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

lmao

leggoooo

Hmm. (Worth noting Gaetz has been complaining about the Mueller probe forever, so, two birds, one stone?)

Rep. @mattgaetz, who's been one of Trump's strongest allies in the House, blasts DOJ over the new marijuana guidelines. pic.twitter.com/W7xN2IeuxU

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 4, 2018

loooool after receiving a cease and desist order from Trump's attorney the publisher of Michael Wolf's book has decided to release it four days earlier than expected.

boy 2018 is off to a fine start huh

dooH niboR

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-welfare/trump-push-to-scale-back-welfare-programs-has-republicans-on-edge-idUSKBN1ET1AG

makes sense for them, i'm not sure how a political book could be more hyped than right now

And you thought the beat slowed down

Pessimistically, I can't help feeling that more woes for Trump just ups the odds of some kind of military 'distraction' down the line. Only this time it won't be bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical company, it will be nuking Pyongyang...

he does seem legitimately interested in re-election, which strikes me as an incentive to keep a bellicose peace rather than *actually* lurch into war

Being at war has traditionally been a great way to get the incumbent reelected (Nixon, GWB).

going to war creates jobs (and vacancies!), why do u hate jobs

i guess it depends when it starts and what the optics are.

a war that involves an actual nuke that kills millions will elevate him to hitler-level war criminal p much immediately, even with some of his staunchest supporters imo

not if they deserved it

yeah if there's one thing the american people have an appetite for, it's acknowledging the war crimes of their leaders xp

So Truman is seen as a Hitler-level war criminal then?

4real, nuclear devastation in our massively-online era would be communicated worldwide, to everyone, immediately, and maybe i'm just a naive chump but i really don't think that images of a flattened pyongyang and reports of literally millions dead would suddenly make trump ~more~ electable

are you guys being obtuse on purpose

Not really.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/justice-department-looking-into-hillary-clintons-emails-again

The Remix

i suppose i should clarify that i'm talking about the impulsive preemptive strike that everyone's worried about, not necessarily a "we've been at war with this nation for a minute" that might have some popular support

but again: i think it was many years before anyone in the US had anything close to a sense of the devastation of hiroshima/nagasaki

Wait - so are these theoretical dead people white, or not? Asking for a friend.

He isn't going to nuke anyone, he doesn't have to.

maybe so! but i was responding to this (and similar sentiments):

Pessimistically, I can't help feeling that more woes for Trump just ups the odds of some kind of military 'distraction' down the line. Only this time it won't be bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical company, it will be nuking Pyongyang...

― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, January 4, 2018 4:18 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the unthinkable human cost aside, nuking NK as a "distraction" would not be good for trump politically

trump won the presidency by doing everything that conventional wisdom held would not be good for him politically

still inclined to believe that impulsively murdering millions of people with a nuclear weapon isn't really the same as being dumber and more boorish than most politicians but w/e

I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and nuke everybody and I wouldn’t lose voters.

It wouldn't be sold as a "distraction" it'll be sold as "America standing tall, not taking crap from bullies." And we don't really have much of a history with this. Lots of people today think the Japanese bombing was justified, whether because "they started it" or "it saved lives in the long run by bringing the war to a quick end."

idk, been thinking about this lately: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/pretending-it-isnt-there

most ppl seem to really underestimate just how unthinkably horrifying a modern nuke would be, orders of magnitude worse than what we did to japan

dunno why i'm hobby-horsing this today, sorry yall

still inclined to believe that impulsively murdering millions of people with a nuclear weapon isn't really the same as being dumber and more boorish than most politicians but w/e

t/s: murdering millions of faceless foreigners in a sudden flash of nuclear fire vs murdering (at least) hundreds of thousands of faceless foreigners over decades in an utterly incompetent series of interventions in the middle east
― pee-wee and the power men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, January 4, 2018 4:58 PM (twenty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like this is exactly my point lol

xpost

I didn't mean it would start with preemptive nuking, but it might end that way: I can certainly imagine Trump deciding on a "surgical" strike on NK's nuclear capabilities and things quickly escalating from there

Americans are very into nuclear attacks if they believe that it's a tradeoff against US soldiers dying in an invasion.

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/08/08/americans-weigh-nuclear-war/

Their findings demonstrate that, contrary to the nuclear taboo thesis, a clear majority of Americans would approve of using nuclear weapons first against the civilian population of a nonnuclear-armed adversary, even killing 2 million Iranian civilians, if they believed that such use would save the lives of 20,000 U.S. soldiers.

then i dunno what your point is cuz mine is that americans have a boundless capacity to rationalise military atrocities xxp

the unthinkable human cost aside, nuking NK as a "distraction" would not be good for trump politically

the politics of pre-emptive nuclear war! strange times. i think that the problem with guessing at trump's take on the political consequences is that his decisionmaking is driven more by inpulse than reason. this is the guy that thought liberals would like him more if he fired comey, and was surrounded with multiple inner-circle people advising the same. he has no clue what's going on. the only thing he reads are his speeches. so yeah, it might not make any sense politically, but...he's also so very dumb and childlike, and the big nuclear button might be a little bit more of a flashy and attention-getting issue for him to focus on.

i mean does trump want to run again or does he just like the excuse of 'campaigning' in order to have ego-boosting rallies with his true believers

also, it's january 4 and this thread is almost at 600 posts. good lord

It would be easy to fabricate a case - we saw that NK had loaded a warhead onto a missile and was hours away from launching at X. Who would know it was a lie? It's extremely unlikely, but justification wouldn't be a problem - fallout would be (radiation and political).

Here we go. You can buy it (and read it) tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. President.

— Michael Wolff (@MichaelWolffNYC) January 4, 2018

can't really believe we're having a debate about the optics of preemptive nuclear strikes, but gbx otm

Seeing a report that the current head of the NSA, Mike Rogers, has announced he'll be retiring.

i guess i worry about the instincts of a person who has demonstrably responded to any criticism by lashing back as hard as he can, often with terrible political consequences for him and his party, and then brags to others about having that impulse

it's not hard for anyone to look back at the brief history of nuclear weapons and conclude that a pre-emptive strike never, ever makes sense for any reason. that's mutually assured destruction. but does anyone think that trump has even the most cursory knowledge of truman, WWII, escalation, cuban missile crisis, détente, SALT, etc? he literally doesn't know.

Whomp whomp

SCOOP: The Mercers split from Steve Bannon was so complete — & so bitter — that they cut off funding for Bannon's private security detail. More juicy details TK as we update our story. https://t.co/SXrjOD3miD

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 4, 2018

nyt: now with "juicy details TK"

MSNBC’s Katy Tur just revealed the sordid details of how Trump seduced friends’ wives

xpost As it's in reference to Bannon, they could be using 'juicy' literally.

I wouldn't call puss "juicy"

Typo