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

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

not as good as Allen & Burns, better than Martin & Lewis

It does not matter if you're just "activating" racists for electoral gains. If you practice racist politics you are a racist.

agree 100% i didn't mean to suggest otherwise!

Trump using the word 'sacred' makes me want to vomit. Can't wait until he starts ending his tweets with a hearty 'Namaste!'

the sacred investigative process (which I am actively attempting to subvert)

Have a blessed day! MAGA!

I get what you're saying YMP, but racist politics are not illegal, but rather handsomely rewarded in this country. We spend two-thirds of these threads calling him a piece of shit for it. This is a big deal too. As is his crusade against the environment, the massive transfer of wealth to the 1%, the daily assault on the notion of 'truth', the blatantly un-constitutional conflicts of interest, the normalization of white nationalist talking points, the fact that the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy, and the fact that major, major decisions in this country are being made by the likes of Jared Kushner. We should be talking about all of it.

God damnit, I'm just so mad about this Donald Trump !!!!!!!!!

BTW, a year+ of non-stop leaks the dummy and his supporters have derided as illegal, and then we have weeks of preamble about a memo that actually *is* classified that he *wants* released, and that's the one thing that *doesn't* leak.

the GOP is nearly unanimously selling out their values to protect this guy

Question that the GOP is selling out any values here

okay good point

You're cool, Tracer and frogbs.

Just get somewhat frustrated with this because so much of it is about who met with who and where a hotel was/wasn't and whether a sanction is this or that and most people (to be honest) are like zzzzz.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun? No? Okay, back to zzzzz for most people.

Meanwhile if your politics is based on who is doing what to the downtrodden, especially those of color, Russia is only interesting inasmuch as it brings down these mousefuckers.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

Manafort / Gates deserve to be behind bars and a prosecutor uncovering tax evasion, fraud, etc, in the course of a wider investigation has every right to put them there. The same applies to Trump.

Politically, the worst case scenario, imo, would be Mueller failing to demonstrate either financial crimes or illegal collusion but trying to nail Trump and key members of the team on obstruction - which would be perfectly valid as a legal strategy in a criminal case but likely to fuel the right-wing perception that the whole process has been a stitch-up.

it's perverse but the Russia stuff is like the dessert in the five-course meal of shit we're eating every day from this administration. there are lots of ridiculous characters, a mystery, international subterfuge...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

xpost Given the stated expertise of a fair amount of his team involves money laundering, seems likely that's the main target.

xp But YMP I care deeply about all those things and see how erosion of our democracy at the hands of private interests is exacerbating these problems. Human rights suffer in an oligarchy.

actually what we should really be talking about is the fact that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women and barging into underage girls' locker rooms, then was accused by over a dozen women of sexual assault and suffered no repercussions whatever for it

meanwhile the DNC had to spend a month apologizing because Harvey Weinstein gave them money

and the DNC is too "professional" to raise a fuss over steve wynn. the mind boggles at the fruits of our meritocracy

GOP isn't selling out their values, but they're pretty decisively laying their 'we have no values' cards on the table. I don't know how significant a long-term impact that will have on the affiliates who still unaccountably maintain that the party actually stands for things.

A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

Tbf, people related to the investigation have already died under mysterious circumstances, so ...

Also worth keeping in mind that the non-stop controversy and investigation has likely kept the worst potential shit from even happening. The impetus for all this stuff was not to take down Trump, but to prevent a bad actor (Russia) from doing worse. Trump unbound would likely further enable their international chicanery, which had and has a direct impact on elections and therefore politics and certainly democracy. It just so happens that Trump himself, through ignorance or evil or ineptitude, happens to be effect as well as cause of democracy's accelerated weakening/demise.

Is there a poisoned umbrella-tip? Boxes of Pennsylvanian ballots being fed into a woodchipper? Trunkloads of rubles? A literal or even figurative smoking gun?

How about a blackmail piss tape and a leaked* email where Trump Jr. directly attempts to engage in a quid pro quo with people connected to Putin?

*leaked, for whatever reason, by Junior himself**

**who also let it slip yesterday that McCabe was actually *fired*, another bombshell story that somehow didn't make headlines because things are so incredibly nuts right now

...it's a hell of a lot more fun to think about than ICE rounding up schoolchildren or Puerto Rico still be in shambles.

Again, I'm only interested insofar as it embarrasses and discredits and (one hopes) ultimately defeats these horrible people.

And as Josh says, the issue hampers their efforts to do yet more evil, so okay.

One thing for sure: one day this will end without a catharsis commensurate to the anger we have all built up. It will be a shame if so much indignation dies on the vine and doesn't manifest in longer-term electoral/legislative change.

It looks like Manafort and Gates are mostly on the hook for things that have little to do with Russia, though that could just be the opening shot.

I mean, in so far as Ukraine is not literally Russia (yet), but we're not talking six degrees of Vladimir Putin here. Even if the Manafort/Gates stuff was not directly related to Russia, it's not like a complete investigative non sequitur.

Also worth keeping in mind that the non-stop controversy and investigation has likely kept the worst potential shit from even happening. The impetus for all this stuff was not to take down Trump, but to prevent a bad actor (Russia) from doing worse.

haven't our intelligence communities already said that Russia's likely going to target midterms in the same way, and that our ability to do anything about it has been kneecapped by the fact that the Executive Branch still thinks the culprit is a 400 lb. guy in his mom's basement?

Have a blessed day! MAGA!

Will never not see this as MAGMA and forlornly dream of far, distant Kobaïa.

God damnit, I'm just so mad about this Donald Trump !!!!!!!!!

― frogbs, Friday, February 2, 2018 8:16 AM (ten minutes ago)

xpost
Trump and Vander = both neo-nazis who speak in a strange language of their own

Not directly related to this, but the handwringing in the war between FBI and Trump because 'they are both bad' is a categorical mistake. It's not about good or bad, it's about left and right. FBI is too far to the right, but Trump is trying to yank it even further to the right. The easy answer on what to do is to defend the institution from the attempt of rightward-yanking, and then yank it leftwards when we get the chance.

Seeing more and more reports that the memo is a bit of a wet blanket. It'll be spun, of course, but even so.

doesn't the whole Magma story begin with a colony of people escaping a tyrant

Forgive the link to Breitbart, which is a very bad website, but they got audio of Trump's speech to the RNC last night, and he bragged that "there aren't a lot of people" who can pass a dementia test like he can pass a dementia test. https://t.co/OUskfI5CWt pic.twitter.com/G2aMHOkJw4

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 2, 2018

Actually, what we should really be talking about is the fact that the one guy with the power to instantly end life Earth has a very diseased brain

doesn't the whole Magma story begin with a colony of people escaping a tyrant

By going to another planet, yes, not really a viable new direction for the Democrats though.

oh and by the way the Democrat lead in the generic Congressional ballot has cratered in the last few weeks so good luck with that "blue wave"

xp they would push a centrist program for ship-boarding priorities and try to make sure it included a bipartisan allotment of seats for the tyrant's side

So, um, what if they don't release the memo?

Fuck polling about elections 10 months away.

xpost That would be funny. Apparently unlikely at this point, but funny.

just chiming in here to say homan is a fascist and it's imperative that we dismantle ICE before he starts trying to arrest mayors & city council members. my stomach lurches at the shift of the wind that could bring about.

we need to be activating constituents to pressure Roybal-Allard in CA 40, Cuellar in TX 28, Price in NC 4, & Ruppersberger in MD 2 to commit to defund enforcement & removal operations & then we need to follow suit with whichever house dems get added to the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee after we take it back in November.

Mostly lawyerly speculation but some good quotes/viewpoints:

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

The ending is what I found most interesting:

One of the Russia defense attorneys also suggested what he called a “jujitsu move”: naming Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in a larger obstruction of justice case that targets one or more associates.

Whatever Mueller and his deputies have planned, the attorney said, it is not likely to be anticlimactic.

“There’s a sense of confidence I feel when I’m with them,” said the same lawyer. “Their level of confidence has grown, and that’s a body language thing.”

actually what we should really be focusing on is everyone getting Super Ebola AIDS in three years

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/01/cdc-to-cut-by-80-percent-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=buffer6a5e6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=.4316ebf41085

but hey at least all those hardworking people at Home Depot got their $200 bonus checks

Just to be clear: We are really and truly at a historical moment where actual adults are discussing whether the President of the United States is good or bad at a test that includes "identifying sketches of animals."

Sure, he's a known sexual predator and white-supremacist sympathizer. But let's seriously drill down on the important issue of: Can he correctly name a picture of a bunny?

a bit early for a stiff drink, but what the fuck, #nothingmatters

Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo. Last year, when Congo experienced a potentially deadly Ebola outbreak in a remote, forested area, CDC-trained disease detectives and rapid responders helped contain it quickly.

v sensible decision, good work everyone

where's the tax returns? president trump is conspiring with former KGB agents to break up the USA the way the USA broke up the USSR