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

Funny how this madness will necessitate an actual Deep State to do the job of the imagined one

I only wonder if the intelligence agencies care enough to burn the Republicans for making them the bad guys in this. Democrats and the media are entirely useless as usual.

I have to think eventually the purge and cowing will be complete for intelligence to simply ask “how high”, isnt that how Putin gets it done with FSB? I mean oppo journos or plutos can be merked but i imagine intel lines up.

From that Atlantic article. Why would we draw this conclusion?

”Indeed, in many ways, the sheer numerosity and blatantness of the president’s interventions suggests that he really is sincere in thinking that he did nothing wrong. Were he truly concerned about the criminality of his former actions, he might well have been more cautious in so openly attempting to subvert the investigation.”

pathological liars believe their own lies

^

lazy, lazy

The striking similarity between a newly-released Treasury Department report of Russian oligarchs and a 2017 list of wealthy Russians published in Forbes Magazine is no coincidence. On Tuesday, a Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the unclassified annex of the report was derived from Forbes’ ranking of the “200 richest businessmen in Russia 2017.”

The revelation is likely to invite criticisms of the thoroughness of the Treasury Department’s report and reinforce the notion that the list is primarily a who’s who of Russian elite rather than an official accounting of Kremlin-linked political corruption as some US lawmakers intended. Congress mandated the report in a law President Trump grudgingly signed in August. At the time, the president called the legislation “seriously flawed.”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/trump-administration-admits-it-cribbed-forbes-magazine-to

xp What incredible bullshit, like this guy hasn't made a career out of going to court. He knows perfectly well what the law is, for Christ's sake he's been surrounded by lawyers telling him as much. What an infuriating narrative, I guess we'll need to get used to it

christ on a crutch does anyone know how to do their fucking jobs xp

I'm catching up from a couple of days ago, but this is really a brilliant idea, I think:

i think it's a shame that they stop doing voter polls on how people will vote on an election after the election ends. seriously, somebody poll people and ask them how they voted in 2016. i'd love to know what the results are.

― Arnold Schoenberg Steals (rushomancy), Sunday, January 28, 2018 4:59 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I honestly think pollsters could leverage the degree to which people lie about their past voting behavior (by comparing actual results to aggregated voter self-reported results) in order to allow for better prediction of future elections. This would be different from exit polls in that it would be conducted on an ongoing basis. Actually, now that I think about it, is this already done but not widely reported?

The idea being not just that self-reported past voting behavior would vary with the current popularity of a politician, but also that people who will vote for some candidates (e.g. Trump) are more likely to lie about their past and future votes than others

“You can tell Trump believes he’s innocent because of all of the stuff he’s trying to hide.”

Interesting quote from Axios:

What I’m hearing: One source, who knows Trump as well as anyone, told me he believes the president would be incapable of avoiding perjuring himself. “Trump doesn’t deal in reality,” the source said. “He creates his own reality and he actually believes it.” (The president’s attorney, Ty Cobb, did not respond to a request for comment.)

xps, the related list of the 'Kremlin elite' or whatever they're calling it is again just a copy and paste job from the Russian government's website with three names (of people they presumably don't mind) taken off. They didn't even change the order of the names.

the endpoint of this Mueller investigation is gonna be

1) Trump & his entire administration all found guilty of obstruction + borderline treason + numerous financial crimes
2) the GOP spends weeks talking about how it's actually fine for a sitting President to do that, and the real story is in fact
3) Hillary Clinton, Uranium, and Unmasking, leading to the formation of a special council which will only disband upon the death of every remaining Clinton, meanwhile
4) Trump drops the N-word during an interview
5) his approval rating finally hits 40%

^^^ yup, I can see all of this happening.

i agree with that except you forgot that time Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch talked in an airplane parking lot.

about what? SEE #3!

thread: "Basically everything inside Russia is already sanctioned"

Unpopular Russia opinion alert: I'm not surprised at all re no defense/intel sanx, and I'm not sure any sanx were appropriate. And it's not like I'm a Kremlin sympathizer; I helped write and push the 2014 sanx, and I wrote last week on deterring Russian hacking w sanx. 1/

— Brian O'Toole (@brianoftoole) January 30, 2018

Yep, that's the key thing. aiui, the sticking point isn't who you sanction in Russia (in the sense of cutting them off from international banks, making it illegal for US companies to work with them, etc - which Obama already did), it's the US hypothetically setting up a unilateral system of penalties for countries buying weapons from Russia - which would include a bunch of major strategic allies.

The US continues to sanction individuals and businesses (and added another 30 to the list recently iirc) but if the people drafting this bill ever intended it to be implemented, it would have probably looked very different. Republicans got bipartisan support on Iran sanctions, Democrats got a stick to beat Trump with when he inevitably failed to implement parts of the Russia ones.

what do you know

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/trump-russia-collusion-fbi-cody-shearer-memo?CMP=edit_2221

Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.

Shout out to Trump’s speechwriters who are preparing for tonight’s State of the Union by accepting that none of their stuff will be used.

— Mike Lawrence (@TheMikeLawrence) January 30, 2018

he's going to read it from the teleprompter. he's going to do an ok job. he will be as presidential as he can be.

can't wait to see how many idiot journalists will be fooled by this new and improved prompter Trump

or, if he goes off script, he'll say something awful, and none of it will matter, 1.5% of undecided voters will decide they've had enough of him, and then next week they'll decide that they can take a little bit more

http://news.gallup.com/poll/226454/trump-approval-highest-west-virginia-lowest-vermont.aspx

If Trump paying off a porn star isn't particularly compromising, then what could the threat of revealing lewd acts in five star hotels hold over him? Russia would have more sway threatening to reveal financial funny business.

xpost Does that mean we can expect to lose Manchin?

a-fuckin-men xp

I'm so bo-o-ored with the dos-si-er

Trump to make “eye opening” remarks on North Korea at tonight’s State of the Union, I’m told. He will talk about North Korean nuclear threat in a "strong and serious way,” a source familiar with the speech says.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 30, 2018

"we begin bombing in five minutes"

re: gallup. His approval was even slightly underwater in a few surprising states, like Mississippi and South Carolina, but only by a couple of percentage points.

Clearly there are plenty of things he considered compromising, including the porn star. He wouldn't have paid her off otherwise. I think Trump didn't realize that there'd just be zero consequences for his worst actions.

xps

i have no stomach for any more of this shit tbh . none of it matters , see you all in the midterm thread .

^^good approach

Put another way, it is complete legit to believe both that many of Trump's heinous acts have not had the consequences you would expect and that the Russians have some kind of leverage over him. One doesn't cancel out the other.

more xps

He will talk about North Korean nuclear threat in a "strong and serious way,”

This is straight up pandering to an issue they know they can 'win', because it can be cast in binary terms with the USA as the innocent, strong good guy and DPRK as the evil threat. "Eye-opening" is also a reaction to a powerful fear, and powerful fear is also "mind-closing".

"do you ever use trump tweets as an 'eye opener'?"

Apparently, the new line on McCabe is that he was forced out due to his mishandling of the Clinton email server investigation, not unlike the excuse made re: Comey.

The world revolves around Trump, but Trump still revolves around Hillary.

I believe in the sold his soul to Satan hypothesis because I’ve never seen someone get away with this much stuff.

oh cool

Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance.

— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) January 30, 2018

AG Sessions standing at the door checking IDs. please please please let this happen.

Paul thinks it would be so frickin hot if a scene from his favorite dystopia-porn smut film played out for real.

Gosar then giddily took to Twitter to announce to everyone that he did it.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-wants-to-prosecute-mueller

haha he 100 percent hopes a 9/11 happens soon https://t.co/aCu7MdI5sX

— slackbot (@pareene) January 30, 2018

Only seven more years of this. pic.twitter.com/4e22CYN29K

— Will Sloan (@WillSloanEsq) January 30, 2018

xp what the fucking fuck

What if, God forbid, somebody were to throw a brick through your window? Now we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

the obama crash?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/us-stock-futures-dow-data-earnings-and-politics-on-the-agenda.html