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

mods someone has hacked morbs’ account pls investigate

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/367927-senate-dems-demand-release-of-fusion-gps-interview

everyone but the repubs want this out, I wonder why?

make trump testify on camera like clinton had to do

make it 14 hours too

Trump should help deregulate food handling laws and then eat at the same unregulated KFC for the rest of his term

sometimes i sit back and stare at the stars and wonder, 'did the president really settle a $25,000,000 education fraud case after he won the election?'

Of course he didn't, don't be ridiculous, everyone would be talking about it.

well it's a good thing we've sealed our cyber-borders from the kremlin :)

I had the idea recently that someone needs to just put Trump in a room, alone, with no TV or phone, and train a camera on him with a live feed that everyone in the country can watch. Not even for a huge amount of time, just a day maybe. Just an unedited stream of Trump being Trump. Feel like that would pretty definitively settle a whole lot of speculation and deep six his chances for reelection and likely result in him being caged like the sick ape that he is.

The real gorilla channel.

i don't know if airing an unedited stream of footage of someone in solitary confinement is the best way to prove that someone is sick!

I'd be cool if they locked him up without cameras.

It seems the president had to reschedule auditorium space in his head for his Fake News Awards. https://t.co/f7xH9bzr1I

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 8, 2018

make trump testify on camera like clinton had to do

lol imagine how terrifying this would be for Trump's legal team and basically every single person in his orbit

it'll never happen

where's the tax returns?

under the mattress

i don't know if airing an unedited stream of footage of someone in solitary confinement is the best way to prove that someone is sick!

― Karl Malone, Monday, January 8, 2018 12:49 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, my thinking was less about putting him in solitary than it was about withholding an immediately-accessible audience from Needy McBabyman for a span of time that one might think was reasonable for a stable genius to be left alone with his thoughts and a stack of heady literature. But hell, just release a good chunk of raw security cam footage of his day-to-day activities and I'm sure the results would be the same for anyone watching.

alone with his thoughts and a stack of heady literature Barely Legals.

Fixed.

I just realized holding my coffee cup to my ear yeilds the sound of teh ocean

I wonder if Mr "Genius" is aware!

this hasn't been posted right?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/trump-bulldozes-his-own-infrastructure-plan

infrastructure week is BACK baby

koolade.jpg

Sometimes, you have to bulldoze the infrastructure of one infrastructure week so that you have a problem to tackle next time infrastructure week rolls around.

It's like, the country's running like clockwork, but you know as infrastructure week rolls on that another one is coming around the bend in a couple days. What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

it's always infrastructure week at least twice a day

Embrace the senile genius, watch him reinvent the wheel

It's the same wheel as before--except it has the name "Trump" attached and only rolls on golf courses.

I wonder who's REALLY running the country now while Trump watches Tv and eats mcdonalds? Imanka?

The country is being run by the collective efforts of civil servants. It is being steered by no one in particular.

Latham, I think the cool kids now say "Jarvanka." FYI.

Going well for him today

"Get up." -- Trump, telling the Nashville crowd to stand and applaud for him

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) January 8, 2018

Please clap. https://t.co/87RY3osuVh

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 8, 2018

"Oh, are you happy you voted for me. You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege," President Trump tells farmers in Nashville. pic.twitter.com/Z6Q7yR93VY

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 8, 2018

how many countries' elections has the kremlin successfully hacked so far, farmers of kentucky?

lmao he asked a crowd of farmers if they were happy with their 401ks

god if he makes it to 2020 they're going to hide him in a bunker when it's debate time.

brain genious gorka does it again

In a new op-ed, Sebastian Gorka says he was told to speak to Michael Wolff but chose not to, adding that his gut told him that Wolff was going to be unfair. So did he alert his boss? Did he tell his colleagues that he didn't trust him? https://t.co/BSOGN0G5ge pic.twitter.com/ENVwCZEE82

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 8, 2018

NYT gonna try to break some new ground here

Did you vote for Donald Trump for president? We’d like to hear from you. #NYTLetters https://t.co/0SMcE48jrg

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) January 8, 2018

One more. Current Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Rep. Ed Royce, will not seek re-election. pic.twitter.com/W4g3G7Bl5E

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 8, 2018

"you are so lucky that i gave you that privilege" is making me boggle in a way that i thought i'd become immune to in the last year

House committee chairs resigned or announced retirement so far:
1️⃣ Chaffetz - Oversight
2️⃣ Smith - Science
3️⃣ Hensarling - Financial Serv.
4️⃣ Goodlatte - Judiciary
5️⃣ Black - Budget
6️⃣ Shuster - T&I
7️⃣ Harper - Administration
8️⃣ Royce - Foreign Affairs

— K Tully-McManus (@ktullymcmanus) January 8, 2018

i think that's good news, but i'm thrown off by the obnoxious use of emoji numbers

I've noticed that whenever there's an article about the Russia investigation they always run one of only a couple pictures of Robert Mueller. Does the guy ever go outside? Why aren't there more current pictures of him? Has he been ensconced in some undisclosed location this entire time?

Also, it's as meaningless as any other proposal he has ever made - including his marriage proposals! - but expanding high-speed internet into rural America seems like a good idea.

I'm sure whichever Trump campaign contributor gets that contract will do an amazing job.

uh...
Tillerson and Mattis are reportedly trying to hold Trump back from striking North Korea

The best nuclear war, the biggest, have you seen our beautiful bombs? You are so lucky I gave you that privilege!

Well, it was nice knowing you all

i will survive

wolff's explanation of how the leak torrent developed seems plausible enough

Analysis or argument or PowerPoint did not work. But who said what to Trump and when often did. If, at Bannon’s prodding, Rebekah Mercer called him, that had an effect. Priebus could count on Paul Ryan’s clout with him. If Kushner set up Murdoch to call, that registered. At the same time, each successive call mostly canceled the others out.

This paralysis led the three advisers to rely on the other particularly effective way to move him, which was to use the media. Hence each man became an inveterate and polished leaker. Bannon and Kushner studiously avoided press exposure; two of the most powerful people in government were, for the most part, entirely silent, eschewing almost all interviews and even the traditional political conversations on Sunday morning television. Curiously, however, both men became the background voices to virtually all media coverage of the White House. Early on, before getting down to attacking each other, Bannon and Kushner were united in their separate offensives against Priebus. Kushner’s preferred outlet was Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s Morning Joe, one of the president’s certain morning shows. Bannon’s first port of call was the alt-right media (“Bannon’s Breitbart shenanigans,” in Walsh’s view). By the end of the first month in the White House, Bannon and Kushner had each built a network of primary outlets, as well as secondary ones to deflect from the
obviousness of the primary ones, creating a White House that simultaneously displayed extreme animosity toward the press and yet great willingness to leak to it. In this, at least, Trump’s administration was achieving a landmark transparency.

The constant leaking was often blamed on lower minions and permanent executive branch staff, culminating in late February with an all-hands meeting of staffers called by Sean Spicer — cell phones surrendered at the door — during which the press secretary issued threats of random phone checks and admonitions about the use of encrypted texting apps. Everybody was a potential leaker; everybody was accusing everybody else of being a leaker.

Everybody was a leaker.

Problems, problems

The White House is struggling to contain the national discussion about President Trump’s mental acuity and fitness for the job, @PhilipRucker and @AshleyRParker report: https://t.co/lGxgBQNrwV

— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) January 9, 2018