Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

"Devin, why do you keep looking off camera? Who are you looking at?"

Hmm...

https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/845271731900223488

The National Enquirer--which has close ties to Trump world--is now turning on Mike Flynn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7sCKPBXkAAjsJr.jpg

"leaks, that's when i am a viking"

meanwhile, in overseas murder

@AlexanderEmmons
The US is killing more and more civilians in Syria and Iraq. Look at the data, from @airwars:

https://airwars.org/data/

How long before we read about Flynn, Manafirt, or Stone being tossed out a window of Trump Tower?

They're random gentlemen that the president has sat next to on a plane. I don't see why people feel such a need to try and connect their direct ties with Russian governmental officials to the fact that they were personally beaten to death by the president on camera. It's really a stretch.

would be such amazing chutzpah if that's his spin - "i caught the spies! ME!!"

Nunes rambling is just that but he seems to have said Manafort has 'volunteered' to appear before the committee.

he's gonna show up with a burlap sack over his head and many visible bruises

Meantime:

https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/845280848463233024

Freedom Caucus reax to Trump tweet, per multiple sources: meh. Laugh it off. "Trump being Trump." Surprised he didn't come after us sooner.

While

https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/845274499276816384

House GOP source: We are going forward. If Freedom Caucus wants to kill the bill do it in public on the floor. Our members are sick of this.

With other mutterings that Ryan, McCarthy et al are fully in line with this.

Odds on Manafort living long enough to testify?

1 in 6

5 to 10 in the state pen

Odds on Manafort taking the fifth?

or drinking a fifth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YloqZ0FOD0M

Okay I'm starting to fully agree it's endgame. The chairman of the House *Appropriations* Committee just came out against the bill:

https://www.facebook.com/rfrelinghuysen/posts/816598255160874

As a reporter said on Twitter: "In the old days this is the kind of stuff they would strip your gavel for"

Meantime, Schiff has said this:

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/845293157055107072

BREAKING: Chairman just cancelled open Intelligence Committee hearing with Clapper, Brennan and Yates in attempt to choke off public info.

Well well.

Meanwhile the Newsmax guy adds to the cover:

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/845293274009100289

Trump friend Ruddy: "Ryan did major disservice. President had confidence he'd come up with good plan. disappointing”

Circular firing squad time

Ruddy, sure.

I really am impressed by the depth of the overall botch happening here on multiple levels. As Tombot continues to rightly note, can't really laugh at/with it, but I'm kinda already expecting a number of these people to have memoirs in later years talking about these days as the bad times 'before I found God.' (Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

in other news, fuck you, Rick Perry:

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose agency oversees the nation's nuclear arsenal, is inserting himself into an unusually small political dispute: an election for student body president at Texas A&M.

In an op-ed submitted to the Houston Chronicle, the former Texas governor suggested that his alma mater's first openly gay president may have stolen the outcome. Perry wrote that the campus election "at best made a mockery of due process and transparency" and at worst "allowed an election to be stolen outright."

"It is difficult to escape the perception that this quest for 'diversity' is the real reason the election outcome was overturned," he wrote. "Does the principle of 'diversity' override and supersede all other values of our Aggie Honor Code?"

Those who know Perry best said they're not surprised that he would take the unusual step of weighing in on a parochial issue at his alma mater — even though he's now a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.

"There are three institutions that are most important to Rick Perry, his wife and family, the U.S. military and Texas A&M. It depended on the day, or the weekend, which one had the top priority," said Ray Sullivan, a former Perry chief of staff and veteran of the ex-governor's unsuccessful presidential runs in 2012 and 2016.

I really am impressed by the depth of the overall botch happening here on multiple levels. As Tombot continues to rightly note, can't really laugh at/with it, but I'm kinda already expecting a number of these people to have memoirs in later years talking about these days as the bad times 'before I found God.' (Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

― Ned Raggett,

yeah this is the sort of thing you'll read in Mark Meadows' 2028 memoir Freedom is Free: "That's when I gave up the hooch."

Oh, yeah, I've been thinking for a while that the host of people who've had to interact with Orangutan-in-Chief in the post-NDA era will have lots and lots of trash to talk in the years to come.

"Ryan did major disservice. President had confidence he'd come up with good plan. disappointing”

So when the plan was put up for discussion, he assumed it was good, without, y'know, checking? Reading it? Asking a question or two?

MMMkay so he pushed it pretty hard, considering that either (A) He didn't know or didn't care whether it was any good, or (B) Knew it was terrible but assumed it could be made good through the awesome magic of DEALZ.

Like I'm pretty sure that NDAs as a blanket requirement are about the only smart thing Trump ever did. Without them, he probably never would've gotten near the president and would likely be rotting in prison right now.

'near the presidency' rather

[(Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

if you mean, "from inside a prison" then yes

"It is difficult to escape the perception that this quest for 'diversity' is the real reason the election outcome was overturned," he wrote. "Does the principle of 'diversity' override and supersede all other values of our Aggie Honor Code?"

Just want to point out that legend has it a certain A & M hazing ritual involves fucking a sheep.

if you mean, "from inside a prison" then yes

Maybe I should stop bothering with subtext.

we're not living in subtle times

subtlety has no place in the vast soylent green factories of trump's america

Can we point out that the highlight of Rick Perry's college career was being a cheerleader?

(GWB, as well)

once again, the voice of reason:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/the-trump-elite-like-the-old-elite-but-worse.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

not hating david brooks still one of the most startling developments in this new topsy turvy world.

https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/819559614765297665
I read the highly classified Intelligence Report on #Russian #hacking. @realDonaldTrump is not telling the truth.

His full statement:

“I have now read the highly classified intelligence report on Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. I analyzed the report from my perspective as a computer science major and as a Member of the National Security Subcommittee of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee."

"Here is my reaction: there is clear and convincing evidence to support the conclusions of the intelligence community as set forth in the unclassified version of the report. Russian hacking of Americans and American political organizations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election was multifaceted and brazen, with the goals of undermining faith in the U.S. democratic process and harming Secretary Clinton's electability. Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for Trump.”

“I believe Trump is actively misleading Americans when he says the Russians did not attempt to help his election chances and denigrate Secretary Clinton’s electability. Cyber espionage against American political organizations and cyber intrusions into our electoral boards are not partisan issues, they are American issues. I call on every Member of Congress who has been briefed on or read the classified report to tell Trump that he needs to tell the truth to the American people. At stake is not just our national security, but the very fabric of our democracy.”

i keep reading about new no votes, is this thing really going to the floor of the house today? they must know the whip count and unless ppl are just lying to reporters it's hard to see what ground has been made up (unless im missing some new revalation or the gop caucus has suddenly gotten quiet) and even harder to imagine why ryan would hold a vote knowing it was going down

i've been seeing that lieu tweet popping up today and it's from january?

their gamble is that the "no" votes won't actually do so when it comes down to it - that the internal political pressure to cave will be too much. seems likely to be a miscalculation given the intransigence and contrariness of the FC guys, and the external political pressures that the moderate Tuesday Group members certainly are feeling from their constituents. It's a hail mary betting on the internal strength of the party.

Aravosis spelling out the National Enquirer/Flynn thing, w/r/t Nunes this morning in an update, is showy and tendentious but does raise some good points

http://americablog.com/2017/03/national-enquirer-brands-flynn-russian-spy-trump-just-threw-flynn-bus.html

And per Shakey's point, this tweet

https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/845298486132314114

If the bill fails, it fails big.

If it passes, it squeaks by.

Internal strength as such will only just deliver it, at cost.

this guy
https://twitter.com/BenDAvanzo/status/845282659446214657

Why, Florida, who would have guessed?

Post has been saying that "some" no votes had shifted to yes in light of Trump's masterful persuasive jiujitsu, but "some" appears to be, like, three. Nowhere near the number needed (assuming capturing all leaners). Otherwise, one presumes, the headline would be about how "almost all" no votes had caved.

Times still had it as too close to call, which is interesting but not that weird (thinking back to a certain Very Bad Day last fall).

yeah I'm still terrified that these fuckers will close ranks

Of course they could close ranks! But I still think that when you have the head of the appropriations committee saying 'yeah, no' without apparent fear of any repercussions, that's a tell.

We need a countdown-to-the-vote clock.

Post still showing 33 committed "no" votes plus a dozen or so "leaning no" votes. idk how much arm-twisting Ryan can really pull off here.

xpost -- Six hours out, I think.

Anyway, one of three things will happen:

* Vote as announced, whatever the result
* Bill is pulled
* Vote postponed to next week

Personally I could see any one of these happening, though the first is pretty much the most likely result.

Alcee Hastings!