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

QUALMSLEY

otm

yeah, i don't object to that strategy

we'll still be royally fuct for 4 years of course

I get the reasoning and I certainly don't want to get my hopes up here but the difference between this and Benghazi or Emailgate or whatever is that Trump is such a singularly corrupt and dishonest figure, who flaunts his own ability to grift people and avoid paying taxes as something that "makes him smart". He had to settle a fraud suit shortly before entering office and is brazenly using his position for self-enrichment. Him and his staff have been revealed to have actually done practically every single thing they ever accused the Democrats of, and then some. His entire life philosophy seems to be "if you can get away with it, do it", which has paid off given how he's always proven to be above the law, no matter how fraudulent his enterprises are. The man deserves no benefit of the doubt whatsoever.

My advantage over you sportsfans is i don't know who these writers are.

Did you just use sportsfan as an insult, sportsfan?

I'm not convinced there is a relationship between Trump and Russia with the instability of USA the goal, at least not on Trump's end; he's just not that savvy. But I do think there was a significant relationship between Russia and Trump Inc. - loans, business, Ukraine stuff via pals and surrogates - that he unfortunately carried with him into the White House, and which doesn't instantly vanish after surprise victory election day.

again, the taxes are so key here too. as someone pointed out on the previous thread, it's hard to imagine that if there wasn't anything amiss about Trump's returns he would have made them public long ago because it would make a perfect burn to the media and Dems who are so adamant on seeing them.

so Boente apparently has the authority to appoint a special prosecutor - since no deputy AG has yet been approved by the Senate

seems unlikely but idk

have we been invaded yet

The attorney general got caught lying under oath about meeting with the Russian ambassador, he was going to be in charge of an investigation into meetings with Russians, and he initially wasn't going to recuse himself. This scandal was 100% rational, even with the most charitable interpretation of all the facts.

So shut the fuck up about Glenn Beck.

sorry I forgot

good mourning!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/03/in-leaked-document-the-case-for-trumps-muslim-ban-takes-another-huge-hit/?postshare=4171488559952243&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.3d68bcd64e78

i just hope we don't get ahead of ourselves here. obama's white house had contact with the russians, too, you know

Yeah, but Obama didn't have decades of pre-presidential history with Russia, and Obama wasn't on record as saying nothing but flattering things about Russia and/or Putin, and Obama's cabinet wasn't comprised largely of people with ties to Russia or who had contact with Russia prior to his being elected. It's apples and orange people.

I think the issue here is that all such contacts with foreign governments be fully disclosed and official records kept of what was discussed, which has not been the case in this administration. Also, campaigns should not be cutting deals with foreign nations prior to taking office and if Congress asks you about stuff, you don't outright lie to them. Evade a bit maybe, but not just say no when the truthful answer is yes.

important to remember that these contacts all took place before Trump became president. That is the problem.

did rachel maddow really say "bull-pucky"?

could it be?

could it be that this is THE classic equivocating josh marshall post?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation

[1300+ words laying out his theory]

...Now, here are three problems I identify with this theory.

1. There are more than a few facts that are very weird and difficult to explain and what I've laid out here doesn't really provide a satisfying explanation. That's a big problem.

Y'all should read Osnos-Remnick-Yaffa's article on Russia in this week's New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war

xxxpost That's part of the problem, but the bigger problem is the lying and the evading and the perjuring. So you met with the Russian ambassador, even prior to the election. So you do it on the record, and you admit to it when you're asked about it under oath, and you explain what you discussed. If you continue to act guilty, it's probably safe to assume that you're probably guilty even if we don't yet know exactly what you're guilty of.

And y'know...particularly wrt the current state of the swaggering, IDGAF GOP, this "Kislyak who now? Ohhhh him, well, I might have, like, said hello to him once or twice, I don't know, it's all so fuzzy" prevarication sticks out like a sore thumb.

A summary: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation

A friend of mine is trying to get an aviators license and says Trump's visits and airspace restrictions every weekend is making it impossible

Trump is here visiting a Pine Hills school. Christ. They will not like him there lol

i can say, with a certain equivocation, that josh marshall may be onto something there. something big. but then again, we know that there is more information which could change things completely. but for now, we have to rely on the simplest explanation, which - and i'm not saying this is necessarily true - could explode into something either infinitely large or infinitesimally small, which of course has the same effect, depending on one's cosmological perspective.

In more mundane matters of Defense pork:

"The Ford is a poster child for how you don't build a ship," says Ray Mabus. He was former Secretary of the Navy during the Obama administration. "They were designing the Ford while they were building it -- not a good way to build a ship," Mabus says. "This is just a dumb way to build any type of ship, particularly something as big and complicated as a carrier." Started during the Bush administration, the Ford incorporated new technologies, including an electro-magnetic launch system to replace the traditional steam-powered catapult. "Not only did the price go through the roof, but the schedule just became terrible because there were so many new technologies, because it was so unproven and it wasn't completely designed," Mabus says....

The president*'s proposed increases in defense spending are pure examples of what Barney Frank used to call "military Keynesianism." He is more direct than usual at pitching the defense budget as an economic stimulus, and there already are rumors that he may fold the new defense spending into his long-awaited infrastructure improvement plan in order to inflate those numbers. Watch the trickeration unfold if this happens.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53576/trump-aircraft-carrier/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-gerald-r-ford-poster-child-for-how-you-dont-build-a-ship-says-former-navy-secretary/

If you continue to act guilty, it's probably safe to assume that you're probably guilty even if we don't yet know exactly what you're guilty of.

This is a bad theory in policing, don't know why it'd be better for politics.

and it didn't work for Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb, recall.

What did they have to be guilty of?

dressing in white for an album sleeve

after Labor Day

Ha.

Well, put it in the context of my second point, re: the current general swagger of the GOP. Some fucker who will brazenly spearhead racist initiatives like the last 50 years never happened suddenly gets a case of the stammers wrt his discussions with a Russian ambassador and we shouldn't read that as a sign that something's fishy?

here's what the intellectual wing of conservativism is posting:

Betsy DeVos was subjected to widespread ridicule when she suggested that “potential grizzlies” were a reason that a Wyoming school might want to keep firearms on location. But the senator who asked her the question just found out why she thought such a contingency was possible.

On Tuesday, Connecticut, home to the asker of the question, Senator Chris Murphy, had two schools put into “secure school mode” after a bear was reported to be roaming the area. Democratic politicians, liberal pundits, and late-night comedians had a field day with DeVos for her contention that state and local authorities should have the latitude to set their own rules about school safety. Senator Murphy, a vociferous advocate of gun-control, used the opportunity to voice his opposition to the presence of guns in or around schools.

Happily, the bear moved away from the schools, which were opened later that day. A good ending to the story — for Chris Murphy most of all.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445474/betsy-devoss-grizzlies-comment-not-unfounded-chris-murphy-thought

Have we mentioned this piece of fun?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/why-the-alt-left-is-a-problem

Did you guys know that "Alt-Left" is a thing? And that Jill Stein, Oliver Stone, and Jacobin are all in the group together?

Shit, why didn't I get the invite? BRB, checking the recycling bin.

The Carter Page interview mentioned upthread really is amazing.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/carter-page-i-don-t-deny-meeting-with-russian-ambassador-889043011736

"I may have met him possibly. It might have been in Cleveland”

those are great hold steady lyrics

carter page looks like if chris hayes had made a lot of shitty life decisions. he and stephen miller are so prematurely aged. nothing but the best people :)

interesting correction in that new yorker piece on putin/trump

The U.S. officials who administer the system that Putin sees as such an existential danger to his own reject his rhetoric as “whataboutism,” a strategy of false moral equivalences. Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser under President Obama, is among those who reject Putin’s logic, but he said, “Putin is not entirely wrong,” adding that, in the past, “we engaged in regime change around the world. There is just enough rope for him to hang us.”*

~~~~
*An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties.

Carter Page and the Dodgy Dossier!

a regular at the top universities in moscow was comrade combover's foreign policy advisor. where's the birth certificate?

Whataboutism is the new hotness.

Engage in lazy-ass, boring tu quoque for fun and profit!

today in slapstick

President Trump on Friday attacked Democratic calls for a probe into his contacts with Russia, tweeting a photo of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The 2003 photo shows Schumer and Putin eating doughnuts in 2003 during Putin’s trip to New York to attend the opening of a Russian gas company’s station.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/322209-trump-tweets-photo-of-schumer-with-putin-hypocrite

still waiting for the promised face buzzsaw

https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/837730437564936192

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141108/no-thing-alt-left

I hadn't noticed that "alt-left" crock was by James Wolcott. He was much smarter writing about The Uncle Floyd Show 35 years ago for the Village Voice.

Schwarzenegger is leaving Celebrity Apprentice. His official statement:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6BCe-MUoAAG4ha.jpg

it's weird to think that I actually would prefer one Celebrity Apprentice host as president over another

wolcott's ok on ballet these days