of Trump are worth discussing. it's so easy, any of us could do it. why aren't we the speakers?

. I think the reflexive "haha he misplaced Kansas City" tweets are a lot worse

Yep, because this is why his fans love him.

either you liked it, you hated it, or you didn't care, but it ain't gonna fuckin' hurt anything, so not exactly worth writing a thinkpiece about

I don't suspect many people actually gaf about the KC thing as much as enjoyed trolling because by now we all know he and his ilk will never admit he's wrong and will find hilarious ways to double down.

I mean...there is no convincing his base, and beyond that, most lifer Republicans, so maybe we can stop pretending that's our goal. it's always been about more moderate Republicans, Independents, and mobilizing our own vote for the Democrats.

She should have spit in his face.

that I might have given a standing O for

Pelosi ripping the speech annoyed me. Not her fault—she did try to impeach him, but that failing it felt like an empty gesture, aimed at exciting #resistance idiots on twitter

― treeship., Wednesday, February 5, 2020 10:34 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was her version of killing soleimani

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes)

i loled

Yep, because this is why his fans love him.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 5, 2020 11:41 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

And we've been here before! We did the exact same thing through two terms of W, except there was no twitter.

the idea that the KC tweets or any of this "lol look how stupid he is" posts are harmful at all is offtm. a waste of time? ok, sure. but there aren't massive scores of potential convert voters scouring Twitter and saying "y'know, these guys mocking Trump are jerks, I'm gonna vote for him in 2020".

yeah, we can all be devoting 20 hours of every day focusing on the more substantive terrible things he does and exposing everybody to them (and most of us do), but sometimes people are just tired and wanna have a cheap Nelson Muntz "haha" laugh. these things aren't mutually exclusive. focusing on them is almost as pointless as the original "haha KC" tweets themselves.

He really does deserve it. The Ukraine thing isn’t what I would have staked the impeachment on, but it really was jaw-dropping that he dangled 400 million of taxpayer money over a foreign leader’s head in exchange for (manufactured) oppo (he knew there was nothing to the burisma stuff or the crowdstrike stuff)

xpost are you familiar with 'coping mechanisms'?

yes, he absolutely deserves being spat on. otm. I wish we could start a campaign to do it, only to see his reaction on live tv.

i imagine she was thinking, during his speech, about if and how she should react to the handshake snub at the beginning of the proceedings. i don't blame her for ripping up the speech, i'm ambivalent about it. how do you respond to a bully? you can try to rise above it, ignore it, etc. she and most other democratic leaders have gone that route. sometimes you have to fight the bully, or at least stand up for yourself. that's why people hate bullies - they force you into a shitty situation you didn't want where no matter what you do, it's sort of wrong

She could have walked out before the speech

shoved pence off the edge on her way out

Endless options

yeah, exactly. i don't really dig this thing where Dems microanalyze every minor event like the speech rip or the alleged "mocking clapping" in terms of 'what it means for 2020'. It was a cool optic moment, it doesn't 'mean' anything, and who really cares?

this is Howard Dean scream level whinging.

xxxposts to Malone

I think trump gets sympathy when it seems he is the target of classist attacks on his erudition

from who?

xp -- I guess I don't really believe they are effective "coping mechanisms" so much as passive aggressive energy diversions. They seem like symptoms of a losing mindset to me, where we snicker rather than effectively confront. But at the end of the day I agree snuffing out "lol Kansas" type tweets is not a high priority.

From his supporters. They identify with the perception that the eggheads and elites of ilx and congress look down on him.

who cares about his supporters?

xp

I mean, this is the game he played—the way he got supporters. Self pity is his favorite hobby and he took his people along for the ride. It’s “done” at this point but this is a huge part of his appeal

I think it's less that he gets sympathy and more that democrats look like petty, spiteful nerds.

I understand, on the one hand, being frustrated by the futility of pointing out Trump's obvious mental decline, given how little it matters in any substantive way and the fact that he would still be a sitting president with comparable approval even if he were just constantly writhing on the ground covered in his own shit. But on the other hand, I think there's real utility (perhaps not utility with any immediate impact but something that is hopefully cumulative) in pointing out that THIS IS NOT NORMAL OR OKAY any/every time it occurs to you that this is not normal or okay, even if it's the eleventy-millionth time that someone has pointed out that instances of this particular phenomenon are not normal or okay. Because the alternative, it seems, is to eventually lapse into a defeated shrug and allow the abnormal to become normalized, if only via entropy born of exhaustion. The bar has already fallen to a dangerously low level, so I'd hate to see it plummet further because people are tired of bitching about all of the things that are obviously wrong with our Commander-in-Queef.

And we've been here before! We did the exact same thing through two terms of W, except there was no twitter.

totally forgot how we started the year on the precipice of pointless armageddon, fml

for a guy who is collapsing mentally and has no idea what he is doing or how to form sentences, he did manage to read out a very long, prepared speech to millions of people, live, without messing up too badly, which is more than i could expect of most people, including myself

I guess if the real issue is legitimate concern for his mental fitness, that's not conveyed very well by lulz tweets about "He direderd the December dersalt."

ugh meant to c&p the soleimani ref

for a guy who is collapsing mentally and has no idea what he is doing or how to form sentences, he did manage to read out a very long, prepared speech to millions of people, live, without messing up too badly, which is more than i could expect of most people, including myself

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone), Wednesday, February 5, 2020 12:00 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the man technically is literate and has never experienced a second of self-doubt in his entire life. that's really all you need to pull off that feat.

His entire adult live has been played out in front of cameras. An ability to occasionally avoid stepping on and subsequently ripping off his own dick while on camera is not exactly what I'd call a high competence threshold.

he loves listening to himself

Who cares

For a dementia patient he is doing a bang up job controlling all of our lives and attention.

yeah well here are on a thread called "U.S. Politics."

alfred makes a typo about once every 4 to 5 years, so i just want to call it out

Clear signs of cognitive decline, would not vote for.

bout how often we get a change of power in Congress!

But on the other hand, I think there's real utility (perhaps not utility with any immediate impact but something that is hopefully cumulative) in pointing out that THIS IS NOT NORMAL OR OKAY any/every time it occurs to you that this is not normal or okay, even if it's the eleventy-millionth time that someone has pointed out that instances of this particular phenomenon are not normal or okay

but this is pretty much exactly where his support comes from. people hate politicians. they hate Congress as a whole. pretty much everyone thinks our government is a total failure. the main plank of Trump's appeal (outside of racism) is that he wasn't "politics as usual"

Would’ve been nice if Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump’s military budget

— Justin Jackson (@J_ManPrime21) February 5, 2020

i guess we're all dealing with our own futile battles

morning, Karl!

when we finally wake up on 11/9/2016 after the longest sleep ever, it will be very refreshing.

Hopefully as refreshing as the shower our husband Bobby will be taking.

TS: seeing Patrick Duffy naked vs sleeping for four years

No option for sleeping with Patrick Duffy for four years?

from Code Pink:

Last night at Trump’s State of the Union address, Democrats gave a standing ovation to one of his worst foreign policy blunders: the regime change attempt to place Juan Guaidó into the position of “interim president” of Venezuela. Instead of standing up against another US coup attempt, sanctions that have killed at least 40,000 people, and military threats that could destabilize the entire Latin American region, many Democrats stood up to cheer Trump on.

We are both shocked and outraged that the Democrats, including Speaker Pelosi, are cheering Trump’s foreign policy debacle. Coups and regime change cause chaos, suffering, and death, as happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Bolivia—to name a few...

Coups and regime change cause chaos, suffering, and death

If only the media thought this was a worthwhile narrative, as compared to "we poked the bad guy in the nose - USA! USA!".

speech rip will accomplish precisely nothing

in a psycho-social battle, which of these is most effective for 1) effective political opposition, and 2) for voter persuasion and participation? 3) are these the same for freshman rep and the speaker?

a. sitting behind opponent, recorded, ripping up his speech
b. walking out beforehand
c. walking out during speech
d. never showing up
e. yelling “YOU LIE!”
f. mincing near his lectern during speech and taking a shit on the carpet

1. Lol nothing, but ‘a’ or ‘c’ if it flips out your opponents enough (doubtful, they don’t care— they winning)
2. ‘c’ if voters want demonstration, ‘e’ if you want to raise cash from angry partisans, and maaaybe ‘f’ if you make monetized dirtbag patreon podcasts
3. ‘c’ because that’s possibly visible, or ‘e’ or ‘f’, depending on how you fundraise. ‘a’ is not likely possible because you are likely remote to camera?

more accurate intro to item 3: “no best courses are dif for freshman and speaker. for freshman...”

i could add that for freshman, ‘d’ is a good response if you go out and fundraise or raise support during your night off.

Not in reference to anything in particular (and I know before I ask that the answer is basically just 'tribalism') but how is it that there are people sufficiently credulous to believe that someone who demonstrably and pathologically lies to everyone about everything and is demonstrably and pathologically self-interested is honest with them and has their best interests at heart? Like you'd think even a dog would've figured this shit out by now.

i suspect they dont really stop to think about his individual decisions making a dif to _them_. he is just the icon for the side. creditable for all, amazingly culpable for nothing. thinks the party will ensure things stay orderly, to his interest and understanding.

I think of the georgia trumpy jackass whose wife was deported. Not until that line really really really connects to trump hisself will he change jackshit.

Manchin is a vote to convict

so is romney

so Roberts declared that Trump is not guilty on Article 1
if 48% of a jury votes guilty that's not generally a complete exoneration

seems like "not removed" would be more apt

Evidence is not the basis for the vote

I guess after Kavanaugh, the most naked demonstration that politics is exclusively about power and principle plays no part

Nihilism ftw.

I made a solemn oath before God to always defend the principle of maintaining a thin veneer of "decency"

If only the media thought this was a worthwhile narrative, as compared to "we poked the bad guy in the nose - USA! USA!".

Aimless OTM

I guess if the real issue is legitimate concern for his mental fitness, that's not conveyed very well by lulz tweets about "He direderd the December dersalt."

The point wasn't "lulz he gets words wrong bcz he's dumb," it was him experiencing two consecutive full-body spasms that interfered with his ability to form words. I know there's precedent, but it still seems non-ideal for the executive branch of the government to be extensively covering up for the sole elected element of it having a suite of medical issues that make it non-functional, if that's what's happening.

(everyone sure proved that they want to talk about actual actions taken by the US government rather than the President's neurological condition or general assholishness, by diverting to discuss the implications of CBP's exclusion from FOIA, and the eradication of archives as a basic concept, instead though. point made!)

he did manage to read out a very long, prepared speech to millions of people, live

luv u Z and there's genuinely no reason why you should remember that I've been saying the same thing itt since September 2016, but this was just hours ago tbfttm

For the third time, “body spasms” are not a symptom of dementia. Please stop with this bullshit. The guy is a narcissist asshole and clearly his mental state and diction are flaky, but he does not have dementia or any other neurological illness unless diagnosed by somebody competent. To say otherwise is denigrating to people who actually live with these diseases.

to clarify - it’s absolutely fine to hate this piece of shit, just please stop trying to medicalise or pathologise your opinion as if it’s based on something other than his shitty personal qualities

lol

ftr these aren't my socks

dementia

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone),

dementia

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone), Thursday, February 6, 2020 3:16 AM

"dementia"

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, February 6, 2020 3:36 AM (five hours ago)

For a dementia patient

― treeship., Thursday, February 6, 2020 4:08 AM (five hours ago)

experiencing two consecutive full-body spasms that interfered with his ability to form words

It's fair that "interfered" is my inference, but I'm just describing what I actually see, and saying it's concerning. I am absolutely not attempting to diagnose anyone, except in that one post upthread where I checked the specific term, and strive to be clear when I make observations about the dude's behaviour that these are observations.

I don't mean to be dismissive, Matthew, and appreciate you concern for precision. Please substitute "that coincided with a sudden inability to form words in each instance."

To explain further, I am a researcher and postgrad lecturer in dementia. Aside from the diseases themselves, the number one thing which blights the lives of people with dementia is the fear and stigma of dementia. To effectively say "I disagree with this piece of shit, and I can't fathom the mindset that would allow that kind of amoral narcissistic corruption, thus I think it's reasonable to think that he might have dementia" and go looking for "evidence", is precisely the reason why people with dementia become isolated and shunned by society. Sorry to climb on my hobby horse but this is a major fucking problem.
I also think that medicalising and pathologising an individual is to ignore the moral crisis of a political system whose highest principle is to get and maintain power, and to say and do whatever is necessary to achieve that, period. There's your pathology.

For the third time, “body spasms” are not a symptom of dementia. Please stop with this bullshit

(also, as I noted the first time that you called me out for somebody who wasn't me saying this, and I googled it out of curiosity, the Mayo Clinic disagrees. I just tried again on DDG, and they're the first result there, too. if there's another thread worth talking about this on, or you want to ILXmail me, I'm honestly interested in hearing about your experience or knowledge or w/e, even if it's just to shout at me.)

xpost!

I appreciate that, and I can assure you that posts I've made in the last five months about things that he has physically done on television in that time are separate to having thought this guy was a loathsome prick, with one of the most repugnant worldviews possible, since I first encountered him in an American comic strip as a child in 1986, and read about the real person in order to try and get the jokes.

After our president's rapid rush to Walter Reed for a fairly recent and wholly unscheduled "routine physical", it does seem within reason to think he may have somewhat serious health problems that are being concealed from the public, but poring over 30 second snippets of video carefully selected by people who are selling a particular kind of characterization of what these purport to show seems like an unreliable method of informing oneself about the presence of, or nature of, his possible maladies.

xp "spasm" in the Mayo Clinic advice refers to sustained tension that prevents movement, a spasm is in clinical terms. You're referring to a rapid jerking motion which is called a clonic jerk. I mentioned this earlier too.

"spasm is in clinical"

easier to look for that moment on Rupar's feed after seeing it in ten minutes of the speech you catch on TV, and link that here, than to tell the thread to travel back in time and have their housemate happen to leave the TV on when they go out, then to all come home themselves at the same time and not switch over to music before taking off their coats and shoes and putting their bags away and turning the stove on and starting a pot boiling, imo

clonic jerk

thanks - apologies for missing it before.

matthewk respect, seriously.

still, trump is to most who’ve seen prior footage, fucked up vs his condition 10 years ago +. Whatever you know it not to be, that’s great to share. avoiding incorrect application of diagnostic terms is nice. I believe that yes, his biggest problem remains he’s an evil-ass jerk.

And still in this case, and in this specific case only, just as in Bush v Gore— so. What. It merits correction and little more imo.

(I did help walk an old guy thru 5 years of diagnosed alzheimers until his death1.5 yrs ago. he was in declining stages prior to diagnosis. he never ever had what you helpfully label clonic jerks. Most normals correctly guessed his diagnosis around his 2 year mark post diagnosis. So. What. Way way before he was in hospice, the opinions of others mattered to him not at all, and it did not affect his treatment. And he was not in any office).

For the record, lest it seem like I think sic is a bad person or anything like it, my only issue is with people saying "hey this guy is a total fuck who acts in ways which make no sense to me, hmmm that means it could be dementia". Even if you think there is something medically wrong with him, being an asshole, or stupid, or throwing tantrums or even spewing a bunch of rhetoric which makes no sense when parsed but which is really just cant to fire up his support base, is not part of an overall picture suggesting dementia. People's behaviour changes when they have dementia, for sure, but there are many many reasons for people to rant and rave which are not dementia. Trump's stupidity and inappropriate behaviours are very easily explained by his well established narcissism, lack of knowledge, profound apathy toward others' needs, egocentrism, lifetime of privilege and a complete lack of consequences for asshole behaviour. His occasional physical twitches and speech stumbles are likewise most easily explained by fatigue, stress, and god knows what stimulants he uses to reach his exalted plane of self belief. I'm in my forties and I have glitched out in the middle of sentences when I am tired and stressed and lecturing to large groups of people - and I'm not doing rails of Adderall.
tl;dr sic is generally a stand-up guy and I am trying to draw a huge, clear line between dementia and the behaviour of an amoral sociopath

also Hunt3r the stigma of dementia has a massive effect on the carers and families of people who have dementia - their friends shy away and they end up walking a very hard road without much support. That's why I get fired up about it. I'll stop preaching now.

yeah i hear you man. there are prejudices re actual illness that are so harmful to the treatment, therapy, patient communities that one feels moral AND professional obligations to denounce or clarify.

on a much less substantive basis, me flipping out every time anyone calls the Ukraine call report a “transcript.” til i die. 🙄

these things actually matter

imo not always, such as a political discussion in which the nature of the affliction—whatever its cause—is a disqualification from office, and which disqualification, regardless the cause, necessitates immediate removal from office. it’s a clear and present danger.

ha i either sound like butti whom i dislike or a narc which, lol.

Listening to Moscow Mitch's voice is somehow even worse than to Trump's

even the stables will be Romanesque when New Caligula gets a horse

The New York Times reports:

Should every new government building in the nation’s capital be created in the same style as the White House? A draft of an executive order called “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” would establish a classical style, inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, as the default for federal buildings in Washington and many throughout the country, discouraging modern design.

The order, spearheaded by the National Civic Art Society, a nonprofit group that believes contemporary architecture has “created a built environment that is degraded and dehumanizing,” would rewrite the current rules that govern the design of office buildings, headquarters, and courthouses, or any federal building project contracted through the General Services Administration that costs over $50 million.

oh nice, trump has really good taste in design, very hopeful for what he picks out

contemporary architecture has “created a built environment that is degraded and dehumanizing,”

'degenerate' was right there

we should take some of these brutalist buildings and make them 10,000% tacky

one word: mosaics

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

Bitecofer’s theory, when you boil it down, is that modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place. To her critics, she’s an extreme apostle of the old saw that “turnout explains everything,” taking a long victory lap after getting lucky one time. She sees things slightly differently: That the last few elections show that American politics really has changed, and other experts have been slow to process what it means.

The classic view is that the pool of American voters is basically fixed: About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of “swing voters” who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side.

Bitecofer has a nickname for this view. She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”: “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment.”

this article is relevant to the architecture talk

https://www.thedailybeast.com/second-trump-ghostwriter-says-he-was-lousy-at-business-bored-and-obsessed-with-carpet-swatches

Charles Leerhsen, ghostwriter of Surviving at the Top, has written an account for Yahoo News about the time he spent observing Trump for the book. He paints a picture of a lazy, ill-tempered man who was out of his depth when it came to business. In fact, his main contribution to his businesses seemed to be choosing carpets.

Leerhsen wrote that Trump was neither terrified about the scale of his losses nor, as the president claimed Wednesday, carrying out a Machiavellian plan to make sure he didn’t have to pay income tax. He was just bored.

“Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day—which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches,” said the ghostwriter. “Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his ‘French military helicopter’ to Atlantic City—where he looked at more fabric swatches.”

According to Leerhsen, Trump's obsession with carpets and curtains appeared to stem from his lack of understanding of much more important business decisions. The writer recounted one decision Trump reportedly made that exposed his complete lack of ability as a businessman.

Re: Bitcofer. She could be right as rain, but her model would need to predict more than one or two elections for me to read that article and not hear strong echoes of "He predicted the 2008 crash in 2006, now hear where he thinks the DOW is going in 2021!" clickbait.

inclined to agree re: the breathless hype, but I think her underlying logic is very solid. swing voters are a myth.

Hmm, I'm undecided as to the wisdom of her claims, perhaps I will await a strong breeze to blow me in one of two directions.

heh

i do think there are sincere swing voters. they're all complete morons obviously. i guess the question is/are 1) are there enough for them to be worth worrying about 2) are there more of them and are they more easily activated than non-voters. land of contrasts stuff i know.

i don't care about the predicitive accuracy of her particular model, but the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kFUNJ2TA9II/maxresdefault.jpg

oh yeah that asshole

Andy Reid crossed with Mr Rogers crossed with Joe the Plumber

the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

To the extent she is right about turnout being the be-all and end-all, it's not like either party thinks that GOTV isn't a critical part of winning elections already. I guess they could channel more resources from running ads into organizing GOTV, but part of GOTV is giving voters the idea that they need to vote and why. iow motivation matters and campaigns build that motivation over time. So, exactly how to turn her basic thesis into a more practical strategy is not entirely clear to me.

fair. i guess if it's correct it helps you figure out which voters *not* to chase.

i assume low info voters, ideologues or not, boil down to tribal prejudice stacked to terrible, misapplied risk mgmt heuristics.

Since this does not add anything i am not writing a book.

imho chasing racist suburban wine moms who think trump is tacky or never trump conservatives who write opinions for nyt & wapo seems like a bad idea but i'm not a data guy

She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”

lol tho

read that as "The Chuck Eddy theory of American politics"

the hatred of modern architecture (as well as anything modern or post modern: art, lit, etc) is a big thing in alt-right circles.

Same as the Nazis obvi

yeah that sounds like a pet project of Stephen Miller

read that as "The Chuck Eddy theory of American politics"

TEENA MARIE 2004!

BIG AND RICH 2020

lol Rich was super-pissed a couple of weeks ago because a Nashville private christian school's curriculum included discussions of white privilege and racism.

my man has definitely got a future in TN politics if he wants it

Rig & B*tch

but how would a Nashville private christian school ever even find examples of white privilege and racism to show their students??????

Bitecofer's analysis also points to the effectiveness of disenfranchisement, if her theory is correct. The Republican version of GOTV.

big & rich remains one of the more embarrassing ILM bandwagon movements

that first album is still good, damn you

Also: I was not around in 2004 for Chuck Eddy to cast his cantrips

the hatred of modern architecture (as well as anything modern or post modern: art, lit, etc) is a big thing in alt-right circles

Not because they actually care but because they think the libs do. And if the libs like it they hate it, etc.

I believe one Charles Windsor (him of Wales) has dabbled in this realm of criticism as well.

tbf I dislike a bunch of new buildings, too! but adhering to some artificial idea of what looks "classic" is very wrong-headed

why would the greatest country on earth look towards those effete euros for architectural inspiration??

new mgmt seeks cred

why would the greatest country on earth look towards those effete euros for architectural inspiration??

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger),

are you still talking about Big & Rich

Really, one of the best public services we can all regularly do is find some agreeable little sliver of a right-wing proposition and then excitedly talk up our approval of that sliver, prefacing with 'as a liberal socialist...'.

Kill them with leftness.

I kind of appreciate that conservatives care about aesthetics. I have an affection for the utopianism of modernist architecture and design—a melancholic one as the calm, humane rational of those guys ended up not being the way of the future—and i think it’s good that some other people care enough at least to hate it.

And there is truth to scruton’s critique of modernism. There is something cold and calculating about modernism, and people do feel more comfortable in less rational spaces.

I think every conservative should leave politics and become an architecture critic.

vulgar-highbrow aesthetes are the best. the little mini sloppy joe pintxos at the events- i can't tell If it’s out-of-fashion normcore or next-level trumpism or just gross, really.

"And there is truth to scruton’s critique of modernism."

there is truth to your mom as well

The Koonsinization of the American elite

I’m a modernist calzino i just think it thrives better if there is a critic rather than just apathy

This is the U.S. Courthouse in Austin, Texas, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, a husband-and-wife firm based in Atlanta. Maybe you like it—maybe you hate it.

The White House proposal to ban modernist federal buildings mentions it by name. https://t.co/FdySKF991b pic.twitter.com/ydHk5SpNUp

— .@kristoncapps (@kristoncapps) February 6, 2020

Great thread there.

The Treasury Department has broken the law for three years in denying Congress from seeing Trump's tax returns. Now they're giving documents on Hunter Biden to GOP senators.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/06/targeting-newly-emboldened-trumps-enemies-may-have-begun/

The Attorney General has notified federal agents and lawyers that they cannot open investigations of any presidential candidates, their campaigns, or advisers without his approval.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/barr-says-no-investigations-2020-candidates-campaigns-without-his-approval-n1131836

Unidentified ICE officers shot a dude in the face today while beating up another dude who is in the country legally, then blamed the NYPD.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/06/ice-agents-new-york-shooting-brooklyn

Think it's time we start working extralegally

Fuck

xp might as well, they sure are

good morning!

so did we note that the Grifter said to Steve Scalise yesterday, "You might've set a record for blood loss"?

"If the right people hadn't been there we might be celebrating something else today"

celebrating the death of steve scalise? ok, cool

not sure where to put this but this is the funniest thing I've seen in years

https://www.reddit.com/r/daverubin/comments/ez6rxi/larry_king_thinks_so_little_of_rubes_show_that_he/

Larry king is still alive is my first learning tbh

FOX reporting the big stories

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQMQElsXkAMkC21?format=jpg&name=large

Elsewhere in Fox, a canary flutters:

Fox News’ own research team has warned colleagues not to trust some of the network’s top commentators’ claims about Ukraine.

The 162-page document, entitled “Ukraine, Disinformation, & the Trump Administration,” was created by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, who produces research from what is known as the network’s Brain Room—a newsroom division of researchers who provide information, data, and topic guides for the network’s programming.

impeachment witness who confirmed the quid pro quo got fired, for some reason

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/alex-vindman-donald-trump-impeachment/index.html

key passage:

His twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a National Security Council attorney, was also fired and walked off the White House grounds alongside him.

paranoid about a sitcom-style identity switch

Sondland mist got fired too. No surprise there. Man that guy is an asshole

mist = just

Rig & B*tch

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Thursday, February 6, 2020 4:27 PM (four days ago)

Trump's election strategy, in a nutshell.

Interesting article here (from an anti-Trump conservative website) about how health care could fuck him in November. Note that the dream budget he released today abolishes the ACA.

abolishes the ACA

when you're a celebrity president they let you do that

it's great that no matter how good the healthcare programs we get are, they can be destroyed by one republican wrecker-ass president and will never last longer than 8 years.

Chris Hayes killing it in his opening monologue on the received wisdom of Trump's strength.

and Bernie's weakness

I listened to hayes’ ep and as said on other thread, my takeaway is “why the fuck is tom prez running anything?” his feelgood ‘we’re larnin’!”, with no reasonable evidence to support it is so, was infuriating to me, an old. wtf is that, he got a cv that should at least point to competence, but i doubt that.

just listening on to that ep, in this case to plouffe shortly after, made me wonder, “well, this guy sounds informed and actually credible, is he available to run dnc?” and of course that impulse is ignorant, because I don’t know that type of party shit. But has there been discussion of a new leader for the DNC?

the funny thing is that the first time I ever heard of Mayor Pete is when he was jockeying to lead the DNC, and iirc he finished a distant third behind Perez and Keith Ellison.

ust listening on to that ep, in this case to plouffe shortly after, made me wonder, “well, this guy sounds informed and actually credible, is he available to run dnc?” and of course that impulse is ignorant, because I don’t know that type of party shit.

Plouffe looks frighteningly cold-blooded. I saw that interview too.

ha i only heard it, so i did not witness his blood-temp. on the phones he just seemed ~informed~.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I can only imagine Larry David being delighted at Trump being fooled by this bit <a href="https://t.co/FHGcsJtsgw";>https://t.co/FHGcsJtsgw<;/a></p>— Andrej (@AndrejNkv) <a href="

I can only imagine Larry David being delighted at Trump being fooled by this bit https://t.co/FHGcsJtsgw

— Andrej (@AndrejNkv) February 11, 2020

sorry i botched the embed there

The DOJ is changing its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, according to a Senior DOJ official.
“The Department finds seven to nine years extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate," the source said, adding the DOJ will clarify its position on sentencing later today

— Jake Gibson (@JakeBGibson) February 11, 2020

this whole nonsense about trumps personnel change and flynn case motions is freakin me out for real.

the doj is downgrading roger stone's sentence to 'adding an angry frown onto the richard nixon tattoo on his back'

'adding a grin and a thumbs up'

This is why no one should ever be caught saying "It's all good."

it's not fair if all mr. trump's sharpest advisors are in jail for the 2020 campaign

yea Trump not getting what that CYE bit was about is pretty par for the course (see also: Pompeo tweeting out the image of Lisa tearing up her essay)

this on the other hand...not only does it make no sense but Trump seems to be RT'ing an account claiming Bloomberg is racist because he hangs out with Trump?

Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT! https://t.co/5DUj16jtZf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020

also noticed trump committed the most unforgivable sin of calling a white guy racist for supporting policies he himself was a fan of in 2016 in another tweet today

they think racism is over and everyone should "get over it" and it's horrible to throw around accusations of racism...unless they're able to do exactly that to their opponents. I'm beginning to think they're just a bunch of disingenuous assholes!

The GOP president could hold a press conference where he levies unfounded murder accusations against a democratic political rival while simultaneously bludgeoning a man to death with a length of pipe on camera. This isn't hypocrisy, it's tribalism.

Unlike Democrats, who do everything they can to frustrate justice with red tape and endless rules, Republicans just follow the simple, commonsense standard that it's not murder if the dead person deserved it.

Stone's prosecutor just resigned, very cool that we just allow the POTUS to interfere with sentencing now

maybe Rudy will win an Oscar next year! like Jojo Rabbit

https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-storms-back-into-ukraine-investigation-with-hunter-biden-documentary-163027638.html

Three Stone prosecutors have now resigned. Jesus.

Oh sorry, I see that one left the DOJ completely. The other two just quit Stone's case. Still.

lmao Trump is gonna openly fuck with the election and no one's going to do a thing about it

I think it's safe to say that President Trump has learned his lesson and has been chastened and dare I say humbled by the experience of his impeachment. It's mourning in America!

I can't wait for the vigorous head shaking and finger wagging when he calls off the election.

So maybe the right response for this is for me to just step away from the thread and not read it. Twitter too. But -- I really really don't want people to laugh hollowly and say "well I guess that's it for democracy, election's gonna get cancelled amidst modest harumphs of disapproval from elected officials and journalists," and the reason I don't want people to do that is it makes me feel like shit and it makes me feel like there's no point and it makes me feel like giving up, which is not, I know, anyone's intention, but fuck, I am not ready to give up and I want to help other people not give up and I want other people to help me not give up. THE FUCKERS WHO ARE DOING THIS WANT US TO FEEL LIKE THERE'S NO POINT AND THEY WANT US TO GIVE UP. That is all.

cosign this sentiment about all the pointless black comedy nihilism on these threads

as Alfred and DJP have repeatedly pointed out in these threads, performative despair is white privilege in action

I've done it in the past, and now regret it

idk if anyone linked this earlier, but greg sargent of wapo had a good article about how this type of despair is exactly what trump is counting on: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/11/trumps-latest-rally-stunts-are-designed-get-you-surrender/

performative despair is white privilege in action

say it louder for the people in the back

eephus! completely and utterly otm

I mean despair is one thing, but this "yuck yuck, all hail Emperor Trump guys, hope you like reprogramming" bullshit Letterman routine that keeps popping up on here keeps pissing me off more and more.

like it isn't even based in reality. if it were that easy to topple an election, he'd have done it during the mid-terms. There are legitimate things that he could do to undermine the election that we have to fight but nobody's gonna do it if everybody is like YEA PARTY WE ARE RIGHTS-FREE IN THIS COUNTRY, NO VACCINES AND NO FREEDOMS as if it's somehow hilarious?

and we won more than 40 seats in 2018. The fuck is wrong with you people?

it's pretty damn fucked what happened today, yes. no way to sugar coat it. but I figured he'd start flexing his muscles after he got faux-"exonerated" just as he did post "release the memo", post "Nunes-gate", post "Mueller report", and yet his momentum never lasts for long and we do manage to get a few licks in.

but hey if anybody wants to pack it in and think 2020 is over, well, there's other message boards mang

xpost fuckin' seriously. and even then i had to convince my Democrat friends that the election wasn't a disaster simply because Desantis won our state. like, stop listening to Katatonia cds or somethin

i have the other other kind of (mostly white) privilege in action, which is THIS IS MY COUNTRY because I WAS BORN HERE and I SERVED so if anybody tries to tell me democracy’s over there will be significant issues for them

I have always despised the handwringing and shrugging and moaning, especially since Trump didn’t even win anything close to a majority.

sometimes my wife is like “if he wins again, we’re leaving the country” and I am all NOPE I WILL NOT LET THEM WIN which, granted, could be its own variety of mental hangup

lots of people have that mental hangup

I don't think I'm engaging in performative despair here - for what it's worth I am fully expecting Trump to lose in 2020, barring even crazier electoral college math than what we got in 2016. But the fact remains that Trump has tried to interfere in both of these elections, both times was caught red-handed, both times "exonerated" by a Senate that was more than willing to engage in a cover up, and in both cases saw his approval ratings jump right afterwards. It's practically a given that he's going to try to pull something blatantly illegal in the months leading up to November.

srsly. Why would I surrender this country to this crew of sociopaths and charlatans, especially when Americans significantly poorer and browner than me will suffer for my cowardice?

Tombot otm, "I'm leaving" talk - even in mournful jest - just hands the nation to the usurper. And it abandons those without the resources to flee. In other words, precisely those ppl who are meant to be protected and or uplifted by the political action of privileged white liberals like, well me

what "both times" are you even talking about

xps

Or what Alfred said (and said better)

the 2016 election and the 2020 one

on a related note

Trump says the military should look at disciplinary action against Lt. Col. Vindman, who gave testimony in impeachment hearings about the president pic.twitter.com/yX1ysfOMQ5

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) February 11, 2020

I have a similar Tombot-ish reaction rooted primarily in how long my family's been here and what I feel is my responsibility as a result

xps

i'm sorry guys, long enervating day both politically and otherwise and I'm feeling raw, probably i am overreacting to posts not meant to be unhelpful, wish I had the level of equanimity required to just take every shitty piece of news that hits me in the chest and instead of absorbing it as despair let it bounce off me as a donation to one of the thousands of candidates around the country who are trying to make things better in their own spheres.

sorry for this shitty metaphor, long day as mentioned above

pull something blatantly illegal in the months leading up to November.

I just imagine the scene in Three Amigos where the German keeps accusing Ned of using tricks to simulate his fast-draw skills, and then it turns out Ned is actually fast.

I get it, but sometimes part of processing the despair is just venting it out a little before it can be productively refocused. If that makes sense. I can only absorb so much disheartening news before I feel so overwhelmed that either a) I have to vent my spleen in despair, so to speak; or b) just shutdown completely and ignore it all. The latter, for me, is the far more damaging long term option. I absolutely get how performative despair comes from a place of privilege, but I also just fucking feel despair. Really strongly. It's hard not to in this constant onslaught. Hats off to folks who are far better disciplined with how they express it though, seriously.

we're all trying to cope with a shitty, twilight zone-ish situation. I rmde @ some of the drama queen theatrics (not talking solely about on ILX) sometimes but I understand where it's coming from (a good place...these ppl are on my "team"), can sympathize, and understand it's therapeutic as eephus and jon said.

I cheered myself by giving some money to Pennsylvania state legislative races

xp -- "I'm leaving" thought processes are always short-circuited by the fact that I'm a writer so no other country wants me

I think people should leave if they fear for their safety, but short of that it seems a little, idk, soft? Spoiled? Like you’re going to abandon your country because the president causes you some psychic distress?

Also, this is the most powerful country in the world - if it really falls to despotism or whatever then it’s going to be bad news for the entire world.

"Like you’re going to abandon your country because the president causes you some psychic distress?"

I've never considered leaving BUT if I did it'd wouldn't be cause of one asshole in the white house it'd be cause of the millions who want him there

Like there's this old coot who rides around town in a shitty military surplus truck with an enormous US flag and Trump flag. Yesterday he drove past and a group of milquetoast people waved and cheered him. Literally turns my stomach to share my country with these people.

Yeah that’s why I joined the military and got my ass out of Alabama

Plus side is my vote counts for more in AZ than it did in IL. Felt great to vote against Paul Gosar even tho the fucker won.

And here is much better than somewhere like Alabama as far as having fellow liberals around. Sedona and Flagstaff are pretty liberal, and Navajo and Hopi too.

ha this is all the reason i post FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT on twitter and i think here at least once. i do mean it. i even use "patriots" in reference to my 5 people in tweets, though i long disliked its use. more than disliked.

fuck them. this is our place too. you gonna march in dc with guns and masks? fuck you, you fuckboy fucks.

this said, talk is cheap. pixels is cheaper. VOTE VOTE VOTE. don't walk away, people need us. stand in, stand.

has any other incumbent president travelled around to the various primaries and given campaign speeches the way Trump has been doing? he's spending a lot of time declaring "victory" in Iowa & NH even though nobody's really running against him. its bizarre.

Meanwhile is this approach working for Warren:

In the week between Iowa and New Hampshire, there have been no messaging shakeups or public shifts in strategy. Warren, as usual, has refused to attack her rivals and stayed positive. She's made slight tweaks to her stump speech, but her message of uniting the party to beat Donald Trump, taking on corruption and offering the broadest menu of policies is the same as it's been for months.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/11/elizabeth-warren-sticks-to-plan-new-hampshire-113718

Not going to lie, my wife and I have discussed emigrating if there's a Trump win in November, and I'm not really interested in who does and doesn't approve. As a trans woman in a queer relationship, the continuation of Trumpism will result in an even bigger, more permanent target on my back and I am not especially interested in being anyone's martyr. "Voting is your most powerful tool?" Great. I'll vote absentee. But don't lecture me on some obligation to stay here and suffer.

Makes me think a bit about the question of roots. My family had much deeper roots in Eastern Europe and Italy than I have in the US, but they realized that the smart thing to do was to come over here, and they had the foresight to do it well before things got really bad over there. It sometimes pays to go before the bad stuff happens. All my relatives who were unable to leave Eastern Europe were eventually murdered. I have no plans to leave the US, but it's hard not to think about that.

True of my dad's side of the family as well. The ones who fled Austria-Hungary and Russia during the pogroms of the late 19th century all came here and thrived. Most of the ones who didn't perished in the Holocaust. My mom's side has early 18th-century roots here. My wife is a 3rd-generation American so her roots are not particularly deep.

Not going to lie, my wife and I have discussed emigrating if there's a Trump win in November, and I'm not really interested in who does and doesn't approve.

^^^

^^^^^^

completely disagree with the prevalent opinion that it's weak and cowardly to want to leave. esp with the references to "minor psychological trauma" or whatever that bullshit post was above. jfc

No one's life should be in danger in their country.

Yesterday I (lightly for me) railed against pre-election performative despair.

If it's ok to get the hell out of Alabama, it's ok to get the hell out of the other 49, right?

sorry, i misspoke. it was "some psychic distress"

LOFL

no WmC, it is your duty as a patriot to fight for alabama. if you leave alabama, it will make it worse for other good alabamans. and if you aren't in alabama, why aren't you? that's where you should be to make the biggest impact. now go rip your shirt off, grab some kitchen knives, and run straight into the woods there to fight racists

i dont put a lot faith in the “i am my ancestors” stuff. my “people” historically moved early and at adversity and toward oppty. where theyve got entrenched theyve been no more perfect than other whites. but the shit right now, while unimaginably bad, i hope it is the equiv of a death rattle as we all move forward together.

if we let them win now, they will unbuild all they can. they have no plan outside oligarchic neo feudalism. there is plenty reason that is immoral, and plenty reasons it needn't happen. i know a fed judge and i worked with former usas who know recognize and abhor this bullshit. when leas prosecutors quit and line attys withdraw, dont give up on them. ppl who cheered “yay someone quit, standards!”, i’m like, “NO THOSE PPL YOU WANT TO STAY, IT’S CABINET PPL YOU WANT QUITTING, GAH.”

i accept and know that the fears of minorities and superminorities are for real, but we need you to stand in, too. we need you.

i got a rando call from warren dude last night who’s asked me to canvas for warren in prep for super tue. if she’s staying in, i am going to do it. it is like actually the least i can do, besides voting. the only dem i’d eyeroll at this point is butti, and i’m scared sanders does not have the skillset to do what he wants, but maybe i’ll canvas for them i general if warren is out.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Lots of great otm responses here, but I struggle with the "if we let them win" part because it's not like we are just rolling over and giving up, it's because they are cheating and gaming the system at every single turn. I just don't feel like it's "letting" them win when we aren't even playing the same game at this point.

yeah good discussion, all I have to add is that the rising tide of fascism is a global problem and not confined to the US.

other people I know who want to move are doing it purely for health care reasons, which seems legit to me as our system is broken.

i'm not opposed to dipping but i'll absolutely cop to it being a consequence of privilege (for now). my gf has brazilian and italian citizenship, and i'm not sure how viable either those options are in the face of creeping fascism. and by that i mean i'm literally ignorant, particularly wrt italy.

anyway, she's not going anywhere until her two young kids (u.s. & itlalian citizenship) are out of the house.

my original gripe was all the immediate pivots to "well we're fucked, yay Emperor Trump", not just because they're defeatist, but incredibly triggering to those of us with major anxiety issues, esp when it's pointless speculation nine months out.

i can't tell anybody whether it's right for them to move or not if he wins again. I don't think any of us can. none of us know anybody's situation. people are just afraid that if he wins again, all of the people that would fight him and the Republican government will leave, leaving only those who need people to fight on their behalf. it's an understandable fear, but it's a collective fear as opposed to an individual one. i wouldn't think less of someone who decided they couldn't live here anymore if he won again.

think of it this way, if the worst thing that happens is you move to Canada, or Europe, or somewhere else and feel peace but there's someone mad at you on the internet, I think you did well.

things are always the way they are, until they aren't

this is what makes me homicidal about the endless "McGovern 1972" chorus

xpost Speaking as someone with major anxiety issues, respect, but also trafficking in gallows humor is sometimes the only way I can process bad shit without having an embolism. That said, because I realize that can be triggering for people who process differently, I do make an effort from going as far into the black as I might otherwise tend to.

re the history of europe and migrations and labor and roles and general shit.

atop the jungfraujoch in bernese alps in che is a memorial to the people who died and struggled while completing the tunnelling there (at 3000m+!) at the end of the 19th cent.

To my maybe-not-discerning eye, the vast vast majority of those digger’s names appeared very italian. the engineers referenced had v germanic names, but i cannot identify what regionalisms were in those.

someday i’ll learn more about that melting pot, and i sorta understand that tunnelling is gonna come outta mining demos. but still— what is the reasonable conclusion there about who was doing the hard dangerous work, and who was drafting plans and directing? About maybe this history of movements of peoples?

The struggle is always real. I suspect there, too. Stand in.

Chris Hayes had a good monologue in NH about this - the idea that Trump is undefeatable, that he's gonna rig the election or cheat or has this unstoppable army of rural voters guaranteeing him an EC victory is...exactly what they want you to think. not saying parts of that aren't true, he's absolutely going to commit more crime to his own political ends, but at the end of the day the hopeless "Emperor Trump" stuff is good for the GOP and they all know it. Trump is still one of the most hated politicians in the history of this country and practically all his policy goals are deeply unpopular. his one thing is that the economy is strong.

also worth noting that in spite of Trumps all time high approval ratings the current polling still shows him losing handily to every single Dem candidate, with Sanders and Bloomps beating him by nearly double digits.

Chris Hayes had a good monologue in NH about this - the idea that Trump is undefeatable, that he's gonna rig the election or cheat or has this unstoppable army of rural voters guaranteeing him an EC victory is...exactly what they want you to think. not saying parts of that aren't true, he's absolutely going to commit more crime to his own political ends, but at the end of the day the hopeless "Emperor Trump" stuff is good for the GOP and they all know it. Trump is still one of the most hated politicians in the history of this country and practically all his policy goals are deeply unpopular. his one thing is that the economy is strong.

― frogbs, Wednesday, February 12, 2020

otm

Also, the Gallup poll that freaked us out last week was an outlier.

the economy is not strong for a significant minority of the population

my gf has brazilian and italian citizenship, and i'm not sure how viable either those options are in the face of creeping fascism. and by that i mean i'm literally ignorant, particularly wrt italy.

well, I would suggest that Brazil might not be the *best* choice wrt to avoiding fascism

xp hey I agree but for some reason this country decided that the key economic barometer is a system driven entirely by speculation and made up numbers that values Tesla as being 4 times more valuable than Ford despite selling 1% as many cars instead of, say, whether or not the average person can afford to buy groceries

Part of me wonders if there will come a point where Trump starts to see the writing on the wall and, as the realization dawns upon him that he might finally have to pay for his rampant venality once he's no longer in office, begins to transition from his trademark assholism towards a more hat-in-hand, foot-shuffling approach in deference to the likely president-elect. 'Aw, chee willikers, I...I was just foolin' around, fellers!'

I realize that this is a complete fantasy which assumes Donald Trump possesses any of the qualities commonly associated with a functioning human being, but still. It could happen.

trump is the dumbest guy to ever hold the office but he's definitely got a child or really pet-like understanding that he gets the most treats from indulging in his worst behavior

imagine how much him and his ppl will bitch and moan about any attempts to hold him accountable, and how they'll say Angry Dems are the ones violating norms and are we living in a banana republic now where you can jail your predecessor once you grab the reins of power?? Then for the rest of eternity they will try to prosecute any Dem prez as soon as they're out of office on some er trumped up charges.

One of the more baffling things about him is that, given that he seems to be driven almost in toto by self-interest, his self-preservational instincts are for absolute shit (see: the eight million problems he's personally brought on himself). At the moment, that's offset to a great extent by a GOP willing to bend over backwards to cover his ass, but he may be surprised to discover how many of his republican friends drift away if he loses the election (and, possibly, more importantly, if a number of his friends are likewise voted out of office thanks to the Trump Taint).

May the Trump taint infect them all

i accept and know that the fears of minorities and superminorities are for real, but we need you to stand in, too. we need you.

The pure fucking balls of this. You wouldn't say this to a German Jew in 1938, so don't fucking say it to me now.

as a threatened minority, I feel the opposite and am not going anywhere.

I would've told German Jews in 1938 to stop cooperating with Nazi authorities and giving them lists of people to murder and deport

also tbrr I think Nazi analogies are way off and I'm sick of them

do you. i’ll fight with you, i cant fight for you.

I'll hop right on murdering and deporting people.

There are currently 12 states trying to make it illegal for medical professionals to provide affirming care to trans teens, and even more states fighting to keep LGBT people unprotected by anti-discrimination law, and a Supreme Court that is in all likelihood about to rule that gender identity and sexual orientation are explicitly not protected by Title VII. And no conceivable Congress for the foreseeable future is going to do anything about that. So I'll keep my own counsel about what analogies are and aren't apt.

And, not for nothing, but despite being Jewish you are a cishet white man and can be completely invisible.

and there is a point in any fight where flight is the only safe manner to survive. i have no issue with that.

I think it's easy to assert but difficult to know with certainty how one will/won't/might respond if shit were to get truly dire. I would guess, knowing both my cellular loathing of injustice and general haplessness wrt doing anything real about it, I would almost certainly be the bullet-riddled corpse they're talking about when they ask 'okay, anyone else wanna be a hero?'. But who really knows.

xxp I didn't ask you to! I don't know what morally superior mantle you're trying to claim, but go nuts. It has nothing to do with me.

my gf has brazilian and italian citizenship, and i'm not sure how viable either those options are in the face of creeping fascism. and by that i mean i'm literally ignorant, particularly wrt italy.

At least Italian citizenship gives you access to the rest of the EU.

^ah yes very true. and even though she grew up in Brazil and all her family is there, she’d def go to Italy were she inclined to leave the US.

though hey maybe it won’t be up to her if GOP has it’s way

as a non-student of trans rights and a supporter of a group supporting migrating trans persons, i want morally improved conditions of lots of shit, that’s the best claim to morality i’ll venture.

my tendency is to believe that coordinated allies for moral battles are better than uncoordinated flight, though that is sometimes the only answer.

but despite being Jewish you are a cishet white man and can be completely invisible.

if you mean "not go to synagogue where I routinely wonder what I would do if someone burst in to murder us all" ok sure. that invisibility is predicated on essentially erasing a part of myself, which I refuse to do.

but we shouldn't fight, I get you feel threatened and that's totally legit and I want to support you and do what I can to make you and others feel safe, we are in this together.

xps

she’d def go to Italy were she inclined to leave the US.

no fascists racist homo/transphobes in Italy lol

i’m am with you both, peace. privilege does (mis)inform me as it does many.

(FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT)

you're right, Shakey, that was a shitty take by me. I have friends who attend Tree of Life in Pittsburgh and wasn't really thinking. My apologies.

no worries, hugs all around

/she’d def go to Italy were she inclined to leave the US./

no fascists racist homo/transphobes in Italy lol

;and I suspect that would stand even if Bolsanaro wasn’t in power)

There's nowhere else either of us could claim citizenship, but we've discussed trying to emigrate to the Netherlands as it seems to be very trans-friendly even compared to other EU countries.

Everyone with the capacity for caring about the well-being of people they've never met is hurting right now, and that's gonna manifest in a variety of ways (not all of them pleasant), so it always does my heart good to see the general tendency toward comity 'round these parts. Even when nothing else is doing the trick, that gives me hope that we can push through this shit.

Voting Republican to be made illegal

profiles in courage

Sen. Murkowski on the Stone sentencing revision: "I don't like this chain of events ... The President weighs in, all of a sudden, Justice comes back and says change the deal. I think most people in America would look at that and say hmm, that just doesn't look right."

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) February 12, 2020

"tut tut"

it might look bad, it might even be blatantly illegal, but is it impeachable? impossible to say

HMMMMMMMMMM

The Constitution is very clear about the Senate's role in such matters, and fortunately all that we are called upon to do is judge how concerning this type of behavior is. And let me be absolutely clear, I am deeply concerned.

Surely there's nobody that still thinks this election will be fair or that anyone other than Trump could possibly win. The outcome has already been determined.

Please scroll back 24 hours for responses to your post so that we don't all have to relive the past 24 hours.

i am unsurprised by the username attached to that post

The outcome has already been determined.

FP'd

The outcome has already been determined.

https://i.imgur.com/0OXKK25.jpg

Barr to testify before House Judiciary on March 31, Nadler says. https://t.co/JxAPDCu1GM

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020

He won’t show up for that

Just curious, how will they transcribe said testimony when Barr just sits in a chair doing this for sixty minutes

https://ak7.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/4224037/thumb/11.jpg

Chairman Nadler: First, the chair would like to thank the distinguished Attorney General and welcome him to this hearing. Before we proceed, do you have you any statement you would like to read into the record?

Barr: (The witness remained silent, extending the middle fingers of both hands aloft in the direction of the Chairman.)

mar 31 seems...remote

The Founders conceived of a President running amok and legislated for that. They did not conceive of people below him and to either side not giving a damn.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) February 11, 2020

they also conceived that we would have used our mechanism for removal successfully at least one by now.

*once

but they wrote the provisions shittily so

Then for the rest of eternity they will try to prosecute any Dem prez as soon as they're out of office on some er trumped up charges.

a) big fucking whoop

b) if the expectation of later scrutiny keeps future presidents from criming relentlessly in office, yay

c) it's impossible to predict what the GOP will even be or stand for once they're not in inexplicable self-created thrall to a crazed void of narcissism and outwardly-directed self-hatred. can they return to a fake image of being moderate or sensible after this? they're certainly unlikely to find a replacement figurehead of such reprehensibility that he or she can hit the pavlovian stimulus for Trump's base. especially one who's had the advantage of the television advertising a completely bullshit version of them for 30 years. the two-party system is a tumour, and hollowing themselves out for Trump might lead to a collapse afterward. (if youth support for the likes of Bernie Sanders and AOC leads to the evisceration of the existing DNC, double bonus.)

but they wrote the provisions shittily so

the provisions didn't anticipate mass political parties, so

The Founders conceived of a President running amok and legislated for that. They did not conceive of people below him and to either side not giving a damn.
— Richard M. Nixon

Anyone else notice that this tweet from this source seems a bit cockeyed?

they wrote the provisions shittily

governance eventually comes down to people making decisions. when the governing people are shitty, so is the governance. I'm not sure what system they could have devised that would have worked any better, given the people currently operating the system.

let's review what the constitution says.

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Unless, that is, a majority of the most powerful 100 people in the country want to keep getting elected. In that case, no Impeachment shall be possible, and you may proceed directly to Article III."

Aimless, presumably RMN did not consider his actions "amok"

the two-party system is a tumour, and hollowing themselves out for Trump might lead to a collapse afterward.

GOP been changing from Buckley type dweebs to Deplorable meatheads over last few decades. There will be a party that caters to that ~44% of the country that's ruled by fear and paranoia, the Dunning-Kruger types, the simpletons who want simple solutions to complex problems, etc.

will be a party that caters to that in foreseeable future

feel like a broken record but the problem doesn't stem from Trump or from GOP, but from the millions of fuckers who vote them into office

One side has decided to win by breaking the game, and will use any illegal or irregular method (propaganda, abuse of power, stacking courts, destroying the administrative state, voter caging and purging) to get that done.

The other side wants to both play the game and win the game, by election. I’m not sure it’s possible.

As Bitecofer says, Republicans know they are playing “for keeps.” This is correct.

Who here thinks the house should impeach the MF again? I mean, he clearly didn't learn any lessons and is back to committing crimes. I get that it's basically pointless (the Senate seems hell-bent on endless Trump fellatio), but the alternative ("wait until November") seems irresponsible.

Yeah, impeach him every time he crimes imo. It's not like any other major governing can get done by Congress this year.

that ~44% of the country that's ruled by fear and paranoia, the Dunning-Kruger types, the simpletons who want simple solutions to complex problems, etc

Like I kinda said in that post, Trump has been a case not just of handing the bell to the dogs, but effectively transforming the broadcast news media into a PA system for the bell, and playing MAX/MSP loops of the bell all day.

No other individual is going to be able to replace that blast of hate/fear as effectively. It's very likely that micro-Trumps will do well in deep Republican constituencies, but it's also likely that this will decrease party unity. Even a fraction of Trump's self-interest, let alone his narcissism, will make it very hard for these types to effectively caucus. I'd expect to see a lot of these types succeeding as independents after Trump: his rally-attending-type base want the reckless buffoon figure, they don't want the nonentities subsuming themselves to him.

i don't think re-impeaching is politically a great idea. doing it once was necessary, and showed that republicans will countenance anything at all; more attempts seem likely to gain nothing but further firing up magans

if they wanna go after barr, or actually get bolton under oath, tho . . .

I hope you're right, and you're analysis and predictions are as good as any. But I'm v skeptical of all predictions about US politics. Trump becoming prez was a punchline until it happened.

I got burned in 2016 and trying not to get hopes up too much but I do think Donnie gets beat in Nov. Grinning just thinking about it.

Did anyone even notice that this happened? lol

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/12/798296505/deval-patrick-ends-his-presidential-bid

if they wanna go after barr, or actually get bolton under oath, tho . . .

Yeah / hell yeah

the alternative ("wait until November") seems irresponsible.

Pelosi only trusted the people to object to "national security" crimes. She doesn't care enough about the other kinds, or trust that the people will be absorbed by her inept messaging.

Seemed more like she was concerned about election security... because it affected Biden.

One reason I don’t think the GOP will be able to replicate Trump is simply because it’s got to be impossible to find someone with that much fucking baggage, who draws that much criticism every time he opens his mouth, therefore validating their message of “the mainstream media hates us and that’s why they have to lie all the time”, while the actual media decides they also have to go equally negative on the other side to appear balanced, leading to a situation where stories about their guy defrauding old people, sexually assaulting dozens of women, and stealing from charity are all one day stories that are quickly forgotten while a relatively minor story about say, improper email use suddenly becomes a giant scandal that eats up thousands of hours of airtime. No one else on the planet is dirty and shameless enough to pull that off.

maybe Steven Forbes will run again

gotta admit, i'm intrigued by his flat tax. imagine billionaires paying a 17% tax instead of using loopholes to pay 0%, wow!

Remember when Steven Forbes hosted SNL?

not making it up: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/season-21/episode/17-steve-forbes-with-rage-against-the-machine-63781

You kinda buried the 'with musical guests Rage Against the Machine' lede there.

Good morning!

during their performance of "Bulls On Parade", the band hung an upside-down American flag on one of their amplifiers, in protest of Forbes hosting.

Afterwards, a very angry Lorne Michaels chased the band out of the studio, resulting in them being banned from the show.

lol I saw that episode live, I think I was 12 years old and obviously had no clue who Steve Forbes was

iirc he brings up the "flat tax" during his monologue and even at 12 I thought that was the dumbest idea on the planet

that reminds me wasn't one of Trump's big talking points that you'd be able to file your taxes on a postcard or something? whatever happened to that

Liberals shut down the postcard industry

the skit about the Teeve Torbes novel was pretty good

I think we can forgive President Trump his one declaration that didn't pan out.

On page 142, he writes: “I don’t think Grenator Dole is handling the pressure very well.” [ confused ] “Grenator”? I don’t know why the author felt he had to disguise the word “Senator”.. Anyway, he goes on to say: “Today, Dob Bole leaned over to me, and said, ‘If family values means stealing the taxpayers’ money and sniffing model glue, I’m way into family values!'”

John Kelly has Thoughts

Misgivings! Goodness me.

what's his excuse for not garroting Trump when he had the chance

Hope Hicks coming back to help change trump’s diapers

Reminds me of the time the garbage disposal obliterated my hand and then after the stump had healed I jammed that fucker right back in.

Spicer and Priebus back too

The self-loathing is strong with these ones.

How many times do you have to get a fistful of fishhooks removed from your stomach before you learn that swallowing a fistful of fishhooks is oh wait, you're doing that because you wish you were dead and don't know how to make that happen, you poor thing.

This should be fun.

Barr pushes back against Trump’s criticism of Justice Dept., says tweets ‘make it impossible for me to do my job’

By Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky
Feb. 13, 2020 at 3:34 p.m. CST

Attorney General William P. Barr pushed back hard Thursday against President Trump’s criticism of the Justice Department, saying, “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.”

In an interview with ABC News, Barr said presidential statements and tweets “about the department, about people in the department, our men and women here, about cases pending here, and about judges before whom we have cases, make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors and the department that we’re doing our work with integrity.”

The attorney general’s comments are almost certain to anger the president, who has heaped criticism on some current and former Justice Department officials over prosecutions and investigations involving the president’s former associates and alleged leaking by government officials. Barr said he was prepared to accept the consequences of speaking out against the president.

“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,” the attorney general said. He also noted that when he became attorney general last year, he pledged to resist intimidation from any quarter, whether Congress, the White House, or elsewhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/barr-pushes-back-against-trumps-criticism-of-justice-dept-says-tweets-make-it-impossible-for-me-to-do-my-job/2020/02/13/7ff5f308-4e7c-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

lmao

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.”

Fuck Barr. He's just play-acting the role he knows Congress wants to see from him, while his actions will continue to roll over to Trump every goddamned time.

I'm sure he got Trump's permission to say this first, 100% kayfabe

maybe. the people in the administration tend to eventually get fed up. unlike the republicans in congress, who i guess are far away enough to continue to act like all is good.

I know this is exhausting to most of you but it is still funny that Trump ran on hiring "only the best people" and "draining the swamp" and now has to attack his own hires and make excuses for not firing them sooner about once a month

lol

This Barr interview is DeNiro in Goodfellas yelling at Johnny Roastbeef for buying his wife a Cadillac after the Lufthansa heist.

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) February 13, 2020

Hahaha

It'll be great if the thing that takes down Barr is being slightly rude to Trump in an interview

Of course (as WaPo pointed out yesterday) Trump excoriated Obama for inappropriately trying to influence the DoJ in 2016.

narrator: this is surprising no one, and changes nothing, but still

OMG that tweet.

"I didn't do it, and who cares if I did?" Every time!

“The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2020

What is this tic that drives him to keep arguing the legality of his actions or potential actions? We all know you don't give a fuck, Donnie! And we all know that you don't give a fuck if we give a fuck! While you're in office, you're going to do whatever you're going to do and you're going to get away with it! I don't know why he's so obsessed with providing a pretext.

(burns down White House) No, but see, I'm president, so I'm allowed. Perfectly legal!

What is this tic that drives him to keep arguing the legality of his actions or potential actions?

it means a) I have already done this and b) by stating that I think it's legal you cannot claim that I knew I was breaking the law

I just mean that he flagrantly and joyfully breaks the law and he's been given a free pass to do so and the opinions of people who oppose that behavior don't matter to him and will have no impact on his decision to do so. Why bother with those appeals at all under those circumstances.

It's not like the bogus insistence that he's operating within the bounds of the law somehow absolves him of liability. It's just a weird, non sequitur aside for the sake of people he'd just as soon watch die in a car fire.

It's just the logical extension of the John Yoo memo defense--as long as the president can find one dildo who will say he can do something he has plausible deniability of abuse of power.

It's just a weird, non sequitur aside

The gentleman in question is a liar so pathological that he cannot state any number with accuracy. He is also an incessant braggart. Here, you see these two impulses sparking at once.

Escalation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/us/Border-Patrol-ICE-Sanctuary-Cities.html?emc=edit_na_20200214&ref=cta&nl=breaking-news&campaign_id=60&instance_id=0&segment_id=21298&user_id=f0ef51a738774f8c6d037c5c6beb7573®i_id=101106615&fbclid=IwAR1XJ1QNcqeidEx85GOciwFNEXoLXqU-05nUI6XBvqxsqyrCVmXoVcGXgb0

please sic don't hurt em

xp this is not going to end well

Fucking scum of the earth

I admit it’s literally impossible to tell if Raymond is for or against shadowy above-the-law organisations that track citizens and weaponise their data against them

I guess I don't post here often enough for you to know that I am 100% against this shit.

sic is referring to your extended referrer url “in character”

god forbid someone records my click!!!

*sighs*

How did I miss that

https://www.nycbar.org/media-listing/media/detail/prosecution-of-roger-stone-and-related-actions-by-the-department-of-justice

i'm clicking on the other one just to make sic grind his teeth

think it's his gears yr grinding

Man upset he can’t bring cutout of Donald Trump to dialysis

^ So, the guy is allowed to bring an item that comforts him. He chooses to bring a photo of Trump. Presumably he is comforted. But suddenly this no longer comforts him and instead he must bring a small cardboard cutout of himself standing next to a Trump photo. This was his second choice. For comfort. So, now he is comforted, right? Nope. For unexplained reasons, this now gives him no comfort. He must have a life-size cutout of Trump. For comfort. The dialysis place objects and he insists they are trampling on his rights.

His son insists the Trump cutout takes up "no more space than a garbage can." Hmmm. Maybe I'd like his son. Hard to say.

he's from Florida. the dude's kid posted about it publicly on FB and I clowned him, and he private messaged me all butthurt.

i'm just loling at a 6 foot Trump cutout under dude's armpits

in bizarroworld trump matches and then donates a kindney.

i'd imagine his kidney is 85% stone at this point

https://jalopnik.com/trumps-attempt-to-roll-back-fuel-economy-standards-cont-1841697849

Why are we doing this again? We may not, in fact, be doing this in the end but if we don’t it’ll either be an almost inspiring story of how expertise prevailed over politics or a laughably incompetent attempt to impose bad public policy just because, pick your poison. Either way, I’m sure we’ll hear more from Trump about it, since Michigan is a swing state and the election is swiftly approaching. Whether the proposal dies or just remains in limbo, Trump will find someone to blame.

My guess is that Trump doesn't care a damn if fuel standards go up, down or sideways. Instead, he is loudly telling his base he's going to shit on the liberals who want to FORCE them to buy better mileage vehicles, when it's their God-given right to drive whatever the hell gas-gulping monster they feel like driving. This makes him a hero and once more proves he is the only politician who really understands them and is on their side of the culture war. If they get that message loud and clear, the actual fuel standards become irrelevant.

Can one heroic NASCAR driver do what we are all secretly hoping, forever removing this tyrant

OH NO. Does this mean I'm gonna be culled from the email list? (No, it does not.)

Bob,

According to our records, your Sustaining Membership has EXPIRED.

This is an official notice that your Sustaining Membership has EXPIRED. If you don’t renew soon, your status will be marked as lapsed.

President Trump wanted us to reach out and ask you why that was, Bob.

2020 Sustaining Members are going to play a VITAL role in President Trump’s 2020 campaign, and he needs to know if he can count on you.

We need every Member to renew if we're going to win again in 2020. Can President Trump count on you, Bob?

Contribute $5 or more before 11:59 PM TONIGHT to renew your Official 2020 Sustaining Membership and let President Trump know you’re with him in 2020. >>
​​​​​​
Your Sustaining Member contribution goes directly toward helping President Trump win in 2020 and continue his hard work to Keep America Great.

We’re sending President Trump an updated list of Sustaining Members tomorrow. Make sure he sees YOUR name at the top of that list.

Please contribute $5 or more before 11:59 PM TONIGHT to ensure that President Trump sees your name on the list of 2020 Sustaining Members.

Thank you,

Team Trump 2020

Is “the President himself would be disappointed to not see your name on the list” a common fundraising tactic?

Probably, although his disappointment would be buried in the tiny pang of disappointment he felt when someone verbally summarized the monthly report on campaign fundraising and came to the item that mentioned that X number of people stopped being "Sustaining Members".

"I'm not saying anyone is expecting drone strikes if you don't re-up your membership but I'm also not saying it's impossible."

i havent novichoked you, but it would be totally my right to do it as Preznit, plenty of countries support this practice.

so Air Force One buzzed the Daytona 500

Sadly Trump wasn't pushed out

President Trump wanted us to reach out and ask you why that was, Bob.

“ITS NOT GREAT BOB”

WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF, BOB?

Seems significant:

Federal judges' association calls emergency meeting after DOJ intervenes in case of Trump ally Roger Stone

only if you care. those judges have no power over Trump, so he will just tweet bad things about them and use it to ask his base for more money, because it's so unfair.

"Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected," says George Soros in a pointed letter to the FT. He has a point...https://t.co/J84gQ7W16c

— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) February 18, 2020

Soros going against Zuckerberg would really break the antisemitic conspiracy theorists' brains if they weren't already broken

unrelated Q: would it be annoying to also have a rolling 2020 non-presidential election thread (i.e. for Senate/House/State races?)

NO

too many goddamn threads. I've wanted to bury the fucking Bloomberg thread in eight tons of concrete.

i would like that but maybe it is time for a separate politics board...

(i feel like this may have been broached in the past? but i have no idea where ilx folks came down on it)

0bv there's no "Politics" board so

xxxp the narrative

2016: fake news
2020: fake jews

maybe it is time for a separate politics board

strongly agree, might i suggest reddit or styleforum.net

strongly disagree, wtf difference would it make beyond requiring an extra click

that's what they said about the fleshlight

turn on your fleshlight

i was under the impression that minimizing the number of unique areas that we talk about US politics was a good thing, but hey, let's create a politics board and make sure to create ten mini-threads on micro topics.

i already frequently have difficulty remembering if we talked about this thing in Thread A or Thread B

I guess you can file this one under getting pay back on an election year.

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/14/mitch-mcconnell-celebrated-key-securing-army-hq-fort-knox/4754106002/

CNBC reports:

President Donald Trump has issued a pardon of Michael Milken, the former junk bond king who became a face of the insider trading financial scandals of the 1980s.

Trump cited the “incredible job” that Milken has done supporting cancer research since his conviction for racketeering and securities fraud.

Milken, 73, originally was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his crimes while heading the bond department at the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, and fined $600 million.

gee wonder why he is suddenly pardoning a bunch of white collar criminals

xpost, I feel like all the politics threads need to be locked for 48 hours. I used to read all of them in their entirety but there is so much chum on them now.

Trump pardons are like when the Joker releases all the criminals from Arkham Asylum

Well here's to hoping they result in the same degree of street justice.

he should pardon Avenatti

the pardons on Trump's final day in office will be hilarious

aaaand the only white collar felon in jail in 2022 is...DONALD J. TRUMP MIWIONAIRE

The facts are just washing over us with numbness, as intended, but it's worth taking a second to try and remember that three years ago it wasn't normal to pardon convicted criminals because you repeatedly saw them on Fox News asking for pardons, or they gave you hundreds of thousands of $ in a couple of months.

Totally missed that Trump commuted Rod Blagojevich's sentence. Motherfucker's on a roll, huh.

Good morning!!

for someone so convinced the democrats are crooks he seems to have no problem with the one who is demonstrably a crook

Saw that ol' Blago now referring to himself as a 'Trumpocrat'.

People are just so fucking gross.

Blago was on the Apprentice. Trump said some weird thing about how he admired him because he knew people who gave up and curled up under their desks when faced with less.

don't do your job, or you might lose your job

A top Defense Department official who internally raised concerns about freezing military aid to Ukraine has been asked by his national security superiors to resign and is stepping down.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon John Rood authored emails pushing for the aid to be released, according to CNN.

those national security advisers are spineless fucks

sorry, national security "superiors"

imagine that it's five to ten years and a time hole rips through a cumulus and delivers this news from a random day in the distant year of 2020:

The suggestions of resignation came at the end of a day when the president asserted his dominance over a justice system that had long sought to insulate itself from political pressures. Calling himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” Mr. Trump demanded a new trial for Mr. Stone, urged federal judges to address the “tremendous” abuse of the special counsel investigation of his campaign and bypassed the traditional pardon process to grant clemency to celebrity convicts recommended by his friends, allies and political donors.

Never before have I witnessed a person so driven by making people who already hated him deeply yesterday hate him even more today. Like you'd think we'd reach a saturation point where our collective hate waves would finally melt him down or something. That's science, right?

can't wait to vote. i'm going to vote ten times!

Calling himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” Mr. Trump demanded a new trial

The judiciary is a separate branch of government from law enforcement. This is why.

It's almost like he's taking cues from Tim Heidecker's On Cinema universe character now instead of the other way around.

my state legislature is busy trying to curtail the power of the state supreme court

yelling about checks and balances in the street right now tbh

It's almost like he's taking cues from Tim Heidecker's On Cinema universe character now instead of the other way around.

Can't wait to see the Trump equivalent of Dekkar. Something country-flavored?

Calling himself “the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” Mr. Trump demanded a new trial

what's sad is that the real quote was “I’m allowed to be totally involved. I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”

fall debate response: "guess again"

Axiom literally donating his hand to Tim and Tim subsequently dismantling Dekkar was a pretty Trumpy thing to do now that I think about it

the only only only person who could probly legit ruin trump is putin, but he’s got no motive tbh.

If it's looking like a big Trump loss this fall, I could see him cutting the puppet strings, revealing loads of kompromat and laughing "SUCKERZZZZZ" to rub US noses in its own mess. Maybe I'm just fantasizing.

my fantasies usually involve him being run over by the same car 30 or 40 times

let other cars have a chance

Given a Putin goal is to remove the US from sole superpower status through encouraging internal fracturing and destabilizing alliances, he has little reason not to surreptitiously dump info about Trump's puppet strings, after a reelection.

At any rate, evidently some in the FBI are following up on forensicnews.net's reporting on Trump Org's financing from Gazprombank via DeutscheBank (even if mainstream media is avoiding the subject). It'll all come out eventually, so Putin may just time it to cause maximum damage to the US.

40 months in jail for Stone, but will probably be more like 9 when Trump pardons him

The nonpartisan election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted its rating of the Colorado Senate race to “leans Democratic” from a “toss-up” on Thursday.

The rating switch comes as recent polling has shown Colorado voters are more disapproving of Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) than they are of President Trump.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball cited polling in the state, noting polls in Colorado have been sparse and that the GOP senator is in a tough spot, risking losing some of his own base voters if he criticizes Trump.

Just 37 percent of Colorado voters approve of Gardner, and 48 percent said they disapprove of him, according to a poll from Global Strategy Group conducted between Jan. 31 and Feb. 4.

The same poll found 44 percent of Colorado voters approve of Trump and 56 percent disapprove of the president.

Trump’s approval was also stronger than Gardner among “very conservative” and “not very conservative” Republicans, although both men had the overwhelming support from this group, according to the poll which surveyed 818 registered voters.

I forget the difference between "leans" and "toss-up," which to me are virtually synonymous. Does this mean Colorado looks worse for Dems as a blue pickup in the prez election?

No, it looks better. It's leaning toward a Democratic pickup.

oops sorry -- missed "from" in first line. Carry on.

37% approval rating doesn't bode well for Gardner's re-election prospects.

Collins currently pulling a similar 42% (with a 52% negative rating - the highest in the country, even above McConnell)

possibly tied with Susan fucking Collins, who was also at 52% negative in January (source: one of the early paragraphs in this piece on why susan fucking collins sucks so badly which was posted on ILX earlier that I'm still working through)

Hard to believe she even polls that high. McConnell is evil incarnate but he at least gets things done, like yeah everyone really hated Barry Bonds because he was a cheater and a jerk but you sure as hell wanted him on your team. I can't imagine who would be satisfied with the job Collins is doing, her constant "I'm extremely concerned about this but have no choice but to vote against my conscience" stance besides maybe like Joe Scarborough

you should read that article, it's good (https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/susan-collins-moderate-legacy-trump.html)

among the things i've learned is that not that along ago she was actually once very popular, with the highest approval ratings in the senate other than bernie sanders

i may note these facts on my highly anticipated website susancollins2020.com, for which i've still made absolutely nothing

imo go full rotten.com on it

never do that, it's not worth the cost to your soul

i want to do something that singlehandedly destroys her chances. i want to be like elizabeth warren to bloomberg last night

write a diss track

i feel like nathan fielder should just do this

Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, in a disclosure that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a particular irritant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/politics/russian-interference-trump-democrats.html

holy shit, russia is interfering in the 2020 elections? that can't be right...trump directly asked Putin if russia interfered in 2016, and Putin said they didn't! what am i missing!?!?

oh well!

*stares blankly*

cool headline on my homepage, "Trump fears Dems will exploit report on Russian meddling", so the story isn't about the fact that a foreign power is (again) trying to fuck with our elections, but rather, as always, "how does Trump feel about all this?"

I'm so sorry he feews bad

I sure hopes him doesn't get a tummy ache and shit himself to deaf!

look vladdy daddy told him it wernt no thing, and he could see no reason it would be a thing, so...

it’s over, LOSERS! *slams locker*

^my unfunny there reflects my feeling that this while bullshit is acted out like a shitty john hughes hs scene.

https://i.imgur.com/pCA0JYr.jpg

we're in that age of journalism where you have to read the headlines in a sarcastic voice in order for them to make sense

huge if true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrP6U6JjAUg

Pareene:

Democrats are furious that a shady conservative PAC has begun spending money to boost the candidacy of a liberal candidate (Erica Smith) in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s upcoming Senate election over the more moderate front-runner. ...

It would be one thing if Smith were a kook—a Vermin Supreme–style stunt candidate or a LaRouche follower or a libertarian—but from what little I know about her, she seems to be a very normal state politician. She is in her third term, she has been an engineer and an educator, and she lists endorsements from seemingly normal Democratic politicians on her website. I see no obvious red flags—except that, apparently, she has less access to the Democratic fundraising network than Cunningham....

In other words, Cunningham is a product of the Democratic candidate-selection machine that above all values the “right” biographical details (moderates with military backgrounds are ideal), along with the ability to pass what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee calls the “Rolodex” test (candidates are asked to go through their phone contacts and add up how much money they could raise from everyone in it). Smith clearly failed the Rolodex test.

https://newrepublic.com/article/156629/gops-silly-attempt-boost-liberal-democrat

I personally think it's great that Mitch McConnell's shady conservative super PAC is running attack ads against a Democrat in North Carolina.

Guess Pareene's due diligence ("what little I know about her") didn't include noting that Smith has denounced the ads.

that doesnt matter if it doesnt matter

Good afternoon!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html

good spring, summer, fall, and night, this is going to be a shitshow

i see the Clintonite Homo blog chorus is unanimously asking Sanders to drop out

it's going to bring out the most idiotic responses from all sides. bernie's supporters will be constantly accused of being russian plants, and his own supporters might being fighting internally as they try to identify them. meanwhile conservatives get to tell themselves a new story: sure, russia wants to help trump. both they want to help democrats too. both sides, not just trump

sorry, imagine those sentences with fewer typos and more insight

re the bernie brief, well yeah

Fuck this. It’s a ploy to kneecap him—leaking the brief to the press so they can report on it.

People support Bernie because they have seen family members crushed by medical debt and student loans. Or they got dicked over in the financial crisis when they mortgge tripled overnight. He is not a random outsider who serves only to disrupt the system like Trump—he’s offering solutions to problems that have been roundly ignored for decades

yes fuck this shit

Putin just wants everyone suspicious, frightened, confused and fighting with everyone else over what the truth even is.

expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed, particularly in America

Aimless otm. inasmuch as Bernie interest is in disrupting the system and Putin's interest is in fomenting dissent, Russia promoting both him and Trump makes perfect sense.

er not dissent, more like confusion

I dont care at all what putin wants. Its such a dumb obsession.

I dont care at all what putin wants

lol ok

I’ve been thinking about drafting a facebook post — because it‘s really only relevant to facebook — advising friends about how to spot questionable groups/sources because a few who are less online keep reposting liberal content mill crap.

Key signs: most of the content is sourced from other sites or memes, the profile links to a website with spurious content and “petitions” that seem to be the same form as their “sign up for our email newsletter” form, and a handful of other indicators that there’s nothing of substance there.

I expect most of these pages to flip to selling diet plans when the politics grift gets old

I think linking a totally normal presidential campaign to russian spies sows confusion

Putin wants some prime shoreline and oil priced in rubles and not euros or us dollars iirc

the eternal dream of warm-sea ports

sounds idyllic tbh

iirc it's long been an iowan strategic priority as well

we’re busy spitefully ruining the mississippi delta by dumping nitrogen in the river

Typically good piece by David Roth, here on how reactions to both Trump and Sanders highlight the institutional failures of both the GOP and the Democratic party establishment.

https://newrepublic.com/article/156639/bernie-sanders-no-donald-trump

A similar transparency is fundamental to Sanders’s pitch; he pushes for the ambitious policy goals that Democrats have long claimed to want but leaves out the signature Democratic caveat that those things are of course impossible and anyway must be negotiated with an opposition that is by now quite open about not just its unwillingness to do any such thing but its belief that the Democrats are inherently illegitimate. Again, this only looks like a parallel where the candidates are concerned—Sanders deals in the universal “us,” where Trump governs by pointing to increasingly large tranches of Americans and sneering “not you.”

From the perspective of the institutional parties and their aligned media organizations, though, the parallel is cleaner. People who have made their living by defining and describing the scope and scale of the possible naturally resent being challenged on that sort of thing; party insiders, just by dint of their vantage point, do not take kindly to the sudden presence of uninvited masses. In nominating and then electing Trump, Republicans made obvious the extent to which they were no longer playing what one side persists in thinking is a gentleman’s game. The president oversees prisons with children in them and often “jokes” about remaining in office for the rest of his natural life. Only one side of that once-polite binary is even alarmed by this. It’s somehow the same one that keeps playing as if the old rules were still in effect.

Acronym—the well-capitalized, well-connected, deliberately opaque “venture-style” outfit headlined by veteran Democratic campaign types that built the busted app that helped turn the Iowa caucuses into a tragicomic shitshow—is precisely the sort of failure that would result from a political establishment disappearing up its own metaphorical ass. Whether that organization is deliberately scammy or just a low-utility gambit executed with slapstick amateurism is, at some point, immaterial.

sorry, imagine those sentences with fewer typos and more insight

Nu borad description

Did we already cover this?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-prosecutors-lay-out-case-against-julian-assange-extradition-n1141366

Assange’s legal team insists the American case against him is politically motivated. His lawyers say they will present evidence that the Australian was offered a pardon by the Trump administration if he agreed to say Russia wasn't involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails that were published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Assange’s lawyers say the offer was made in August 2017 by then-Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who claimed to be acting on behalf of President Donald Trump.

The White House has called the claim “a complete fabrication and a total lie.” Rohrabacher acknowledges discussing the Democrat leak with Assange, but denies offering a pardon from the president.

Rohrabacher acknowledges discussing the Democrat leak with Assange, but denies offering a pardon from the president, saying "I was very careful to make no explicit offer of a pardon; all I did was drop a few broad hints and wink at him vigorously."

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CloudyNegligibleBergerpicard-small.gif

"That Pam Anderson, she's a real goer, isn't she?"

the Democrat leak

It drives me bonkers that mainstream news organizations have picked up this garbage verbal tic.

Ginni Thomas unleashed!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/clarence-thomas-wife-among-conservative-activists-leading-trump-efforts-to-compile-deep-state-hit-list

Clarence and Ginni seem like a well-matched couple. I'd wonder what their dinner conversation sounds like, if I thought Clarence ever said anything.

"Is that a ..."

Nah, I won't.

Ginny dressed like this once:

https://cdn.talkingpointsmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ml28atfg8ybgtsi8me6l.jpg

Ginni Thomas unleashed!

unleashed, muzzled, brought to curb

let's neuter all this dog talk!

oh

#SCOTUS rules 5-4 in Hernandez v. Mesa that the family of a Mexican teenager who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting cannot sue the agent for damages under the U.S. Constitution

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) February 25, 2020

Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch both additionally called to remove the right from individuals to sue federal officers for civil rights violations at all, let alone for murder.

cool stuff

Speaking publicly against the Patriot Act could have a significant impact at a time Democrats are still acquiescing to a George W. Bush-era policy that has been in place for nearly 20 years. Last November, Democrats voted overwhelmingly for a measure granting a three-month extension of the three Patriot Act provisions, included in a House resolution to prevent a government shutdown, infuriating civil rights activists. Only 10 Democrats in the House voted against the reauthorization, among them Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), known as “the squad.” But Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) co-chairs Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), and vice chairs, Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.), all voted for it. (Neither Sanders, Warren nor Klobuchar were present for the Senate vote.)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22326/bernie-sanders-patriot-act-safeguarding-americans-private-security-records

speaking of jurisprudence

The question was "do you think justice was served in the Harvey Weinstein case?" This was Trump's full answer. pic.twitter.com/vyF3f1a5Lw

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 25, 2020

The phrase that keeps bubbling up lately starts with 'once all legal means have been exhausted, then ___' but the blank at the end is escaping me atm. I'm sure it'll come to me.

Very interesting article from Rachel Bitecofer, the political scientist/analyst who says there are basically no independent voters:

Hate is on the Ballot

My forecasting model for the 2018 midterms predicted an enormous Democratic wave in the House, mostly by focusing on a dynamic known in political-science circles as negative partisanship. The idea behind negative partisanship is simple, harking back to Henry Adams’s definition of politics as the “organization of hatreds.” The determination to vote out the opposition—and the broader trend of acute polarization within the American political system—has altered virtually every facet of our political life. Negative partisanship is affecting the behavior of voters and reshaping the voting coalitions aligned behind each major party.

...

Against this backdrop of roiling cultural upheaval, our politics has remained rigidly binary—and indeed has grown far more brittle over time. Partisans in this culture struggle have sorted themselves ideologically into two parties that are now devolving into bitterly opposed enemy factions in the 1860 model. In 2014, pollsters with the Pew Research Center found that 27 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans believed their partisan counterparts were a “threat to the well-being of the country.”

Now, just three years into the Trump era, and a whole new brand of negative partisan division, my survey finds that these indexes have skyrocketed. Seventy-one percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats now regard the opposition party as a force that stokes baleful national decline. In a study of what they call “lethal mass partisanship,” political scientists Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason found that 15 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats agree that the country would be better off if a large number of opposing partisans in the public today “just died.”

...

Even though we commonly assume that independents make up roughly a third of the electorate, the pool of persuadable independents is actually quite small, just 7 percent of the total electorate, according to the Pew Research Center’s most recent analysis. This is because most independents admit to being “leaners”—bringing them into fairly reliable affiliation with the Republicans or the Democrats. Research shows these leaners think like, feel like—and, most important, vote like—“soft partisans.” In fact, many leaners are what political scientists Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov call “embarrassed” partisans—people too ashamed to admit their partisan dispositions even to themselves.

This dynamic leaves a quite small pool of “pure” independents truly open to persuasion, especially late in a campaign season. That’s especially the case after voters have been reminded why they vote for one party, and not the other, by a barrage of campaign appeals that key into their latent partisan dispositions.

...

To hear many Democratic leaders tell it, ignoring Trump was the secret to their success in 2018, but the voter file data suggests otherwise. Democratic gains, strong though they were, may actually have been handicapped by a strategy that failed to exploit the party’s best asset: the electorate’s angst about Trump. What’s more, the turnout of the Republican base was just as strong in these districts as in districts where candidates were more liberal and did talk about Trump. So the strategy of not rousing any partisan blowback in the general election doesn’t appear to have yielded the advantage of a suppressed opposition vote.

...

What do all these negative partisan trends portend for 2020? Even though most analysts continue to look at 2016 as a frame for 2020, that reflex bespeaks another failure to size up a dramatically shifting electorate. The complacent voting ranks of 2016 who believed (at the energetic prompting of polls and pundit forecasts) that Donald Trump could never be president have been replaced by the terrified electorate of 2020. These voters know all too well the hazards of granting great power to a figure like Trump and view the president as a Terminator-like political figure who simply can’t be stopped. After threading the 2016 Electoral College needle, Trump has acquired an almost mythic aura of invincibility for most people, election analysts included. And in some key ways, the unsettled character of this political moment—together with the structural inequities of the Electoral College and a battery of GOP-orchestrated voter suppression drives—has inoculated President Trump from political gravity. But as Andrew Yang would tell you, math matters, and Trump has a basic math problem. As the electorate is currently constituted, there are more potential Democratic voters out there than there are Republican, and not just in California. There are more in the Midwest and in the Sun Belt. There are so many more in Virginia and Colorado that both states have moved off the swing state map.

It's a long piece, but very much worth reading. As I keep saying around here, the Democratic candidate — any Democratic candidate — has a powerful weapon on their side going into November, and that's that 55-60% of the American public fucking hates Donald Trump.

Is it a variant on the piece you posted last month?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Sort of, in the sense that the former was an interview with her, whereas this one is a long essay — with charts — analyzing the lessons of 2016 and 2018 (hint: the midterms did not happen for the reasons you think) and what they portend for 2020. (No predictions are forthcoming, no candidate endorsements are offered.)

Thanks. I'm reading.

Trump seems to be misfiring on all cylinders this morning... https://t.co/AYThOIwJuS

— Jeffrey St. Clair (@JSCCounterPunch) February 26, 2020

a chocker

choker presumably?

chocking on my covfefe over here

I mean yes just give him an opponent

quick reminder as we barrel toward a potential pandemic of the likes unseen in a generation that the president of the united states is more or less undeniably a raving moron who has severe difficulty spelling common english words.