US Politics, May 2018: How Broke Is He?

mccain announces own mortality, will not seek new term after his inevitable death

where's jar jar? has he flipped on 2scoops already?

too many nicknames dude, who is 'jar jar'

Jarold Kushner?

jarah juckabee jarders

i assumed it was just a reference to jar jar binks's pathetic blue-dog #DINO track record in the Galactic Senate

also gotta say i'm surprised that "Remember Sailor!" did not make it to the thread title but i've been listening to holland a lot so maybe it made more sense to me than others

modern bipartisanship: in addition to unending war and a secret surveillance state the two ruling parties also delight in trolling each other for fun and profit

triggering snowflakes on both sides

i had to read the comey book for work. this stuck out

On my plate, I had found a large cream-colored card describing the entire four-course menu in cursive script. Salad, shrimp scampi, chicken parmesan with pasta, and vanilla ice cream. The president began by admiring his own menu card, which he held up. “They write these things out one at a time, by hand,” he marveled, referring to the White House staff. “A calligrapher,” I replied, nodding. He looked quizzical. “They write them by hand,” he repeated.

That hurts so much ^^^

Just imagine if someone had hipped him to the existence of calligraphy before he was seventy. He could've really gone places with that wild scrawl of his. Places that aren't the White House.

welp. it's good imo. real good.

It's a ring-toss game

even his meals are the schmuck's idea of what a fancy bigshot richy mcrich would eat lol

white foods only
i bet the salad was egg

Nah, that’s a 12-year-old from flyover land going to Olive Garden with Mom when they are on daughter’s first junior high school shop in the nearest metro area and Mom says ‘no banana split’

i assumed it was just a reference to jar jar binks's pathetic blue-dog #DINO track record in the Galactic Senate

― noel gallaghah's high flying burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 10:47 AM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

played a key role in normalizing Palpatine as military strongman. he-sa is #complicit

On my plate, I had found a large cream-colored card describing the entire four-course menu in cursive script. Salad, shrimp scampi, chicken parmesan with pasta, and vanilla ice cream. The president began by admiring his own menu card, which he held up. “They write these things out one at a time, by hand,” he marveled, referring to the White House staff. “A calligrapher,” I replied, nodding. He looked quizzical. “They write them by hand,” he repeated.

L-R: Comey, Trump, Eric

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S09E12/801233.jpg?b64lines=

Gotta love those returning cast members.

NEW: Exclusive: Trump doc says Trump bodyguard, lawyer "raided" his office, took medical files. https://t.co/U4CW0Xv2H5

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 1, 2018

xpost

Trump doc says Trump bodyguard, lawyer 'raided' his office, took medical files

In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.

The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a "raid," took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.

In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House.

...

Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president —known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law. A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter to Bornstein from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, but didn't know if there was a release form attached.

Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump's charts, including lab reports under Trump's name as well as under the pseudonyms his office used for Trump, were taken.

The world can never know just how intensely healthy the man is. We aren't ready for it.

(Dollars to donuts this was to prevent news of Trump's Kuato getting out.)

• What was the purpose of your May 12, 2017, tweet?

After The Times revealed the president’s private dinner with Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump responded on Twitter.
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

HAHHA - REGRET

That bit with Bornstein is just so fucking small and so predictable. The world may be falling to pieces but Trump needs to make sure nobody knows what he actually weighs.

From the outside and on TV Trump is a clown and so are his henchmen but to people like this pathetic doctor, the Playmates, the contractors, etc. they are legit criminals who are pro's at scaring people. Anybody who doesn't think that the President of the United States hasn't in his decades of mafioso real estate business been on the ordering end of a physical beating (or worse) is kidding themselves. These guys are straight thugs.

We’ve never had a president with actual hired goons before, how novel.

Love a thuggish playmate

One of my lib friends is advocating for the return of the Fairness Doctrine.

I cant even

xp Seriously, how many people out there—not just Playmates or the doctor from Cannonball Run—are trembling about what they know and what they've been told might happen to them if they tell anybody? I'm sure we're seeing only a very small sample.

https://i.imgur.com/veod9.jpg

it's a real simpsonsy news day

what does "lib" mean?

Asked how he could justify saying Trump would be the healthiest president ever, Bornstein said, "I like that sentence to be quite honest with you and all the rest of them are either sick or dead."

is this the real life is this just fantasy

scaramucci, scaramucci

I hope all of our ailing ex-presidents are receiving nothing but the best hospice care.

lol was wondering why Propecia was trending

thuggish Playmate

thuggish, ruggish, boned

irl lol

We’ve never had a president with actual hired goons before

#morbzbait

I almost took a swing at that one myself tbh

*cough* Nixon *cough*

What do you know, not only does a new report note how fast the uninsured numbers are rising, especially among Republicans, but Tom Price just said the Republican tax cut will lead to ACA price hikes as well. Who knew?

thanks obama

This wouldn't be happening if we didn't have Obamacare.

Ah, what a follow-up.

.@KaciSokoloff just spoke w Dr. Harold Bornstein, who refused an interview but said that NBC's piece was "a pretty good story." Bornstein also said that he spoke to the NBC reporter “in the bathroom” of his office. He signed off with: "Sweetheart, this is watergate, goodbye!"

— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) May 1, 2018

Here's a bit.

Wow from Dep AG Rosenstein just now: “There have been people who have been making threats privately & publicly against me for quite some time & I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.” @Newseum

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) May 1, 2018

dammit Ned

wow

xpost Back from vacation and here to provide the 'what the' moments once more.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on @freedomcaucus members considering his impeachment: "They can't even resist leaking their own drafts." He also says, "The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

Question from @lauraajarrett. pic.twitter.com/puEnP3thgA

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 1, 2018

he only pardons celebs

He's hoping to establish a precedent.

I kinda feel like my wildest imaginings couldn't possibly measure up to the variety of outrageous ways his corpse will actually be desecrated irl.

― My Favorte People Call Me Dad Soft Toddler (Old Lunch), Thursday, May 31, 2018 11:23 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good news
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-inauguration-charges-dismissed-because-170411777.html

That's great news.

O'Keefe. He's another one I hope to live long enough to see lashed to a raft and pushed out to sea.

Can you undo a pardon? If delivered for corrupt reasons or anything?
Or is the process of pardoning non-reversible.
& would that further hinge on being able to impeach the person doing the pardoning.

― Stevolende

you want to know if there's a precedent? sure. there's tons of precedents. here's one:

1642 – From this date all honors granted by Charles I of England are retroactively annulled by Parliament.

Why would any American want a car from a shithole loser country like Germany Alabama anyway

― the salmon mousse (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 1 June 2018 3:54 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/31/615843930/listen-how-michael-cohen-protects-trump-by-making-legal-threats

Andrew McCarthy:

The selective, politicized prosecution of conservative author, producer, and activist Dinesh D’Souza was an exercise in gratuitous severity. President Trump’s pardon of D’Souza, announced today, is the remedy the Framers had in mind.

D’Souza was (and is) a strident anti-Obama critic. He committed a trivial campaign-finance violation. This is not to excuse the conduct; it is to reaffirm the principle that the punishment should fit the crime, and to observe that the conduct at issue is typically not treated as a crime at all. Routinely, misconduct of the kind engaged in by D’Souza is settled by payment of an administrative fine to the Federal Election Commission. In stark contrast, the Obama Justice Department not only selectively prosecuted D’Souza; prosecutors turned the case into a multiple felony indictment.

Saw a comment somewhere that at least he was a non-violent offender who already did time (right?). Someone like Joe Arpaio, that's much more stomach-churning.

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” This seems increasingly true.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) May 31, 2018

increasingly

it was always true

it is to reaffirm the principle that the punishment should fit the crime
i hope he agrees with this for all those black men in prison over a piddlepuff of weed then?

gonna stack some avocados

why do presidential pardons exist

fear of bureaucracy -- but faith in the decisions of the elite electorate -- in the constitutional religion

Pardons For Everyone At The Goat Rodeo!

We’re all stars in the dope rodeo

i believe that some of these things happened as described, and i believe that some of these things some did not happen as described

“What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.

“Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”

“Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” he said.

“I feel like Michael Corleone. I almost got out.”

When they parted for the final time, Ms. Merkel had a single tear in her eye. “She’s all alone,” Mr. Obama noted.

“What else did you expect from McConnell?” he asked. “He won’t even give us a hearing on Merrick Garland.”

“I talk about it every time I’m asked,” he responded. “What else are we going to do? We’ve warned folks.” [about Russia]

He noted that Mr. Trump was already claiming that the election would be manipulated if Hillary Clinton won. “If I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged,” Mr. Obama said.

The next day, Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff. At one point, he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, “There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.”

“I don’t know,” he told aides. “Maybe this is what people want. I’ve got the economy set up well for him. No facts. No consequences. They can just have a cartoon.”

He added that “we’re about to find out just how resilient our institutions are, at home and around the world.”

Afterward, Mr. Obama called a few aides to the Oval Office to ruminate on the encounter. “I’m trying to place him in American history,” he said.

“He peddles” bull, Mr. Rhodes answered. “That character has always been part of the American story. You can see it right back to some of the characters in Huckleberry Finn.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Obama answered, “that’s the best we can hope for.”

June thread.