US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

While Congressional inaction is indeed a bad thing, keep in mind that dozens of congressmen and senators and investigators are privy to all sorts of stuff, so nothing is going to get buried if it is truly incriminating.

ME: We need a political party that will stand for universal health care, free housing, and an end to the carceral state
DEMOCRATS: What about a Kennedy that looks like Ron Weasley

— Gore Vidal Sassoon (@JimmyJazz1968) January 29, 2018

The name Kennedy is triggering Berniecrats & the Left

Why?

— Poll Cat (@gato_danger) January 29, 2018

I'm opposed to any political dynasty. It's just a cult of personality and ignores policy goals

— Gore Vidal Sassoon (@JimmyJazz1968) January 29, 2018

xp but Josh this isn't inaction, it's a deliberate, proactive effort to reach into DOJ and FBI and disrupt a criminal investigation. (I stopped counting on the congressional committees to do anything a long time ago.)

xpost These people would have pushed FDR out of the party.

I've kinda just given up hope at this point cos if this O'Keefian power play works on the general population, idk if I'll still be living here in 5 years anyway.

when things I thought weren't going to be happening anytime soon like legalizing gay marriage came to fruition, I thought to myself "oh we'll get blowback for this I'm sure", didn't realize it would be being held hostage by a 30 million strong pseudo-Christian cult.

Hey Mr President don’t do this please

John Bolton Remains Leading Candidate to Replace H. R. McMaster, my latest in @TheNatlInterest https://t.co/GJxgoMhRKu

— Curt Mills (@CurtMills) January 29, 2018

swimming in an inner orbit, eh

I feel like this memo bullshit s a new level of fucked up. But I can only assume it’s going to get so much worse.

I’m assuming the minority memo will be leaked

i can't for the life of me figure out why i'm supposed to care about this memo one way or the other

like i get that it's being played up as vindication for right wing fever dreams but what's the corollary will im not really following

"This memo is going to be a bunch of scary-sounding allegations that can't be debunked without leaking classified information. Fox News will run with it, Trump will fire Rosenstein, whoever replaces Rosenstein will fire Mueller (or, worse, will quietly kill/neuter Mueller's investigation), and the GOP will do nothing. And all the Dems will be able to do is complain about how they can't release the full story."

Whomp whomp

https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia/

John Bolton at the UN would def either turn it all to Duck Soup or accelerate our doom. Maybe both!

Gee, my sympathies for you:

Spicer: I regret embarrassing myself and my family https://t.co/cIqZqZH4jn pic.twitter.com/5UwxVrgkr0

— The Hill (@thehill) January 30, 2018

ned that hannity story is nuts!

To put it mildly.

Just to refresh, the sanctions against Russia that the President refused to sign were passed in the senate 98-2 and in the house 419-3

yeah and we've already done enough damage to our relationship with our dear friend russia so it's time to just drop it, okay?

no to defend what is clearly Trump trying to delay something he doesn't want to do, but the actual legislation itself has an allowance for postponement written into it. It isn't quite the same as him refusing to obey the legislation. From the article on The Hill:

"The 2017 legislation allows President Trump to postpone imposing sanctions on people or entities if he determines they are largely scaling back their transactions with Russia's defense or intelligence sectors, as long as he notifies the appropriate congressional committees at least every 180 days that they are seeing such progress."

trump's gonna fire mueller during the state of the union tomorrow night, isn't he

I know it seems kind of reductive and sophomoric to say "oh, President of the United States is a Russian stooge" but for real the President of the United States is actually a Russian stooge. Like, this is really happening.

Can you say kompromat? I knew you could.

this could be insane. i hope not.

WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, disregarding Justice Department warnings that their actions would be “extraordinarily reckless,” voted Monday evening to release a contentious secret memorandum said to accuse the department and the F.B.I. of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance order on a former Trump campaign associate.

The vote, made along party lines, threw fuel on an already fiery partisan conflict over the investigations into Russia’s brazen meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Republicans invoked a power never before used by the secretive committee to effectively declassify the memo that they had compiled. It was an extraordinary maneuver, cheered on by President Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt” and a sham.

on the news sources most of us rely on, i'm guessing they'll just report on the memo and the fallout. but i don't really have a good sense of how it will go down on the right. part of me is stressed the fuck out that this is going to be #benghazi bullshit all over again

and not only is he really a russian stooge (for whatever reason: debt, kompromat, the kochs and tillerson worked out an oil deal with putin, who knows?), the republicans are using their congressional majority to cover up treason, while the russian stooge defies the conclusions of the FBI, the CIA, the dutch government, and whoever else, successfully delaying coming to terms with russia having meddled in our and other NATO countries' recent elections. we are in the upside down, the sunken place. joseph mccarthy must be spinning in his grave

xpost

karl, pierce as usual has sharp sight

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15917140/will-trump-fire-mueller/

i mean,

There is no known precedent for the Republicans’ action. Though House rules allow the Intelligence Committee to vote to disclose classified information if it is deemed to be in the public interest, the rule is not thought to have ever been used. Typically, lawmakers wishing to make public secretive information classified by the executive branch spend months, if not years, fighting with the White House and the intelligence community over what they can release.

wtf

it's not trump that even worries me right now, it's the house republicans. they are all in on fighting for trump, and starting a war with the justice department and the fbi to do it

despite flat income my tax return seems lower this year! where is my little richerness

need to figure out some deductions over here

I'm having...trouble finishing that Hannity/Assange story, i.e. I'm sick to my stomach.

Pierce ha

Carter Page, the Zelig of international ratfucking

"Russian spies gave up Carter Page while being bugged by the FBI. Page was a known Russian stooge. FBI warrants to watch him have been issued ever since by Rod Rosenstein. Now that Page is Trump's lackey, those warrants have ended, and the GOP is trying to get rid of the last man above Mueller, Rosenstein, by claiming 'He was watching our good man, Page! LOCK HIM UP', and the stooges eat it up.

"Meanwhile, our government has been compromised. Welcome to Amerika."

"trump's gonna fire mueller during the state of the union tomorrow night, isn't he"

Well I suppose it is the sweeps week version of The Presidential Apprentice, so I say it is possible.

Today has a real "end of Empire Strikes Back" feel. A lot of awful stuff suggesting awful things happened yesterday, huh?

luv2see the needle on the authoritarianism thermometer edge ever-closer to 'outright fascism'

lol if the shutdown was still going, would the house intelligence committee even be able to meet? Gr8 stuff democrats, really getting goals accomplished there

Yam is going to trap Schumer in carbomite at the end of the speech tonight

The memo affair seems like a fun popcorn munch to me (Dems will surely leak their memo at some point)

qualmsley not only all in on Olbermannesque paranoia but quoted the year's most overrated movie

Maybe Trump will successfully halt the investigation. He’s very sloppy and careless and dumb but he seems also to get away with anything he wants.

good mourning!

in addition to all that the revelation that the Kochs are going to funnel insane amounts of their newfound tax cut cash into the RNC this year seems like a bad omen

NYTimes headline: "Supporters Fear Trump’s Speech Will Lack the Edge They Love."
My headline: shut the fuck up

Has the NYTimes gone senile?

No, it's a Trump supporting paper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A

lol not that the one excludes the other, quite the reverse

It's just a bad look all around for the media (not just the Times) to propagate the preemptive charm offensive line that the speech will be more nicer and more inclusive, it's even worse to write a preemptive story about hardliners being disappointed it's not meaner. Because in either case, who the fuck cares? He'll tweet something shitty within hours.

yea I'm getting ready for all the shit "is this the Trump we were hoping for?" takes by the likes of Fareed and Cilizza

New York Times is absolutely awful, they don't even try to hide their biases anymore

It's not that they're "biased" -- every paper is. But the editors write headlines and assign stories that want to be clicked on by rural voters (who won't read the NYT anyway).

IDK throwing in some different form of "lets give the white supremacists a platform" every week while virtually ignoring those who dislike the president or are hurt by his policies feels a bit like a bias to me

Whetstones, getcher whetstones here, perfect for sharpening those dull gilly blades, whetstones, getcher whetstones...

They're liberals biased toward people in power, i.e. Clinton types who nevertheless loathe HRC.