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

What was that a few days (months? years?) ago with Bannon boasting we will never see him hiring a lawyer or testifying?

presumably the interaction between the fbi agents and bannon were like a larp of the x-files episodes with eugene tooms

dammit i meant flukeman i fucked this up i'm sorry guys shit goddammit fuck

I think you're just conflating the various monsters of the week that were modeled after Bannon. I'm sure he also roosts in a nest he's constructed from newspaper strips and his own bile.

From that Bloomberg piece Ned linked:

Author Michael Wolff’s pitch to the White House to win cooperation for his book included a working title that signaled a sympathetic view, a counter-narrative to a slew of negative news stories early in Donald Trump’s presidency.

He called it “The Great Transition: The First 100 Days of the Trump Administration.” And in part due to that title, Wolff was able to exploit an inexperienced White House staff who mistakenly believed they could shape the book to the president’s liking.

Nearly everyone who spoke with Wolff thought someone else in the White House had approved their participation. And it appears that not a single person in a position of authority to halt cooperation with the book -- including Trump himself -- raised any red flags, despite Wolff’s well documented history. His previous work included a critical book on Trump confidant Rupert Murdoch, the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. co-chairman.

...

Wolff’s entree began with Trump himself, who phoned the author in early February to compliment him on a CNN appearance in which Wolff criticized media coverage of the new president.

Wolff told Trump during the call that he wanted to write a book on the president’s first 100 days in office. Many people want to write books about me, Trump replied -- talk to my staff. Aides Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks listened to Wolff’s pitch in a West Wing meeting the next day, but were noncommittal.

Several aides said Hicks later informally endorsed talking with Wolff as long as they made “positive” comments for the book, which they said Wolff told them would counter the media’s unfair narrative.

It wasn’t until late August that alarm bells were raised in the White House -- when Hicks, Jared Kushner and their allies realized that fellow aides who had spoken with Wolff, especially Bannon, may have provided damaging anecdotes about them.

not worrying at all that senior white house figures can be so easily duped by the most simple flattery and so disinclined to do any background checking on the flatterer

worth recalling wolff's quote from a little while back

I remember when the Murdoch book came out and Murdoch's guy [former News Corp. marketing and corporate affairs exec] Gary Ginsberg, called me, furious, and said, "What is this? The book is all about him!" I said, "It's a biography." And Ginsberg says, "But it's so personal." That's when I realized, these guys don't just not read books — they don't know what books are.

Jeff Flake set to make some kind of anti-trump speech on the senate floor

well that oughtta take care of trump once and for all

Flake the Trump Slayer

I'dxask what the over/under would be about Trump tweeting about "Frosted Flake", but a nickname like that is too clever for him.

AP "reviewed hundreds of pages of depositions taken of Trump in the past decade":

"The transcripts reveal a witness who is by turns voluble, giving expansive answers far beyond the questions asked; boastful, using unrelated queries to expound on his wealth or popularity; unapologetic, swift to defend incendiary comments or criticized actions; and occasionally combative, once deriding a lawyer for 'very stupid' questions."

xpost should just post a gif of himself brushing brushing his shoulders off

Jeff Cornflake xxp

really don't think Corey Booker throwing Weiner-style tantrums on camera is gonna help anything

how? nobody cares either way imo

so the associated press reviewed hundreds of pages of trump depositions and found that trump be trumpin'

guys I think this trump guy might be a bit of a piece of work!

AP should interview some Trump supporters, see what they think.

Been seeing Farenthold's byline so infrequently these days that I assume he is deep in something, or writing a book, but this remains the standard bearer for the Trump is a Liar storyline:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-lies/

fuck!! CNN in the background with voters from Ohio praising trump's bullshit and eating up the lies on immigrants taking ALL their jobs!!

"he says stuff like real americans,i like that, I want may country back" xp

my*

(bitcoin babies right now getting a lot not-richer)

psyched for everyone save native americans to self-deport

New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018

....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018

fUCK THIS FUCKING NARRATIVE IS SO INFURIATING .

and of course completely untrue

be interested to know exactly how many individuals have been convicted of terrorism-related charges in this stat he's citing

https://qz.com/1180762/trumps-dhs-and-doj-are-overcounting-foreign-born-terrorists/

Charles Pierce is not pleased with Chelsea Manning's running

Look, I have no problem if Manning wants to run. Everybody who wants to run should be able to run. That’s why I’m in favor of campaign-finance reform and easy access to the franchise. Also, as my grandmother used to say, everyone’s entitled to go to hell in their own way.

And, generally, I’m in favor of vigorous primaries. They sharpen people up for the general election and, occasionally, the debate creates momentum for a policy or an issue that’s been lost in the general hurly-burly. But I also believe that, in a proper primary, both candidates should agree on exactly the office for which they’re running. Ben Cardin is running for re-election to the United States Senate. Chelsea Manning seems to be running to be Natalie Portman’s stunt double in V For Vendetta II: The Vendetting.

If I had my own military intelligence establishment, and I was trying to run candidates to screw up the government of the United States, this is exactly the kind of campaign video I would run. I also would point out that there’s a very old and racist joke involving the Lone Ranger and Tonto that Manning’s rather profligate use of the first-person plural brings immediately to mind.

“’Terrorism-related’ is not a term that appears in the US criminal code,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute. “It’s pretty meaningless.”

His own analysis, which counts foreign-born terrorists convicted of planning or committing a terrorist attack in the US, found 154 cases from 1975 to 2015. That’s almost 250 fewer than the Trump administration’s count over a longer period of time. The White House and the Homeland Security department did not respond to requests for comment.

trump administration in 'total bullshit' shocker

(thx for the link doc c)

First, the list excludes homegrown extremists, who have become the US’s biggest terror threat.

basically they're including people who were convicted of whatever non-terrorism crime, if the investigations/prosecutions in some way arose out of a terrorism investigation... and NOT counting "domestic" terrorism like vegas, charlestown etc. so basically the remit for the report, which was called for in the muslim ban EO, was "manufacture evidence to support the muslim ban EO."

xpost

the level of incompetent mendacity on display would be funny if it wasn't so likely to help trump get what he wants

If I had my own military intelligence establishment, and I was trying to run candidates to screw up the government of the United States, this is exactly the kind of campaign video I would run.

cause if there's one thing we all love it's the government of the United States as it is currently structured and operated

Flake’s speech is going to compare trump’s treatment of the media to Stalin (for real - there were reports about it from early transcripts the other day)

wait, so the military intelligence establishment is backing the campaign of someone who infamously blew the whistle on that same military intelligence establishment in order to tilt the us government on its axis... for some reason?

the 'chelsea is a russian stooge' take seems sane by comparison

Flake’s speech is going to compare trump’s treatment of the media to Stalin (for real - there were reports about it from early transcripts the other day)

oh cool so now the right's gonna stan for stalin the way they've been stanning for hitler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mnv3WcQPk

'i strongly condemn the president's shameful words and actions, and i will continue to vote in support of his policies the overwhelming majority of the time'

oh cool so now the right's gonna stan for stalin the way they've been stanning for hitler

tbf he probably killed more communists than anyone else

when #nevertrump GOP dudes end up in gulags for, oh let's say at least six months, I'll buy this comparison, with a side of popcorn.

oh cool so now the right's gonna stan for stalin the way they've been stanning for hitler

― grim-n-gritty hooty reboot (bizarro gazzara),

my thought too

The part of Pierce's post on Manning that Alfred quoted is not the important part. This is:

I would like one person to explain to me how any of the following would improve if Chelsea Manning were the senator from Maryland instead of Ben Cardin.

1) The national government;

2) The lives of the people of Maryland, and,

3) Any progressive policy not drawn up with spray-paint on the side of an abandoned factory.

And please, show your work. Also, any answer containing the phrase, “neo-McCarthyism” is automatically disqualified.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation extending a government program established to gather information from foreigners overseas has cleared a key Senate hurdle.

The Senate voted 60-38 to limit debate on the six-year reauthorization of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s vote to limit debate got supporters to the threshold needed for the Senate to move to a final vote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had pushed Democrats to oppose limiting debate, saying lawmakers from both parties should get an opportunity to offer amendments.

here are the 18 senate democrats who got it to 60 votes:

Tom Carper (Del.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Doug Jones (Ala.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Joe Manchin (W.V.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Warner (Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.).

my boy Bill Nelson

MORE POWER FOR THE MAD GOD-KING

so much for my tentative endorsement of Duckworth

so tired of Dems doing this shit under the guise of "bipartisanship" or w/e

primary them all

Yeah, I know Duckworth is a military vet and that probably affects her vote but jfc