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

There's a Joe McCarthy Drive in Buffalo! I never knew if it was named after the Senator and, if so, why. Maybe it's named for this guy, idk.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcconnell-urges-mississippi-governor-to-consider-cochran-senate-seat/2018/02/01/7f455d68-079d-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?sw_bypass=true&utm_term=.51ae590478db

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Anderson

After U.S. Senator Walter Mondale was elected vice president in 1976, the governor needed to appoint Mondale's successor. Anderson agreed with his lieutenant governor, Rudy Perpich, that Anderson would resign as governor, and Perpich, as the new governor, would appoint Anderson senator.

In what became known as the "Minnesota Massacre", nearly the entire DFL Party ticket was defeated in 1978, including Perpich and the candidates for both U.S. Senate seats, Anderson and Bob Short. Anderson's arrangement to have himself appointed to the Senate—and Perpich's role in that appointment—were deemed central factors in the defeats.

BTW, didn't all these GOP dum dums just maintain current FISA standards powers as of, like, a week or two ago?

if i remember high school history correctly, there was a Joe McCarthy Richard Nixon Studebaker, who was famous for his family brand of television sets

goddamn you for making me google that

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a bulletin from CBS News... JFK. Blown Away. What Else Do We Have to Say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfbcSBib64

he's tweetin'

"Rank & File are great people!"

???

ok, if this memo is released, does Christopher Wray resign? Should he resign? Is it better or worse if he doesn't resign?

Yeah I'm not sure how to feel about that. But get ready for your next Deputy AG, Rachel Lee Brand. Graduate of Antonin Scalia Law School.

I'm sure everything will be just fine.

surprise: the "rank-and-file" comment originated with President Hannity.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/trump-blasts-fbi-justice-dept-bosses-in-showdown-over-republican-memo-idUSKBN1FM1FD

It’s hard for me to get excited about any of this. Of the 10,000 reasons Trump should not be president that Don Jr. meeting is like number 4,000. There have been dirtier campaign tactics than Trump alluding darkly to the contents of the leaked emails—remember the Swift Boat ads?

"Rank & File are great people!"

I've always been curious about 80s cowpunk. Maybe I should check those guys out. There's a compilation of their two Slash albums on Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/album/4gRMsuakBOjK66HxAEYMXc?si=4z7I24DCTty15fMBED8n2Q

Acting ICE director: Politicians in sanctuary cities should be arrested and charged with crimes https://t.co/vmea2zKnvU pic.twitter.com/UrxuIURPMr

— The Hill (@thehill) January 3, 2018

Wasn't there a story from last year about the possibility that Christopher Wray was already heavily compromised by things he did with Christie re the Bridgegate scandal? I was wondering how he was bearing up prior to the current situation.

i'd like to see him try

xpost

The investigation probably is politically motivated to be honest. Mueller is turning over every rock to find financial crimes that obviously exist but are probably disconnected from the original narrative of “Russian interference in the election.” I’m not saying it isn’t understandable — Trump is a scumbag who disgraces the nation at best and an unhinged national security threat at worst — but I don’t think this is world’s away from the Starr report and I’m not going to faint with horror that Republicans are trying to disrupt it. Trump brought it all on himself by firing Comey and incriminating himself of course but he’s a dumb caveman.

What is the political motive of Republican Mueller, appointed by Republican Rod Rosenstein, after Trump fired Republican James Comey?

Not necessarily partisan but I don’t think these people want Trump to be president.

The republicans in congress i guess are onboard but my suspicion is that career intelligence officials realize this is a catastrophe. Also when it all started it wasn’t clear what kind of “republican” he would be — Bannon was still there

I don’t think this is world’s away from the Starr report

respectfully disagree -- starr started out investigating white water, which had zero to do with monica lewinsky. mueller is investigating russian interference in the election, especially quid pro quo with the trump campaign; trump's past crimes laundering money for russians is related to that

yes - anything that could give Russia (or others) leverage over Trump or his team is germane to the investigation, which helpfully means anything illegal they did needs to be looked at. it doesn't need political motivation to cast its net wide.

I don’t really have a point except that Trump might not have been wrong that people had it out for him. That’s why it’s weird when ostensible liberals act surprised thst he would dare — dare! — question the integrity of the FBI. Like come on these people are used to pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy. That part isn’t wrong.

For brutally pragmatic reasons I hope the worst possible happens to Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

xps

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet against the president,” said one of the lawyers.

The second attorney, who represents a senior Trump official, speculated that Mueller could try to bring an indictment against Trump even if he expects the move to draw fierce procedural challenges from the president’s lawyers – if only to demonstrate the gravity of his findings.

“It’s entirely possible that Mueller may go that route on the theory that, as an open question, it should be for the courts to decide,” the attorney said. “Even if the indictment is dismissed, it puts maximum pressure on Congress to treat this with the independence and intellectual honesty that it will never, ever get."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-russia-indictment-mueller-probe-384969

Here's a controversial take on Trump's assertion that people are out to get him: how about, rather, he spent decades getting away with shit and now the chickens are finally coming home to roost? It's like a dude who spent decades on the FBI most wanted list coming out of hiding and complaining because people are all the time chasing him now. Unfair! Sad!

I agree with reggie. The 'financial crimes' are part and parcel to how he became a Russian asset in the first place.

I don’t think he’s a russian asset. I think it just feels better. To people to see him as an alien invader than the monstrous product of our own democracy—thats why the story is so appealing. Maybe i’m wrong.

No, you're absolutely otm

Trump is an authoritarian, which has everything to do with him subverting law and trying to make a law agency do his bidding and nothing more.

There is a billboard in Fresno of Trump and Nunes on leashes held by Putin—some independent group’s ad to get out the vote. This kind of thing bothers me. It’s the imagery of conspiracy theories.

i think he's a monstrous product of voodoo economics, and the russians -- who know full well that reagan's amping up the arms race bankrupted the soviet union -- are laughing their asses off at this posterchild for american hypocrisy whom they've propped up financially for years now

xppst

treesh junior is emphatically OTM again.

Of COURSE federal employees are not robots; they are humans with opinions and when they see something horrid coming it's understandable that they would be alarmed.

And yeah, if Russia stuff is what hobbles Trump I won't be upset. But really the racism and sexism (and antipathy toward the downtrodden generally) are bigger problems for me than who met with who when and then lied about it.

Literally everything in the Mueller investigation (that we know of) is directly related to Russia, from loans to laundering to obstruction to cooperation/collusion to interference. I don't think Trump is an "asset," not formally. But that doesn't mean Russia doesn't have influence. And even if Trump himself is not an asset, clearly Manafort, Page, Flynn et al. have deep, close ties to Russia.

FWIW, every branch of the Starr investigation was related to Clinton, but not to each other. That was a real turn-over-every-rock witch hunt.

Trump but the swirl of discourse around this Russia investigation makes me uncomfortable. Kind of misses the point about why Trump’s presidency is a catastrophe in the first place, which has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with his resurrection of nativism.

If you accept that the catastrophe central to Trump's presidency is an egregious compromise of national interests—domestically and abroad—in order to benefit a handful of supranational billionaires, Russia has everything to with it. Fomenting nativism is merely a lever toward that end (cf. Putin). It's entirely about money.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

you can draw a pretty straight line from "accepts help of a foreign power to win an election" to trump's general baseline m.o. of "willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states, just as it included breaking contracts he didn't feel like honouring, just as it included moving on them like a bitch and grabbing them by the pussy.

The FBI is not just 'pulling the strings in ways that subvert democracy', they have throughout their history pulled strings especially to harm left wing groups and help the right. And as a matter of fact, that is what they did in 2016 as well. What Trump and the Republicans are doing are trying to make them even more right wing, with even less regard for basic constitutional rules, and there's no reason to not fight that.

like the fact that the Trump's campaign's *only* change to the RNC platform was weakening support for Ukraine. or just deciding to not enforce sanctions that were unanimously approved by Congress. or his phonecalls with Putin "mysteriously" going undocumented. or Junior meeting w/ Russians who seem to explicitly offer a quid pro quo, followed by everyone in the admin lying off their ass about it. or Trump firing and/or attacking every single person who isn't "on his side". like, imagine what a fever dream it would be for the GOP if *any* of this stuff involved a Clinton. imagine if Congressional Dems had a quarter of the enthusiasm for this that the Republicans did over the tarmac meeting.

Y'all are frisky this morning!

I mean there's practically a bombshell on this story on a daily basis! I get the concern and all but I think we can stop being worried about Pizzagating ourselves at this point

otm The question of a financially private quid pro quo, in which one citizen's financial interests and history of money laundering are protected in exchange (for example) for a shift in U.S. posture toward Ukraine, is not "business as usual." It is alarming.

idk most conspiracies hinge on people doing in secret the sort of things that Trump is just doing out in the open

Seriously. It's neither conspiracy nor theory, it's all right there! The conspiracy theory is the unfathomable realization that there is probably a lot more we don't know.

xpost And again, whether or not Trump himself directly participated, if those around him and hired by him (and not fired by him!) were up to no good and he either encouraged or enabled that, that's criminal.

Yes. If people are seeing the Russia business strictly through the lens of "corruption" I guess I understand guarding against sanctimony as our govt is inherently corrupt. But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that the President is compromised.

"willing to screw over anyone to get what he wants" and yes that includes activating a white racist base to push him over the hump in swing states

GAH. Didn't we already cover this months ago?

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist. If you benefit from racist politics you are a racist. If you even just kinda sorta like that racists vote for you, you are a racist.

Oh but please, let's talk more about who probably rode up in an elevator with a Russian and must surely have discussed something Russiany.

and yeah - the crazy thing about this, as Fredrik alluded to, is that the FBI *is* right wing; they 100% threw the election to Trump in the final weeks, as alerting the public that they had Clinton emails that they **already had copies of** was apparently more important than letting people know that Trump and many of the people in his campaign were under a far wider-reaching investigation - Michael Flynn was still working for him! the same people who Trump and 99% of GOP Congress are now accusing of being Deep State anti-Trump operatives are the ones who drafted that Clinton memo in the first place! it's infuriating - like an NBA team blatantly getting every foul call, then loudly complaining that the refs were biased against them because they missed a travel in the first quarter.

hey y'all i think everybody's made their points, let's let our president say the last word on this

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

the comedy duo of Rank & File