US Politics, September 2018: having a nervous breakdown

Not sure where you got that from, ie:

At this point, Saddam asked his ministers for candid advice. Health Minister Dr. Riyadh Ibrahim suggested that Saddam temporarily step down to promote peace negotiations. Initially, Saddam Hussein appeared to take in this opinion as part of his cabinet democracy. A few weeks later, Dr. Ibrahim was sacked when held responsible for a fatal incident in an Iraqi hospital where a patient died from intravenous administration of the wrong concentration of potassium supplement.

Dr. Ibrahim was arrested a few days after he started his new life as a sacked minister. He was known to have publicly declared before that arrest that he was "glad that he got away alive." Pieces of Ibrahim's dismembered body were delivered to his wife the next day.[72]

xp

where I get everything from, wikipedia

Bulloch, John; Morris, Harvey (1989). The Gulf War: Its Origins, History and Consequences (1st published ed.). London: Methuen.

Same :-/ (from Saddam's wiki)

Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, "Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside", Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006.

The Trumpian version of this is calling the people he's had other functionaries fire on his behalf and expressing his disappointment that they've decided to leave his employ.

WHat! Wikipedia has conflicting data!

maybe its one of those "many worlds" or "alternative facts" things

either way it seems dr ibrahim died of distinctly unnatural causes

good mourning!

Dismemberment influenza is endemic to totalitarian states iirc.

Democrats chance of taking the House ticked up to 80% on 538. They don't seem to track the Senate, as far as I can tell. Not sure why.

*coughnovember82016cough*

Nate Silver, the renowned pollster who has seriously talked up the chances of Donald Trump winning today's election, has released his final forecast.

And it is good news for Hillary Clinton, with Silver's model now giving her a 71.4 per cent chance of victory compared to Mr Trump's 28.6 per cent.

Silver's FiveThirtyEight project had come in for some criticism in the last week after it gave Mr Trump a chunky 35 per cent chance of becoming president.

Ah, found a note in an article about the TX Senate race that a Senate forecast is coming soon.

I mean you can’t say he was wrong, in the real world we only flip the coin the one time is all

xxp

Not sure what the point is? 538 was much more accurate on the 2016 election than other sources.

Republicans currently have a 20% chance to hold the House. That's a real chance and they might be successful! But the fact that their chances are that low and dropping is still a good sign for Democrats.

They are currently working on a senate model.

What we need are senate supermodels.

Then they could broadcast hearings like the PPV Victoria Secret's Angel Show or whatever.

http://www.simpsonspark.com/framegrabs/5f09/frame037.jpg

custoooooooos!

fp'd u for giving me the mental image of trump in a skimpy silk thong and bustier xp

BREAKING NEWS w/ @PhilipRucker: Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency https://t.co/dUBY1SlrwX

— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 4, 2018

*jerkoff motion*

I’d rather read a Costa/Rucker/Philip book

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

thread titles in here

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

we're in crazytown!

The most shocking thing about these revelations is the notion that anyone could possibly be shocked by them at this point. If you have functioning sense organs and the capacity to use them intentionally, none of this is new information.

tfw when your preferred flavour of horrible-but-covert racism conflicts with the president's more flamboyant style of racism

poor general kelly :(

I mean, the specifics and the confirmations, sure, but...come on. We allowed a gremlin to become president. Of course he's breakdancing and peeing in the rosebushes and wildly firing a pistol at passersby.

feel like woodward's book is what trump was freaking the fuck out about last week when he talked about fake books

lol

Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”

“John, I understand,” Mueller replied, according to Woodward.

Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.”

But Trump, concerned about the optics of a president refusing to testify and convinced that he could handle Mueller’s questions, had by then decided otherwise.

“I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.

“You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”

mr president, you are dumb as a rock and if you testify you will be charged with a dizzying array of crimes including starting the great fire of london and inventing smallpox

The bits about them literally taking documents off his desk so he can't sign them, and him then forgetting they ever existed, are...something.

evidence of trump's steel-trap mind, operating at the top of his game, for sure

Not sure what the point is? 538 was much more accurate on the 2016 election than other sources.

yea Nate Silver was beating the "hey guys there's a real good chance that Trump loses the popular vote but wins the electoral college" drum pretty hard that last week and I don't recall anyone else even floating that as a possibility.

my lowkey fave part from the wapo story:

The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post...

huh yeah wonder how the post obtained the book, itisamystery.jpg

wait a sec he ordered Assad killed holy shit

I'll be the best witness that there ever was. I wasn't there.

to be fair Trump winning is as traumatic as we feared it would be the week before the election, so being in denial about the possibility that he'd win was a reasonable life decision

Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.”

One of the things that does continue to confound me is trying to figure out why, throughout his adult life, other people have such a compulsion to pull the bottle of drain cleaner away just before Trump gets it to his lips. Yes, please, dissuade him when his tendency toward mindless self-destruction will involve collateral damage, but if he's so perpetually insistent, it might actually be a kindness to just let him jam that fork into the wall socket already.

someone make a sitcom of Trimp's West Wing immediately it sounds hilarious!

wait a sec he ordered Assad killed holy shit

but trump's underlings disregarded it

it's a real 'if a tree falls in the forest'-type situation

One of the things that does continue to confound me is trying to figure out why, throughout his adult life, other people have such a compulsion to pull the bottle of drain cleaner away just before Trump gets it to his lips. Yes, please, dissuade him when his tendency toward mindless self-destruction will involve collateral damage, but if he's so perpetually insistent, it might actually be a kindness to just let him jam that fork into the wall socket already.

― Digital Squirts (Old Lunch),

Please be consistent: kill him by drain cleaner or fork in the socket?

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgifimage.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F08%2Fwhy-not-both-animated-gif-7.gif&f=1

Why not both?

haha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E88HEuwInno

It’s beyond fucked up that that gif is captioned in English imo

i've only ever seen it as a gif!

I feel like the most heroic act a high-level WH aide could undertake at this point is to walk into a meeting with Trump bragging about, for instance, how much rat poison he'd consumed last night, asserting that it might have been the most rat poison ever consumed by a human being, and that he's absolutely sure that only a real man could ever break his record.

Not sure what the point is? 538 was much more accurate on the 2016 election than other sources.

haha, not to relive that dreadful evening but 538's optimism was still shining bright while Nate Cohn/NYT/Upshot was showing the dread much, much, much earlier than 538, like as soon as the bulk of Florida returns were coming in.

I even want to say 538 was pretty much in denial until the election was called, leading Nate Silver to write like several pieces over the next few days explaining how probability/statistics work to laypeople but ultimately eating a lot of crow at the margin at which Trump prevailed (which his model only forecasted something like <1% of the time).

someone make a sitcom of Trimp's West Wing immediately it sounds hilarious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW-atvN9y0