US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

lol even NAPOLITANO is concerned

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/371794-fox-news-napolitano-if-nunes-changed-memo-to-satisfy-political-needs-innocent

i don't understand what's so bad about the white house co-authoring a congressional memo that casts aspersions on an investigation into the white house's obstruction of justice when it comes to investigating conspiracy with a foreign adversary to interfere with an american election. aren't both sides bad?

there are some very fine people on both sides

Have there been any indications that Mueller is investigating Nunes? Because I can't help but wonder what he's getting out of all of this.

a tugjob

People want to hear the first statements by new presidents, then their interest drops off. Trump will never beat these ratings.

Which is why he's considering not running for reelection, but resigning and then running again. So he'll be a new president again. All about ratings, baby.

make sure we "secure our border without sending a bad message"

Maybe paint some pictures of tacos and other Mexican stuff on the wall?

I heard about a Chinese restaurant that became a Mexican restaurant, but they liked the art, so they painted sombreros on the pandas on the window.

https://i.imgur.com/J4bFtuY.jpg

Just a suggestion.

if he resigns, he'll prob get huge ratings.

WH saying Trump has read the memo; not sure how that's possible unless it's been converted into a book-on-tape

It's a picture book with his photo on every other page to keep him focused. 'There I am again!'

Did Putin sign off on the memo, y/n?

apparently the memo is only 4 pages, which is 3 pages longer than Trump's attention span. but maybe he did it in chunks.

The only way that memo could be read by him would be tweeting it at him in 400 character parts. Or print it on his toilet paper for, y'know, when he's tweeting.

Trump: (mutters to self while slowly scanning memo with a pained expression) Devin, what's this word?
Nunes: That's 'collusion', Mr. President.
Trump: 'Collusion', right, right. (continues muttering) What about this one?
Nunes: The word is 'FBI'.
Trump: And that one?
Nunes: That's your name, Mr. President.

Trump: Okay, I've seen that one before. And this word?
Nunes: That's a smear of steak sauce, sir. It's all over your hands.
Trump: But what word is it?

This is about what I would figure, making it even more of a muddle:

DEVELOPING: The White House has agreed to some redactions in the FISA memo at the FBI’s request, per multiple WH officials.

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 1, 2018

i hope everyone just takes a deep breath and remembers how careless that crooked nasty woman was with classified information

The redactions are only going to set off the monkey house all the louder.

Well, exactly. As well as making a short and apparently contextless memo even shorter.

i hope something exciting happens soon... trump bores me

I'm sure Trump's followers will accept, with their trademarked grace and quiet dignity, the FBI-requested redactions in this memo about the FBI's conspiracy to destroy America.

i hope something exciting happens soon

famous last words

Pres. Trump says Sen. Orrin Hatch told him he was a better president than Washington and Lincoln

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) February 1, 2018

Exciting!

lol if anyone would remember those dudes it would be Hatch

I'm all for free speech but anyone who makes a claim like that in seriousness should be jailed for life.

Or, in this case, immediately stripped of his Senatorship, at the absolute least.

He wss high when he said it

shut your hatch, orrin

Washington and Lincoln couldn't throw a spiral to save their lives

Losers who have never had their names on any casinos

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/politics/white-house-worried-wray-nunes-memo/index.html

Washington (CNN)Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN.

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official.

is this bad?

The Very Smart Genius is walking around saying "I can't wait to obstruct justice!" out loud to everyone he sees. https://t.co/HPNYeGeV8Y

— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) February 1, 2018

Further muddle

NEW: The WH is worried that FBI Director Chris Wray might resign if the memo is released. Kelly trying to find a compromise that keeps Wray happy: https://t.co/qznaWcyied via @DanaBashCNN @jeffzeleny @evanperez

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) February 1, 2018

Seems Bad

think how poor carter page feels, subject to FBI surveillance all because crooked hillary (and the kenyan's deep state minions) colluded with foreign governments (the UK and the former USSR) to conjure up the phony dossier

I mean this is negotiation in public, really. Not all that surprising that at least some in the WH kinda realize that they actually should find a way out of the box they've made.

what a country

can someone import all the drinking .gifs from the Director's Poll thread into this one?

omg Trump just resigned

j/k just needed an alt history cheer-up

of course Trump is better than Washington and Lincoln, Washington never once eliminated a government regulation and Lincoln set the slaves free, which was just hell on small business owners

I just want to be perfectly clear that when we look at guys like Devin Nunes (age 44) and what sort of young people are currently, in this age, drawn to active participation in GOP politics, that we're looking at the future of the party, not the past

— slackbot (@pareene) February 1, 2018

this really feels like the ending of the book Airframe:

"A senior Democratic committee official told CNN that there are “five material changes to different parts of the memo, including a modification that appears intended to water down the overall importance of the Majority’s purported ‘findings.’”

“The Majority document now in the White House’s possession is different in key respects from the document the Committee Majority voted on January 18, 2018 to make available to the full House of Representatives and which hundreds of House Members have read so far," the source explained. "We have identified five material changes to different parts of the memo, including a modification that appears intended to water down the overall importance of the Majority’s purported 'findings.' The Majority’s White House version otherwise also includes six less consequential grammatical and word modifications (as well as one font-related change to align with the rest of the document).”

What Republicans say: Rep. Trey Gowdy’s office says the congressman, a senior Republican on the panel, has no issues with the changes. They contend that the changes were minor and made before the Monday vote.

Nunes’ office did not respond to a request for comment. His office said last night there were only two edits made as a request from FBI and Democrats and the rest were minor and grammatical changes."

I mean the general public could determine for themselves if we were to see both versions of the memo, so really it's important that we release the memo now

let's all write our own memos

The Trump Administrsrion says once ISIS is gone, our troops will stay in Syria to fight Iran. FYI - this is a BIG DEAL that few in Congress seem to care about. https://t.co/AWfbXMaycq

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 1, 2018

"to fight Iran" is not mention in the linked NYT article at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEzRQYDVD_4

i hope they call this Dilbertgate years from now

"I got a letter from the government the other day. I opened and it said they were suckers."

here’s the same story w much better headline

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/26/us/iyw-striking-teachers-feed-students-trnd/index.html

Trump is hopping mad tonight. In a bad place. I think when we do the tick tocks we’ll find this was a moment where he said “F it.” (Though I think this one is still very TBD, and I assume at *some point* tonight John Kelly will locate the steering wheel again.) https://t.co/FxiHlvh4t6

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) March 1, 2018

I'll be in my bunk-er

Even better!

Steel and aluminum tariffs could be announced by Trump on Thursday, but White House and industry sources still say there's a lot of back and forth on this. w/ @AndrewRestuccia https://t.co/htUoukO1qG

— Adam Behsudi (@ABehsudi) March 1, 2018

Lots of back and forth (mainly because senior White House officials were learning about it for the first time by reading the Washington Post.) https://t.co/NM0Hjk5Z8l

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) March 1, 2018

I don't know why, but I'm not shocked by the Hicks resignation.

Would I be shocked to find out that Hicks is and always has been a mole inside the Trump organization/campaign/administration? I'm not sure I'd be shocked by that either.

what would it take to shock you, besides a cattle prod

A purportedly progressive individual's voice of support for acts in contravention of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Torture?

I don't know that I'd be shocked by any resignation from the Trump administration. It may be triggered by a variety of circumstances depending on the person in question, but most will eventually heed the siren call of self-preservation.

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/24/5d/d2/245dd2b5469f46f2a822cbdf2ac9d087--renault-population.jpg

I guess everyone is otm and that no resignation should be surprising. At this point it seems pretty clear that no matter what a person is hired to do for Trump, if they stay long enough they will 1) be named Director of Communications and 2) be forced to lie about the collusions.

collusion? no collusion

51% of Americans now support Trump's tax cuts. The primary reason: the media mindlessly repeating GOP-allied corporations "000 Bonus!" stories for three months. https://t.co/Vb1gHGvoLi pic.twitter.com/QOmBsbjaxM

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) March 1, 2018

Mnuchin: Well, you must seem to have a bias because you're using the words "engineered," so you obviously think that it was the policy the policies were created. Again, what I would say is we fundamentally believe that we will have economic growth and again, 35 basis points is the break even. And we're already seeing this. By the way, we're seeing companies give millions and millions of workers bonuses all as a result of this. And for people who are getting these thousand-dollar bonuses, these are not crumbs.

Ryssdal: Absolutely not, and I'm not going to imply that at all. You said 4 million workers in this economy?

Mnuchin: Four and a half million.

Ryssdal: Four and a half million have gotten one-time bonuses.

Mnuchin: Yes.

Ryssdal: So this is a labor pool of 155 million people, sir.

Mnuchin: So are you, tell me, are you, for those four and a half million workers —

Ryssdal: So my question is —

Mnuchin: in one month. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Four and a half million workers have already seen this impact.

Ryssdal: By some estimates —

Mnuchin: I understand you're doing the math.

Ryssdal: No. So the Americans for Tax Reform say plus or minus, 86 companies have given wage increases, 250 companies have given one-time bonuses, and I guess the question is, what would you rather have? Would you rather have a one-time bonus or a consistent wage increase over the next couple of years?

Mnuchin: We fundamentally believe that there will be wage increases going through to the workers.

Ryssdal: Why do you believe that?

Because there are implied scare quotes around 'fundamentally believe'. Because they neither 'fundamentally believe' that nor do they care.

I've maintained a fundamental belief in trickle-down economics for decades. It's totally going to pay off one day, for sure.

i don't know who this ryssdal is but i like the cut of her (his?) jib

it just occurred to me that deep-learned AIs would be a vast improvement over pretty much every American broadcast journalist going - not even joking really

I always have such a hard time trying to figure out exactly what kind of lizard Mnuchin resembles.

https://www.marketplace.org/people/kai-ryssdal

xps

ah! duh

Time for a new thread, yes?

US Politics, March 2018: “Is it dirthole?” she asked. Close, but not quite.
US Politics, March 2018: That's a big deal. That's a big deal.
US Politics, March 2018: what would it take to shock you, besides a cattle prod
US Politics, March 2018: elderly, myopic and bumbling

suggested title: Why do people leave the White House for good?

haha love it

yes

Excellent.

I was gonna go with US Politics, March 2018: No Hope, but I like the why do people leave title.