US Politics March 2019: “I can’t say I’m happy. I can’t say I’m thrilled”

I mean, give me a heads up if he announces that he's sent the missiles a-flying but I'm otherwise just done being reminded of his blighted existence.

DONALD TRUMP ON MARCH 12, 2019: "actually I said tim cuck apple"

The American public could take a page from the book of Trump's parents re: neglecting the living fuck out of him.

yeah, I don't think I recall anything GWB said or did in the final year he was in office. I wish I could tune Trump out like that.

At least GWB was smart enough the stfu during the financial crisis.

Dem 2020 convention: Milwaukee

good morning!

why would they want fucking Milhaukee when they can have Miami

tribute to recently-departed working-class hero penny marshall iirc

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/SawyerBronzeFonz2008.jpg/200px-SawyerBronzeFonz2008.jpg

that's an hour away, should I try to go ???

xpost, but of course, great minds, etc.

!!!

why would they want fucking Milhaukee when they can have Miami

presumably surrendering FL to Yam already

I like Milwaukee, fun town

a buncha late night writers furiously pitching beer jokes right now

presumably surrendering FL to Yam sea level rise already

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius

Milwaukee's great.

Guess they want to make sure they don’t accidentally forget to campaign in the upper Midwest again

that's why Clinton lost, recall

Pelosi:

There have been increasing calls, including from some of your members, for impeachment of the president.

I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.

https://t.co/VJq71C7F83

She's right. Why announce what you're going to do before the evidence has accumulated and anyone has voted? The House Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation. That's how Watergate began.

healthy government

To slow down Democrats, Colorado Republicans requested a 2,000-page bill be read in its entirety. But Democrats then decided to have the bill read by a computer at a speed incomprehensible to humans https://t.co/uZxQfOIUJf via @denverpost

— Mitchell Byars (@mitchellbyars) March 11, 2019

maybe i'm giving pelosi too much credit, but there's an argument that trump is the ideal candidate to run against in 2020, and impeachment is likely to be a distraction from that, perhaps even one that benefits him.

enh fuckit let’s just hand control of the government over to skynet at this point why not xp

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1PlKQyaneAvKE

It's true that, if the country at large does not endorse impeachment, then pursuing it will only cause a reaction by a majority of voters against the Democrats in 2020. Pursuing investigations, otoh, does not carry the same dangers as continuing straight to impeachment proceedings.

I'm actually with Pelosi on this. Impeachment qua impeachment is way too charged. Far better to just investigate and investigate and investigate and report the results of those investigations and keep a running tally of all of it in easy-for-even-morons-to-understand form so every Democrat running for office, from the local level on up, can run on the platform "Donald Trump is a criminal and a shambling mountain of garbage in vaguely human form - vote Democrat in 2020."

Either that, or hire a disgruntled ex-military sniper to camp out in the woods near Mar-a-Lago. I'm good with either one.

Impeachment is not removal -- the Senate ain't moving an inch on removal. It doesn't mean you don't investigate. Plus, she's the speaker. She can change her mind.

Yeah seriously. I have friends whining and it's like hmm...do I publicly as Speaker indicate impeachment is coming or a high possibility when the House investigation just launched and Mueller report is forthcoming? Where AT BEST both investigations miraculously present open and shut cases and somehow the GOP discovers scruples.

Or, more likely, the narrative that the House investigation has already made its conclusion and is looking for confirmation bias facts only, which could disengage some indie voters, plus be a PR nightmare for her with her leftist supporters if she has to reverse course.

Why choose the option of zero flexibility which only placates your base and leaves you no room to maneuver? She's just preventing cheap, easy sound bytes. Lesser ranking reps have more latitude to be reckless than she does.

The most annoying thing is the press changing her quite cutting statement - "he's just not worth it" - to "[impeachment is] just not worth it".

I've no doubt Pelosi has read Laurence Tribe's To End a Presidency (review in The Atlantic). I haven't read the book, but the review offers a really chilling reason why impeachment isn't worth it (at least until Trump becomes an immanent risk of nuclear conflict): like or not, an impeachment campaign risks a widespread outbreak of right-wing extremist terrorism, or worse. Quotes from Tribe:

Well-justified calls to impeach the president can simultaneously empower him, harm his political opponents, and make his removal from office less likely … Because removing a truly determined tyrant may unleash havoc, the risks of impeaching a president are apt to be most extreme precisely when ending his tenure is most necessary.

Many Americans who voted for Trump view themselves as belonging to a victimized, disenfranchised class that has finally discovered its champion. For some of them, Trump’s appeal is less what he will accomplish programmatically than whom he will attack personally. Were Trump removed from office by political elites in Washington, DC—even based on clear evidence that he had grossly abused power—some of his supporters would surely view the decision as an illegitimate coup. Indeed, some right-wing leaders have already denounced the campaign to remove Trump as a prelude to civil war. This rhetoric, too, escapes reality and indulges pernicious tendencies toward apocalyptic thinking about the impeachment power.

That argument is making a weird (and unsupported by evidence to date) assumption that the right-wing extremist terrorism isn't coming anyway.

there's an argument that trump is the ideal candidate to run against in 2020

That's what they said in 2016

good lord the past few years have been fucked up

That's what they said in 2016

In 2016 voters could only theorize what a Trump presidency would look like. He encouraged them to project whatever wishes and desires they wanted onto him with his many outlandish promises about "winning", bringing back industrial and manufacturing jobs, inflicting pain on CHI-NUH, providing everyone with great cheap medical insurance, making Mexico pay for a border wall, etc. Like any good con, the marks were willing, even eager, to be conned.

Now they've opened the package and have seen what's inside. Not every Trump voter from 2016 is happy about his record so far. For example, there are a lot of farmers in the Midwest who aren't stupid and see exactly how much his policies are costing them, down to the dollar. He's not a blank projection screen any more.

But, I think it's a mistake to see the 2020 election as a simple yes-no referendum on Trump. There will be another major party candidate to compare him to and most 2016 Trump voters are conditioned to view ANY democratic opponent with a jaundiced eye. As of today, he would easily claim more than 40% of the vote against anyone the democrats nominate. It will still be a battle. It won't be the Triumph of the Left.

I think the correct pronunciation is JI-NUH.

My God, it's not difficult. You can call for his head all you want. She can't. She does it now, they hit her with "vendetta" when the time comes.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 12, 2019

^ A subject where Richard M. Nixon should, of all people, know what he's talking about.

obviously not surprised at this point but it never stops being depressing how the GOP reaction to a Dem/liberal/left proposal to resolve a problem is not "We think there's a better way to fix it, which is..." but "This problem does not exist at all and you're insane for even suggesting it does." I'm not going to reprint it but in this case I'm talking about Trump signal-boosting some former Greenpeace idiot who's still out here in the year of our lord 2019 denying climate change exists. a Googled this fool's name and saw headlines where he'd referred to AOC as a "twit" so that was enough for me, fuck investigating this asshole any further.

Yeah, in keeping with their death cult status they're uninterested in solving problems which might hinder the impending eschaton.

good morning!

I haven’t been following the news much over the past few days. But I guess trump told a bunch of donors that “democrats hate Jews”? Did I get that right? Sarah sanders, when asked if it’s true that trump thinks that “democrats hate Jews”, during the first press briefing in FORTY-TWO days, said “you’ll have to ask the democrats that”.

Just now realizing that there are no democrats who are also Jews. Very supisious!!!1!

the reporter will have to ask the democrats what Trump thinks? 🤔

They call me Mr. Jexit!

anyone ready to have their morning ruined

Donald Trump takes off his hat at Mar-a-lago - forgetting he's not wearing his toupee. pic.twitter.com/CZQ2B9a66O

— Paul Lee Ticks (@PaulLeeTicks) March 11, 2019

Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019

....needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019

what the fuck, what has prompted this latest madness