First, something nice: a roseate spoonbill flew over my house a while ago. I happened to be looking out the window when it flew by, and as usual, I scrambled to get outside with my camera, but NOT as usual, I actually got a photo:
The only reason I was able to get the shot is because the bird was circling, probably preparing to land in one of the nearby ponds or canals. It’s not a great shot, but I’m still psyched to have captured a photo of one of my favorite birds on the wing.
Secondly, something depressing: Jon Chait published a piece in New York mag yesterday called “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.” The whole (longish) thing is worth a read, but here’s an excerpt that lays out the premise:
The media has treated the notion that Russia has personally compromised the president of the United States as something close to a kook theory. A minority of analysts, mostly but not exclusively on the right, have promoted aggressively exculpatory interpretations of the known facts, in which every suspicious piece of evidence turns out to have a surprisingly innocent explanation. And it is possible, though unlikely, that every trail between Trump Tower and the Kremlin extends no farther than its point of current visibility.
What is missing from our imagination is the unlikely but possible outcome on the other end: that this is all much worse than we suspect. After all, treating a small probability as if it were nonexistent is the very error much of the news media made in covering the presidential horse race. And while the body of publicly available information about the Russia scandal is already extensive, the way it has been delivered — scoop after scoop of discrete nuggets of information — has been disorienting and difficult to follow. What would it look like if it were reassembled into a single narrative, one that distinguished between fact and speculation but didn’t myopically focus on the most certain conclusions?
Probably 95% of us here are already convinced Trump (and other Republicans) conspired with Russia to swing the election. But still, reading the narrative Chait lays out is chilling. He’s right about how the way we’ve received “discrete nuggets of information” has a “can’t see the forest for the trees” effect.
Thirdly, another depressing thing: Trump was on Twitter earlier teasing tonight’s prime-time SCOTUS pick reveal, and he apparently ordered that woman who runs the RNC, Mitt’s niece, to hype it up too. It’s all so tacky and gross, like a reality TV nightmare in which the stakes are your civil rights.
I will most definitely NOT be watching. Will have to remember to turn off alerts on my phone too. It doesn’t matter who he picks. The candidates are all uniformly awful Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation shit-birds.
Someone text me if he picks Judge Jeanine from Fox News. There would be entertainment value in that since her affect is that of a braying drunk at the end of the bar with whom every other patron avoids making eye contact. She would even make Alito, Gorsuch and Roberts squirm. (I suspect Thomas is used to similar displays from his wife and would thus be unfazed.) But otherwise, I don’t give a shit.
Open thread!
schrodingers_cat
His handler. Their relationship does not seem to be that of two equals.
Corner Stone
Glad Chait finally clued in – two years too late.
swiftfox
R spoonbill has been hanging out in the Chesapeake Bay. Not part of climate change. They just got tired of stone crabs.
Corner Stone
No intention of watching this shitshow either. Instead I plan to be watching another set of spoiled rich brats with egos the size of a small planet. Inveterate risk takers who are never wrong but can only be wronged by Fate herself, or the utter stupidity of others. Yes, I plan to watch the World Series of Poke Her countdown to final table.
Dorothy A. Winsor
What a spectacular color that bird is.
I blogged about invoking the gods in a secondary world fantasy, using example from a book I wrote a while ago called FINDERS KEEPERS (coincidentally a title Steven King used at the same time). Needless to say, I had the post scheduled and ready to go, since moving has made me stupid.
ETA: I don’t remember other presidents treating a court nomination as a prime time TV event. We have become a reality show with real consequence.
LAO
If you have Amazon Prime, Betty, I recommend watching “A Very English Scandal” — while it is sad premise, Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw are amazing in it.
Also, I have just discovered “The Brief” about 15 years late, so I know what I’ll be doing at 9:00 pm.
piratedan
Betty, I fully expect that Putin has essentially been funding building a world-wide fascist movement and the success in Brexit and US elections means that the only real opponent he has left is the European Union and he’s doing his level best to fuck that up as well, again, with the immigration/other theme playing the leading thread in turning people against one another.
Until someone has the will to weather these attacks and bring Mr. Putin to heel, this shit will continue….
Corner Stone
Doesn’t anyone on the Trump supporter side want to know why Trump insists on no note taking or official readout? If Trump was laying down the law and being a manly man to cow Putin into terms Trump found more “friendly” then wouldn’t they want to crow about how tough he is and that he’s the best, just the best, negotiator evah?
Corner Stone
Of all the MSNBC anchors, she is not the dumbest, but I find Chris Jansing to be the most fucking irritating. Stop fucking interrupting the guest so you can blabber out some god damned inane question you think makes you look smaht! Tweety at least will nail people once in a while, Jansing just interrupts for her own self-aggrandizement.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When I saw your title, I thought, this will either be about Russia or global warming.
IANAL, and I’m sure the different candidates would rule (slightly) differently on different cases, but for the vast majority of the country, whoever it is will be a reliable partisan vote. Again, NAL, but I see Roberts as a politician (kill Roe and Obamacare by the death of a thousand cuts) and Alito as an ideologue (swinging a righteous axe for the Lord). I think that’s the only meaningful difference between R justices.
My money’s on Hardimann, because trump likes central casting, Kavanagh is too young-looking and Bush-tainted, and they’ll keep Coney Barrett in reserve.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My guess is Kethledge, but it could just as easily be Hardimann. The reasons you outlined apply to both.
oldgold
We desperately need an explicit signal from Mueller as to what we are dealing with.
I get that there is merit in running a tight leakless ship and not getting out ahead of one’s ship prow, BUT there are costs associated with this. I think these costs are becoming too high to accept much longer.
Aimai
@Betty Cracker: Its not worse than I imagine. I’ve already imagined this pretty accurately. Yes:Trump is a traitor.
Timurid
I wonder how much longer the Trump/Putin relationship will last (and how ugly things will get after the inevitable breach) for two reasons:
Any kompromat on Trump held by the Russians (short of a straight up snuff film) has a finite shelf life. As the process of normalization continues, disclosures that would have been fatal to Trump as candidate, President-Elect or even at the start of his term will become harmless. Mueller will probably reveal a lot of this dirt on his own, but after children in cages was shrugged off, will anyone even care?
Trump’s team, now that they’re inside the wire, can handle all the tampering and ratfucking they relied on the Russians for in 2016.
Downpuppy
I’ve started keeping track of otherwise inexplicable actions that could be on orders from Moscow. The big ones are trashing NATO, abandoning Crimea, standing down cyberdefense of elections, and putting tariffs on inputs like steel & aluminum instead of manufactured goods. There’s a lot of energy related policy that could be just stupidity, but helps Russia.
Cheryl Rofer
@oldgold: When you come at the king, come to kill.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@piratedan:
Or Putin dies. How old is he?
Downpuppy
@Timurid: The Kompromat is self regenerating. If it comes out that Trump is acting on orders from Moscow, that hurts him but they just laugh.
trollhattan
Everything is going to shit and it’s impossible to pick a single turd to gaze at. UCLA hit 111 degrees, breaking the alltime record. UCLA is a whopping 5 miles from the ocean and I can only ponder how hot the valley must have been.
Trump is nominating his shriveled left ball for USSC. I’m no more watching his goat rodeo than I did Geraldo with Capone’s vault. He craves attention and I’m happy to deny it. Until the perp walk, that I’m watching.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@LAO: I’m grateful to Amazon Prime for saving The Expanse, which is excellent Scifi.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is really good too – possibly my favorite made for Amazon show right now. The lead actress (Rachel Brosnahan) is great but Tony Shalhoub and Alex Borstein are both just fricking fantastic. They steal every scene they are in. Very funny.
Timurid
@Downpuppy:
Hurts him but doesn’t kill him.
trollhattan
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Fucker is 65 and mean people live forever. He’ll wrestle a bear for his 80th.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
No. This has been another edition of SATSQ.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Timurid:
Shrugged off by what’s left of the GOP maybe, but not most people. Hundreds of thousands marched last week in support of the children and their parents.
TenguPhule
@oldgold:
Assume its traitors all the way up. Mueller can’t send a message because everyone in the Executive branch that outranks him is an out and out traitor.
TenguPhule
@Timurid:
They have his snuff film. They snuck a ladyboy in when he was expecting a daughter look alike and his tiny pudgy hands were just the right size to fit around the throat.
Gravenstone
Site weirdness runneth over. I am currently afforded the opportunity to edit the most recent posting at the time of my page click. And we have a new fresh advertising Hell, a pop out ad that slithered in from the side. Oh, and no personal details were present when I entered the reply. Although I will grant that those have been persisting more recently on my personal (as opposed to work) machines.
As far as Chait’s belated realization, I seem to recall Adam making largely the same assertion right here, some months ago in a reply rather than explicitly on a front page posting. But the potential that Trump was compromised from the get go by the USSR/Russia should have been long considered.
Mary G
This is a good thread about breakdown of relations between the US and the EU at lower levels of government:
He ends it with #youdontknowwhatyouvegottilitsgone
oldgold
@Cheryl Rofer:
I get that. But, you can error on the other side of that formulation.
I don’t want Mueller to become a new McClellan along the Potomac. I just asking for an explicit signal.
Just consider the damage that may likely occur over the next week (Supreme Court Justice/ NATO/ Putin).
Spanky
@Timurid:
I’m confident this is it. Well, part of the package. There’s also the fact that Trump is in debt to his eyeballs to the Rooskies.
germy
@TenguPhule: Worst “Apprentice” episode ever.
LAO
@oldgold:
FWIW, based on my experience — we aren’t going to get any sort of signal. Mueller is a “rules guy” and he’s not going to permit his team to start bending or breaking any rules. Ultimately, it’s why he’s the right man for the job.
Yutsano
@Gravenstone: Meh. The Republicans could have stopped Dolt45 at any point in the nomination process. They decided they liked rubles along with the negative energy he was generating and from their perspective it paid off. Our job now is to make that temporary.
Uncle Cosmo
@oldmold: Heartily sick of your whining. Most likely you’re just another Russian troll scrabbling about for some way to goad the investigation into going off half-cocked.
Someone oughta banhammer your arse into your constituent molecules.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
Children in cages was “shrugged off”? I still hear about it every day on social media. There is a court order pending, and more cases being heard. People in every major city are doing OccupyICE actions.
Just because the MSM isn’t talking about it doesn’t mean that people aren’t still pissed off and working on it.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
And HHS just defied a court order to reunite the children. Because they can’t.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@piratedan:
If so, this is incredibly shortsighted on Putin’s part, not to to mention grossly irresponsible. I’ve said before that we’re in a moment in history that could least afford a crackup like this. We needed unity, not division, to solve the coming problems associated with climate change. Putin has essentially doomed modern civilization for his petty geopolitical and monetary ambitions. He traded humanity’s future for power. What a piece of shit.
I assume Pooty-poot wouldn’t agree with my assessment of him.
eric
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I just binged watches 283 episodes of Supernatural in very short order. (Seasons 10-13 were among the best sci-fi/fantasy ever put on tv)
ruemara
Of course it’s worse than we think. Putin has been funding nationalistic, misogynistic, white supremacist movements for over a decade. Until he literally reaps a violent reward probably at the hands of his own people in a power play, he’s going to keep doing so. And he’s doing it openly, brazenly with no downside, no recrimination, nothing – for every other current & nascent dictatorship & racist movement to see. The GOP are traitors. The Tories? Traitors. Techbros who claim no real country loyalty? Traitors.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Second worst. I’m pretty sure they managed to get him even worse on the second and subsequent trips.
germy
via “rawstory“
Mary G
Even a GOP congressperson can’t get in to see the stolen children:
schrodingers_cat
@Spanky: I think its money. T’s enterprises, a money laundering avenue for Russian oligarchs for years, perhaps decades.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
To be fair, they could just be really fucking stupid assholes.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Putin agrees with that. Problem is who he wants everyone to unite under.
TenguPhule
@Mary G:
They don’t have most of the missing children anymore. I guarantee that’s why they can’t show them, because people can count.
rikyrah
I don’t mean to be snarky…
but, this is an actual title.
OF.COURSE.IT’S.HIS.HANDLER.
WHY is this even a question?
Vladimir Putin’s old job was HEAD OF THE KGB!!!
WHY, OH WHY,
Do you think our IC has freaked out?
Because, for the first time in their existence..
They truly believe that THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS AN ASSET OF A HOSTILE FOREIGN POWER!
WHY are folks who should know better, trying to tiptoe around it?
TenguPhule
@germy:
How he managed to lie with a straight face would almost be admirable, if used for good instead of evil.
Bostonian
I found Chait’s explanation plausible. I don’t believe Trumpski is under some short-term kind of threat like a pee pee tape or a handful of dodgy loans. I believe he’s all-in on the project of destroying Western democracy. It’s not tactics, it’s strategy. Trumpski loves the idea of taking the vote away from most people and having a handful of rich shitheads control everything, above the law. All he asks is to be in the club.
Putin’s love for white supremacists and the return of fascism in Russia – and its linkage to American white supremacists and fascists, including the NRA – is only part of the picture. What Putin wants to do is turn every successful technocratic state in the West into an oligarchic, dictator-run fascist state like his. The Russians and the Chinese see eye to eye on this, and a coterie of would-be Western oligarchs are on board with it too.
VeniceRiley
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Oh, I flove that show! Shoreh Aghdashloo throwing F-bombs! I am there for it. Great pickup by Amazon – IDK why Canadian TV ever trusts the SyFy channel to come through for more than 2 or 3 seasons of anything.
SCOTUS? Call me when the nominee grillins are on.
Kay
It is gross. I was reading about the immigration judge who had to question the one year old child and was “embarrassed” by it.
They’re making us all worse.
It’s weird how the slow collapse of institutions snowballs- once they become a bit of a joke that builds, because there are people within them who are incapable of pretending this is normal. They’re playacting, they know it and they blurt it out. There’s some stubborn refusal to play along with this reality tv show that only serves to show how hollow it is.
To me it’s turning into two distinct groups of people- those who are either capable of playing along or eagerly playing along and those who just can’t or won’t play. You have to pick a side- reality or reality tv show. I’m surprised at how many chose reality tv show. Tonight’s celebrity extravaganza to give the rose to the newest far Right justice is just another slide down to the bottom.
Mary G
RIP Tab Hunter (LA Times):
You wouldn’t see that in an obit twenty years ago.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: knew you’d be watching p0rn.?
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yep.
Brachiator
New game show: “Right Wing Wheel of Fortune!”
Host: OK, let’s spin the wheel…. Oh, dear, it stopped on “Lose Your Civil Rights.” We’ll have to deport you. Next contestant. Let’s spin the wheel for you.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
What? Unite under Russia? The country with an economy smaller than Italy’s and has no real global significance other than it’s petroleum resources? Please. That country will collapse in a few decades.
He’s destroy the world’s most advanced economies, the one’s with the best chance of fixing the world’s problems, precisely because they are free societies that permit the free exchange of ideas, more or less. Ours is a superior model to theirs, but Putin doesn’t care. He’s a global threat, not just to West but to the East as well.
germy
@TenguPhule:
I suspect he has presidential aspirations.
Kay
They should have an actual tv special to crown the justice. Do it up like the superbowl halftime. Why fool around pretending it’s news? Just go for broke. There could be a jingle and branded merchandise, proceeds to the Trump campaign.
They should jazz up the robes, too. Trump likes “central casting”. Put them in something with braid and sprinkle some footmen around.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
And you would think after decades of prep and billions of dollars, at least one fucking IC agency would be able to remove Trump and Pence one way or another. But no, our IC are apparently just fine with watching America burn to the ground because the rules they never followed when breaking other countries are suddenly SO IMPORTANT that a Republican can admit in a goddamn interview that he’s committing a crime and they can’t do shit other then “leak” stories to a compromised press.
Tokyokie
@TenguPhule:
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Thanks Kay, now he’s gonna do that. //
Uncle Cosmo
My version of “worse than you thought” is that this isn’t about the USA and Russia so much as the Global Oligarchy scrambling to scarf up everything that isn’t nailed down & create a neofeudalist world by manipulating the hatreds of the citizenry. It all makes sense if you look at Vlad the Paler as just the top oligarch running a failed state (with thermonuclear weapons): As far as the Kochs & Adelsons are concerned his efforts to destroy democracy are just God’s work (since their god is Mammon). They are so seemingly secure in their Money Bins that they don’t realize that once he’s destroyed the rule of law across the globe, the polonium-&-Novichok-equipped hit squads will come after them. And all the arseholes in politics & the media are scrambling to suck up to someone with lots of money & power – as if that would save them.
Say sayonara to the Enlightenment & konichiwa to the Benightenment – a neofeudalist bootheel on a human face, for a helluva long time…
Miss Bianca
@oldgold: “I get that there is merit in doing your fucking job the way you’re supposed to, but C’MON, *stop* doing your job the way you’re supposed to and do some shit you’re not supposed to, so I’ll feel better!”
Mike in DC
“Worse than we thought” is Mueller issuing a report finding that Trump is a Russian asset, and 34+ Republican senators saying, “Yeah, so?”
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
No, this is revenge. Putin is getting even for the fall of the USSR and the looting spree that sprung up when the dogs of disaster capitialism were turned loose on Russia and the East Blocs.
sukabi
@Cheryl Rofer: Cambridge Anal whistleblower makes the connection between brexit and trump campaign…
TenguPhule
@Mike in DC:
They’re saying that now.
I expect when Mueller makes his report they will have moved on to “It is treason to speak against Mother Russia, comrade!”
Kay
@TenguPhule:
I wonder about it as far as participation. How many people just say “this is phony and gross and cynical and I’M not getting paid to take part, unlike all these other people”. How many people just disengage. It’s easier and certainly less heartbreaking, not watching this unfold.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I’m aware of that. It’s still wrong. That’s not fair to the hundreds of millions of powerless people here and everywhere else who no or little say in what happened to Russia after the SU’s collapse. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
oldgold
@rikyrah:
The other side to this is sometimes if you wait too long, it’s too late.
sukabi
@Timurid: pretty sure Putin and crew is a lot more competent than the traitorous clowns in the WH. And that’s the silver lining.
Bostonian
@Uncle Cosmo: I was hoping someone would tell me I was crazy. But this is exactly the long plan that I see in effect. It’s nothing less than the destruction of Western democracy.
Brachiator
@oldgold:
No, you don’t. I don’t think you even want a signal. Whatever Mueller is doing may not necessarily save us from Trump.
We’ve got the midterms, continued resistance and whatever political pressure can be brought to bear.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I don’t think Chait is trying to tiptoe around it; I think he knows his audience, which has yet to reach the consensus we have here at Balloon Juice. If the goal is to remove the scales from more people’s eyes, it’s a better tactic to pose a question and lead readers through a plausible scenario that to pound the table screaming “of course he’s a Russian asset, dummies!”
LAO
Wow — this is truly beyond the pale. Fuck this Fucking Administration:
TenguPhule
@Kay:
I pointed this out last year. When it goes, its like an avalanche. Rule of law exists only because the majority agreed to it. The majority is not in agreement over what’s going on right now.
TenguPhule
@LAO:
Old news, this was announced back in May, though it was a grandfather they started with.
Kay
Here’s a “birder” story for Betty. My two oldest (grown) children gave my husband binoculars for his birthday because he said he wanted to learn birding. But I know him and if he wanted to learn birding he woulda done it- he was just saying it to say something! What he likes to do is watch sports.
So he’s decided he will just make up knowing the birds. He says “that’s a cardinal and that’s a…baby cardinal”
My daughter refuses to play along. She says smaller birds are not all “babies” of the three birds he learned. He doesn’t want to learn these birds and thus he will never learn them. I think they should let him off the hook. He was just making conversation!
ruemara
@TenguPhule: Because so many of our IC were perfectly ok with this – if it brought white supremacy back. Some explicitly so, some based on their “misgivings” that political correctness & special rights (ie; those people being equal) were holding back such good honest men like themselves or their husbands from really succeeding.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
“And then they came for me and there was nobody left to speak out.”
Jager
Forbes believes Putin is the richest man in the world. Trump thinks why not me? Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything except his self esteem.
Adam said last year, his friends in IC community said trump will die in prison, I think he will.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yep.
And, this is also why the confrontations will continue. People have chosen a side, and there’s no squishy middle.
sukabi
@Jager: I’d settle for him living out his days in a gulag after he exiles himself and his family to Russia.
eric
@Jager: if he is charged, he will die well before a prison sentence. I dont think Putin is the only person of such means that Trump need worry about.
PJ
@ruemara: He was hit with some downside with the sanctions Obama put in place after the invasion of Crimea and the Donbass region. Those hurt him where it counts, in his wallet. So far, fortunately, even Rex Tillerson was unable to get those overturned, but it does sound like Trump and the GOP have been laying the foundation to lift them in recent weeks.
Yutsano
@Mary G: Huh. Why am I just hearing now that he was a happy gay man? And 35 years of marriage isn’t something to sneeze at, even if only the last years were legal in the US.
LAO
@TenguPhule: OK, so I guess I shouldn’t be upset by it in July.
ETA: Reads really snarky when I only meant the comment to be kind of snarky. I’m going to have to work on that.
A Ghost To Most
@Aimai: Same here. I’m not convinced that the 2018 elections will not be fixed, or that elections will even be held in 2020.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I feel like they know on some level that their voice isn’t being heard, that something, some process is failing, so they’re much more aggressive about taking it upon themselves.
I agree with that writer who said it isn’t a lack of civility, it’s a lack of democracy. That woman with the statue of liberty! The teacher who sees Pruitt and thinks “I have to tell him”. People are so creative and energetic and they’re thinking up these things themselves!
Cheryl Rofer
@oldgold: I share your concerns about the damage Trump does every day.
BUT
Let’s say that Trump is indeed a Russian agent and that the Republican Party is shot through with more of the same. Any move toward underlings, including some Republicans that may look trivial to us now, like the relatively obscure JD Gordon, is likely to entangle the Trump spawn and Trump himself, along with the Republicans who choose to cast a blind eye like Paul Ryan. (Remember that crack he made about Trump and Dana Rohrabacher being in the employ of the Russians? ha. ha.) THEY will know the path Mueller is on and that they have limited time before they join Paul Manafort’s cozy circumstances.
Trump is showing that he is willing to pull the levers of power. What if he declares a national emergency on the pretext that Mueller is working for a foreign power and declares martial law? There’s already been one instance of a CBP agent doing investigations that he shouldn’t have been. I’m sure there are plenty of ICE, CBP, and other law enforcement personnel who have all those military goodies and will be happy to be set free to do with them as they will.
Mueller has been adding prosecutors to his team. It’s gotta be all or nothing.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
The USSR was always corrupt. Putin is as much a “disaster capitalist” as any of his oligarch buddies. Trying to pin some kind of revenge fantasy on his machinations does not work.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Squishy indecisive middle is a side. Which both of the other sides despise and will show no mercy to.
LC Deng
Risk management 101 teaches that you still take a small probability risk seriously (perhaps even very much so) if the magnitude of the outcome is large enough (good or bad) and especially if negative risk cannot be mitigated. Management sucks, so it’s up to the workers (us) to save the company (country).
A Ghost To Most
@sukabi:
Dude can whistle out his ass?
Kay
@rikyrah:
Too, some people are absolutely reveling in it. They love some big stupid volley of tweets or these dumb performances like the SCOTUS pick reality show and all Trump’s lies about the NK deal. There’s a faction who LOVE this. I think they’re the worst of the bunch, the cynical, slick people who love the “excitement!”
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
He’s an oligarch with delusions of grandeur. He’s a mob boss who wants to be the Prince. If all he cared about was money and power, he wouldn’t be trying to destablize the entire world’s financial infrastructure. Making international money standards worth less isn’t a capitalist play, that’s an arsonist’s plan.
different-church-lady
I can de-kook this pretty quickly: it was a takeover of convenience.
The “kook” part comes from the rather rational observation that it would be absurd to believe Putin got his hooks into Trump a quarter of a century before he ran for president. But that’s not what happened. What happened was Trump decided to run for president and the Russians said, “Hey, this this is perfect. All the hooks and wires are in place with this guy, and it fits like a glove on everything we were already planning to try with social media.” A perfect storm.
He’s not a Russian agent — he’s a Russian tool.
Mary G
@Yutsano: It’s been an open secret in Hollywood for as long as I can remember, but in the 50s, he had to stay deep in the closet. My favorite fashion bloggers, Tom and Lorenzo, are over the moon that they’re making a movie about his affair with Anthony Perkins.
trollhattan
@Mary G: @Yutsano:
his “Polyester” role should have removed any doubt. :-)
skerry
newsweek.com article
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
I remember when this line of thinking used to be mocked here on BJ as paranoid delusions.
germy
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
For some time now, there had been many stories of how the Hollywood studios managed his career and kept his life hidden. A textbook example of the power of the old studio system, and also of the Hollywood gossip columnists, who would keep secrets in exchange for scoops.
He was part of that assembly line of vanilla sex symbols that included Rock Hudson and Troy Donahue.
He was a pleasant enough actor, and seemed to be a nice guy. I thought he was particularly good in “Damn Yankees.”
RIP
Kay
@rikyrah:
People like this are the worst, IMO. The profiteers. The cynics who enjoy this because they’re all making money and it’s fun to dance on the Titanic. Write a book! Chronicle the crazy! Grab that cash with both hands and sip champagne while the ship goes down. It’s gross. They’re gross. It’s just such reckless disdain for the generations that come after. It’s an alien way of thinking to me- the carelessness. Like there’s no tomorrow, like all of this revelry won’t have to be PAID FOR.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
They missed out on Woodstock and want what they’re owed right now.
PJ
@Brachiator: From what I’ve read of Putin (just the news and a bio by Masha Gessen), he believes that the Soviet Union (or Greater Russia, as he and many other Russians viewed it) need not have fallen apart, and wouldn’t have, if they had used their military to suppress independence movements in the Warsaw Pact countries, and there is no reason Russia should not have the power and respect of the other world powers, particularly the US, and why it should not dominate Eastern and Central Europe. And I’ve heard this from regular, non-political Russians, having grown up in a country that was one of two super powers, they don’t understand the political and economic reasons why this happened, except that it was sabotage from the West. Putin knows that as long as Russia is a kleptocratic autocracy, it will never be able to compete economically with the US or the EU, but why not use a relatively small amount of money to destabilize the West and its alliances and, at least politically, put Russia on the same footing as the US, and ahead of the EU, not by elevating Russia, but by encouraging the US and Europe to lower themselves to Russia’s level.
ruemara
@germy: As if Queen Mum would have a minutes patience to dine with that crude boor of a man and his handler model dim wife. Ugh. I bet she wishes she had the time to speak her mind about him being there.
Miss Bianca
@skerry: Oh, but CIVILITY!
Is that going to become the “But her emails” of 2018? : (
Cheryl Rofer
@TenguPhule: Only a hypothetical.
FlipYrWhig
@Mary G: ANTHONY PERKINS, “astonishingly good looking”??? I suppose I’m a straight guy who doesn’t always get the appeal of various male stars (e.g. Cumberbatch), but that’s a new one for me.
Gravenstone
@Brachiator: Well, it’s ‘revenge’ insofar as Putin holds the West responsible for the loss of prestige Russia suffered following the fall of the USSR.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer: Even as a hypothetical.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@skerry: that really surprised me, even though I’d heard Brian Beutler, who’s from SB county, describe it as trump country. And apparently this isn’t new, he’s been getting his racist on on-line for quite a while.
Calouste
@germy: The shitgibbon’s golf trip isn’t a state visit, so there was never going to be a state dinner.
oldgold
@Cheryl Rofer:
As the orthodox here have correctly argued proceeding in strict adherence with the so-called “Rules” has considerable merit.
My point is there are also costs associated with this. Costs which are escalating every damn week.
When do these costs become too steep to abide? I believe well informed individuals acting in good faith could honorably disagree as to whether that point has been reached, is close or we have some time available.
I think the point is very close to having been reached. For me, waiting until after the midterms is unacceptable.
FlipYrWhig
BTW I don’t know if anyone else has made this comparison but Trump’s Supreme Court shtick seems IMO to be not The Bachelor or The Apprentice or what have you but instead The Decision, the show where LeBron James said he was “taking his talents to South Beach.” They’ll probably subsequently have the nominee come out in regalia with Gorsuch and Alito, high-fiving the crowd and talking about the number of precedents they’ll overrule. “Not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven.”
PJ
@different-church-lady: Uh, no. Trump was being cultivated by the Soviets in the late 80s. You can look up the timeline: https://medium.com/@abbievansickle/timeline-of-trumps-relationship-to-russia-5e78c7e7f480 He took a Soviet-sponsored trip to Moscow and, when he came back, put out a full page ad in the NY Times criticizing US defense of Japan and other allies.
Kay
What’s keeping me going right now is local politics- the naive and non-slick stuff. We have a state senate candidate who is just the nicest young man. It’s like a R + 25 district but he’s working so hard!
I’m protecting him from the horrible people at the Bd of Elections, who I know are just dying to file some bogus campaign filing complaint about him, as is their practice :)
He treats me like I’m this ancient cynic but I’m actually charmed by how hopeful he is and am happy to be mean on his behalf.
Gravenstone
@skerry: Grizzled old white fucker, of course. Hope he enjoys the short hop to Fox News punditry, because his ass should be out the door immediately.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: “Baby cardinal,” LOL!
rikyrah
StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) Tweeted:
This is CRAZY! Watch as the white officer ignores this woman begging him to protect her from this racist! This man is literally in her face and the officer does absolutely nothing as she pleads to be protected.
RETWEET THIS! https://t.co/nZsEV4LfA9 https://twitter.com/_SJPeace_/status/1016266800420589570?s=17
LAO
@oldgold: I’m curious — what is it you propose? And exactly, what can or would you do if the “unacceptable” were to happen.
zhena gogolia
@FlipYrWhig:
Very much the same kind of appeal as Cumberbatch. Very potent for some ladies (myself included).
PJ
@different-church-lady: Also, since the late 90s, the only major bank that will lend to Trump is Deutsche Bank, which has been heavily involved in money laundering and other chicanery for the Russians (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/16/how-donald-trump-became-deutsche-bank-biggest-headache), and, according to Trump’s kids, their major financing since the ’00s has come from Russians. Do you really think they only saw Trump as a just a means to launder money?
piratedan
@Kay: we fight the fights we can, right Kay… everyone doing what they can, be it being involved locally or shaming someone like Mitch McConnell and anyone else that has perpetuated this political travesty upon us. They win with acquiescence and each incident and act of rebellion or common sense reminds them that their crown rests uneasily.
they’ve kidnapped babies, ignored our law, international law all for the sake of letting their bigotry freak flags fly and a few bucks… when we regain control of our country, we will use the rule of law to punish these people and deprive them of the rights that they sought to take from others…. they can be forced to binge watch the bachelorette from the low level prison security common room.
Barbara
@PJ: I would add that Putin has allowed Russia to fall into the natural resources trap, where countries lose focus on the natural talent of people in their zeal to extract full value from the resource, which is, after all, just a commodity that has a finite value, a finite lifespan and is subject to a lot of external fluctuation, especially as people take steps to reduce its importance.
Jay
@Kay:
“How many people just disengage. It’s easier and certainly less heartbreaking, not watching this unfold.”
Most people are busy surviving the modern condition. They get their news in the half hour format, presented with out comment. They surf Amazon, Kajijji and E-Bay to try to save a few bucks, not news sites or politics blogs. Their media stream is algorythmiclly delivered and contains lots of “fake news”, mostly created to sell them something.
But day by day, week by week, more and more people are waking up to the horrors and are becoming more engaged.
Brachiator
@PJ:
Yeah. I’ve heard some of this. I think we have to separate to some degree the old Soviet Union and Russia.
Without its nukes, and perhaps its intelligence network, Russia is a second rate country, falling into third rate status. Although a physically large country, its population is 144 million, and life expectancy is 70.9 years but getting better (2015 numbers). By contrast, US life expectancy is 78.7 years, and UK life expectancy is 81.6 years.
Yeah, Putin wants to grab at old glories, but the world has moved on. China is a superpower, India is on the move. Russia is stagnant. At best Putin can be a spoiler and a source of disruption, but not much else.
Yep. This is worrisome. Some Russian citizens are actually nostalgic for the bad old days, and as typically happens, blame others for the failures of their own society.
Equally repellent is how conservatives gloat over supposedly defeating commie Russia, and yet embrace Republicans who seem to want to give Putin anything he wants.
The clock is ticking on Putin and Russia. The games he is playing may cause problems for the West, but they will not elevate him. He is still dependent on a political and economic system he despises.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kavanaugh believes that lying to the public is an impeachable offense, but also believes a president can’t be indicted. If he is selected, then that would tell us something.
Betty Cracker
@Calouste: According to UPI, Trump will have a “state dinner,” but not with the Queen like the Obamas did but rather with the PM. Then he and the Third Lady will go meet the Queen at Windsor Castle. The Brits are likely minimizing Trump’s time in London because of the massive protests that are planned, complete with the Trump baby blimp. So, no ride in the golden carriage for Trump. That must smart something awful!
Mike in NC
Have no desire to view Fat Bastard’s reality TV show. Hope the ratings are terrible. At the same time, today the plumber showed up to fix a broken toilet and AAA got my car with the dead battery up and running, so a decent start to the week.
Plus, I got a shipment of weed in the mail from my little brother!
Libarbarian
He is an out-and-out traitor.
He is still engaged in an ongoing project to help Russia at Americas expense.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
By sheer coincidence, just two days ago I watched “The Pleasure of His Company,” in which Tab Hunter played young Debbie Reynolds’ fiancé. Not much of an actor in that part (although, to be fair, his character was a kind of two-dimensional blockhead) but TH himself always seemed an affable-enough guy. I’m glad he was able to be happy in his private life. R.I.P.
Millard Filmore
@oldgold:
As a Nervous Nellie, I have to agree with oldgold here. The next big event does not have to come from Mueller or his team, but a leak of considerable gravity from the international IC needs to happen.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
I’m here to help, it was 114.5 in Glendale on Friday. That was an all time record high.
PJ
@Brachiator: Right now, it looks like Putin’s “managed democracy” has worked pretty well for him, and, from my obviously very limited viewpoint, there’s no obvious reason why it won’t work in the future. Economically, things seem more tenuous, even for the world’s richest man, but that’s why it’s good to have someone like Trump in your pocket, who can conveniently try to renew an embargo on Iran to drive up oil prices.
rikyrah
Couple who’ve been in the US for 20+ years arrested and shipped to detention while visiting their son-in-law in advance of his third Afghanistan tour. https://t.co/wXy7MrWDxy
— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) July 9, 2018
TenguPhule
Via Wapo.
Anonymous At Work
I’ve emailed the Chait thing to about everyone and asked for reasons that it’s wrong. No responses yet (wasn’t expecting any).
Chait’s been reporting on this thread for a long time, actually. He’s taken the Russian collusion seriously and taken it to its logical ends. The problem is that Mueller’s ship is air-and-water tight, a submarine. What has Flynn told Mueller? No one knows outside of Mueller’s office and Flynn. Same with every other witness.
Scary stuff.
Bill Arnold
In case somebody hasn’t already said it, he’s (IMO) judge-shopping, for someone who believes that he can (a) pardon himself and (b) that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and (c) someone who is extremely deferential in general to the executive branch at least while DJT is POTUS. (And better, that they are intellectually flexible enough to shift when a Democrat is POTUS.) Roe v. Wade is entirely secondary.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s cooking temperatures, not “livable by actual humans” climate.
Ironically, its cooler now in Hawaii due to unseasonal storms.
PJ
@Brachiator:
It’s ok to betray your country to Russia if you’re a Republican, as longs as those Russians aren’t commies.
rikyrah
@Kay:
you are good people, Kay
Calouste
@Betty Cracker: State dinners involve heads of state, which the US President is, but the British PM isn’t. They might have a formal dinner, but it’s not a state dinner by the formal diplomatic definition. I wonder where it will be held, not at Buckingham Palace obviously.
Cheryl Rofer
@oldgold: I’m sure that your concern will encourage Mueller to tip his hand.
TenguPhule
@oldgold:
But you won’t find them here. //
PJ
@Barbara: Yes, this seems to particularly be a problem in oligarchical societies, where ordinary citizens don’t have the opportunity or means to innovate with their own enterprises.
Barbara
@PJ: All the while saying he is pressuring Saudi Arabia to produce more oil so that prices come down. Saudi Arabia apparently professed they had no idea what he was talking about, but Trump doesn’t want prices to come down (because that would upset Vlad) he just wants to get credit for trying to bring them down, or at least not be at fault for why they are going up.
eclare
Really pisses me off that this is the second time that vile piece of shit has interrupted my mind candy, The Bachelorette, for horrible reasons.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s the dinner at Blenheim, isn’t it?
The Lodger
@Kay: Baby Cardinal? He spotted Ross Douthat?
TenguPhule
@piratedan:
low level prisons? Fuck that. Fed max General pop.
Calouste
@PJ: The question is what is going to happen to Russia when Putin dies or loses too much of his mental faculties. He has no designated heir, and I think the fight will be brutal.
Barbara
@Calouste: I am sure Putin is the kind of person who plans to live forever.
ETA: Apparently Team Leave is planning their counterpunch. Another resignation (lower level) based on too soft Brexit and now a big meeting of Tory backbenchers.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
My surprised face:
?
oldgold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Ha!
But if making a definitive difference was the test for commenting, you might as well close the comment feature.
TenguPhule
@Calouste:
Fight to the finish to see which aspiring mob boss becomes a nuclear weapons dictator.
Should be interesting.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, thanks for reminding me. Looks fairly obviously to be the shitgibbon’s choice, it being the ancestral home of Winston Churchill, a mythical version of which the shitgibbon admires very much.
Looking forward to May not being able to make it due to unexpected personel issues.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@PJ:
Will Trump be able help with a stagnant birth rate?
H.E.Wolf
@oldgold:
Fortunately, you don’t have to wait! You can volunteer right now, right where you are, to register new voters, canvass, phonebank, etc., to GOTV for primary season and the November general election.
Your state Democratic Party website will have a “sign up to volunteer” option. If you prefer a non-partisan effort, your local League of Women Voters welcomes all genders and does great work.
If you’re already volunteering, congratulations! If not yet, consider getting started this week – we (the country) can use your help. And then come back and tell us what you’re doing, so we (the jackals) can cheer you on!
sherparick
@Mary G: Well, Trump’s demand is ultimately for the EU to not exist. Again, as I told myself on 8 November 2016, we are all good and truly fucked. But lots of people are in denial about that still, both in Europe and the U.S. Eric Loomis captures the crisis we are facing quite well.
“…These are people are now behind the times. There is no room for old-school centrist Democrats in setting the policy agenda anymore. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. That doesn’t mean a primary challenge to Tammy Duckworth is in order or anything–she did her centrist party mission by dismissing AOC but she’s been a perfectly fine vote so far. She will learn in the next 5 years. The only road ahead for the Democrats is as an anti-fascist party with a bold agenda that combines racial, economic, and gendered justice. For those who fret about that, understand that actual fascism is descending upon America, that the Supreme Court is in the first of a multi-year process that will likely repeal a century of progressive law, and that the future of democracy in this nation is in doubt. There is no room for mealy-mouthed DLC compromise any longer, if there ever really was. It makes about as much sense today as centrist politics did as the fascists took power in Europe…” http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/democratic-center-scared
Gravenstone
@Barbara: If Trump has any interest in low oil prices, it’s as they might affect the chances of Republicans in the midterms. As such, his interest is at best second hand and is being driven by concerns of his staff and supporters.
TenguPhule
Kay
Gross. They’ll be branding pens used by Trump justices next. Novelty gavels with TRUMP stamped on them.
TenguPhule
@sherparick:
Which means jack shit without a majority.
Gravenstone
@Calouste: He has no designated heir likely because he believes it will ‘encourage’ folks to get ideas about replacing him. If he’s indispensable, then he’s safe.
oldgold
@H.E.Wolf:
I am very heavily invested in the midterms.
After decades of only offering money, I am out on the street actively working.
After my state’s recent primary, I did some crowing here.
TenguPhule
We are so fucked.
/Hawaii now looking for a new country to adopt us. Japan, you listening?
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Questions that should never be asked.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@sherparick:
Well, it seems Loomis has gone off the deep end. “Mealy-mouthed DLC compromise”. “Centrist party mission”. Yikes.
Kay
@The Lodger:
I crack up. We saw a little owl and he said “that’s a baby owl”. I think it’s a small owl variety. A small ADULT. There’s all kinds of owls. Smaller ones aren’t all the “babies” of bigger ones.
I’m going to end up learning these birds just to correct him. He’s using the binoculars to watch our neighbor build a deck. This travesty has to end. This charade :)
germy
sgrAstar
@germy: QE ll not only hosted the Obamas at a state dinner, but subsequently invited them to visit her privately, on several occasions. On one of those occasions she had tea with Michelle, Sasha, and Malia, at Buck House. That Queen can throw some shade!
Brachiator
@sherparick:
Sounds like another lame ass cry for socialist utopia.
Anonymous At Work
@Bill Arnold: Roe v. Wade itself is safe. It will never be formally overturned. What Rehnquist and Roberts Courts do is hollow out the precedents, so it only remains in name. It is, sadly, the same process that Charles Houston used to overturn Plessey v. Fergusson. The Roberts’ Court will begin by finding that states do have compelling interests in extra areas, that womens’ freedoms aren’t as important, etc. That some restrictions can have mountains of bad faith behind him but judges are forbidden to consider them, etc.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
Putin turned Russia into the world center for white nationalism and authoritarian rule. Since that’s now the conservative vision for America, they love him.
germy
joel hanes
@ruemara:
Putin has been funding nationalistic, misogynistic, white supremacist movements for over a decade.
Please to be noting that the role played by Bannon in the Trump campaign was and still is being played by Tad Devine in the ongoing campaign of the junior Senator from Vermont. Please also to be noting Manafort’s parallel role in both campaigns. Now to be remembering that Manafort’s family has for decades owned a resort that was popular with Russian gangsters.
Now to be forming own suspicions.
PJ
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Trump is rumored to not be overly “pro-life”, so I don’t think he will do the job on his own. But rising inequality in both the US and Russia should contribute to declining birth rates in both countries, so maybe more drunken sex and lack of access to family planning will give the edge to Russia.
Humdog
@Kay: My dad told one of his grandkids he would like to get into birding. Next several gift giving occasions, Dad got bird ID books, song identifiers, log book, the whole thing. I even sent a clock with different bird calls chiming the hour.
On a visit, I asked what bird was on the deck railing and Dad said he wasn’t sure. What happened to getting into birding? Well, color blindness kept him from IDing birds by plumage color and increasing deafness kept him from hearing the higher pitch calls. He just never had the heart to announce his shortcomings to the family.
? Martin
@trollhattan: 3 miles from the ocean and it was 115 in Irvine. 10 degrees above the record for that day, and the hottest day ever recorded here. First day back from a trip to Europe and we have no air conditioning. Jetlag is hard enough without trying to live in an oven.
raven
@? Martin: I’ll bet it’s nice at the beach! Wow, the surf cams show light crowds at Manhattan Beach and El Porto!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@PJ:
My point is that Russia, as it currently is organized, is probably doomed. That’s what happens when you concentrate so much power in the hands of a single person and don’t put in place a line of succession. Putin’s going to die someday or else possibly lose his mind as he gets older. When that happens it won’t be a good day to live in Russia.
As for America, it’s still possible to turn it around. We have the enthusiasm and the momentum atm. Let’s maximize our potential gains, whatever they may be.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Jolly good show! Okay, not good but memorable.
Personal highest has been 118, not at home where I don’t think it’s gone past 115 but once in Redding (on a motorcycle, just feel that breeze!) and Phoenix, where it was also the proverbial monsoon season. Rain and 118? Great combo!
Summer is yet young and we already have fires everywhere. Next real storms won’t be until October-November. The new normal sucks.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@PJ:
Also, I realize you were being partly tongue-in-cheek and I must say, well played sir.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@PJ:
Also, I realize you were being partly tongue-in-cheek and I must say, well played sir.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Day-umn. Welcome home?
Was in SF once when it hit 98. Talk about unprepared. Heck, growing up in Seattle not even rich folks had A/C and today I don’t think anything gets built without it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: as I said this morning, I’m so old I remember when Tom Hanks sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom was the biggest scandal since Bill Clinton got his hair cut.
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: Screw that. Restore the monarchy and go independent. Hawai’i can stand on its own.
TenguPhule
@Anonymous At Work:
I wish people would stop confidently predicting this. Calvinball is here and its real.
? Martin
@Anonymous At Work: Pretty sure RvW is history. It’s already pretty much already dead in a half dozen states, and the states like CA where it’s not dead things won’t change – access to abortions is in the state Constitution.
It’ll become illegal in a number of states and a whole new brand of court cases will surface. The GOP litmus test for the last 30 years will go away, to be replaced by… what? And you’ll get a new political dynamic arise that will likely compensate for that loss in a number of ways.
The harsh reality is that RvW was a terrible basis to hang such an important issue. It should have gotten legislation to back it up – and it did at the state level in some places – but Congress was asleep at the wheel, and Dems are as much to blame for not wanting to expose their own members to difficult campaigns. But the GOP will regret the day that it gets overturned. The demographics are not in favor of a repeal, and the 2nd order effects of a repeal and the sudden rush of state legislation is going to be all kinds of bad.
zhena gogolia
It can’t be worse than I think.
Platonailedit
TenguPhule
@Yutsano:
None of the Hawaiians who actually want that are of royal blood. And we can’t feed ourselves without outside aid.
A Ghost To Most
@Mike in NC:
Nice. If you lived in CO, you could run out to the store (or your garden).
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Yes it does, at least as propaganda, from the both-side-isms I read from various Russia apologists/nationalists, especially including Russians (who do not really have the option of criticizing Russia unless they are unconcerned about their own wellbeing and to a lesser extent, that of their relatives). They tend to map the intervention comparisons out right to the current day though, not stopping at the fall of the USSR. It’s still badly-targeted revenge though.
OTOH I think it’s a viable hypothesis that he’s shooting for being the world’s first (on paper) $$$ trillionaire; if that means devaluing the $$$, well, that works, as long as nobody else is richer.
On the third hand… :-)
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Trump Admin tells court they have only returned 2 out of 102 immigrant kids under 5 years old https://t.co/TicbD5IU5o pic.twitter.com/2bEZp80n29
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) July 9, 2018
Teddys Person
@TenguPhule: What contract? I didn’t think anything actually got “signed” at that meeting. I’m so tired of this timeline where words have no meaning.
TenguPhule
@? Martin:
We never had the votes to get federal legislation for abortion rights. Never.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You’re cracking me up, Kay.
TenguPhule
@Teddys Person:
They signed a contract of understanding. Which Trump completely doesn’t understand.
randy khan
That is some bird.
rikyrah
Trump Is Committing An Act of State Terror Against Migrant Families
by David Atkins
July 7, 2018
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: I doubt that they have more then 10% of the children they’ve abducted left.
Bill Arnold
@Humdog:
My father had precisely those sensory difficulties (hearing aid for the latter helped). He and my mom had a shared life list; the sighting had to be visual, and they both had to agree on the species ID, for the same individual bird.
It worked, and there were plenty of birdwatching vacations involved.
Baud
@? Martin:
Baud
@Baud: Blockquote fail. No edit function.
Teddys Person
@TenguPhule: Thanks, some how missed that nugget of info. Still tired of this timeline.
rikyrah
Who Gets Permission to Be Angry in America?
by Nancy LeTourneau
July 2, 2018
………………………………………..
The election was followed by an obsession among reporters, pundits, and political scientists attempting to document just what it was that Trump supporters were so angry about. No one can dispute the fact that the train Donald Trump rode to victory was one of tapping into white male anxiety. Democrats have been lectured constantly about the need to empathize with their anger.
As we head into the 2018 midterms, it’s Democrats—more of whom are women and people of color—that are anxious and afraid of what is happening to this country under the Trump administration. All of the sudden we’re hearing lectures on civility and warnings about how anger is divisive. Here’s Michael Scherer on that:
That raises an obvious question: who gets permission to be angry in America? Rebecca Traister answered with an article titled: “The Summer of Rage.”
I am reminded of something Adam Serwer wrote recently.
Contrasting the demands to do away with “political correctness” with the recent calls for civility underscores the point.
Brachiator
@Anonymous At Work:
So what? This is not nearly as important as people seem to think. Abortion is practically impossible in a number of states. Worse, a Trump Supreme Court can do much to erode women’s civil rights and to sit back and let states enact all kinds of obnoxious laws designed to “protect” the fetus at the expense of women.
Mike in DC
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Is this sarcasm? I can’t tell.
trollhattan
Lawyer’s lawyer attacks former client’s lawyer for lying about client’s former lawyer.
Life in Trump’s America* sure is complicated to follow.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Scherer is a young Broderite and worshipper of the R POV. Feel free to ignore whatever he has to say.
Bill Arnold
@Platonailedit:
Her twitter account has been a delight of late. (Maybe it always has been – only started watching fairly recently.)
randy khan
@Anonymous At Work:
I think you’re overoptimistic here. That’s a prime goal of the evangelical base. If the Court doesn’t overturn it after Kennedy is replaced, that could the one thing that turns them against the Republican Party. And, frankly, we have no evidence that Roberts wouldn’t overturn it because he’s never had a chance to vote to do it.
the Conster
I read that article this morning, and wondered on another thread how Tad Devine escapes all scrutiny WHEN HE AND MANAFORT BOTH WORKED TO ELECT PUTIN’S CANDIDATE IN UKRAINE. The first thing Devine did after he got back was convince Sanders to run as a Dem. Why? He certainly got rich off the Sanders scampaign, but delivering the country to Putin’s bitch while Sanders certainly knew about Devine’s Putin connection is certainly worth knowing a LOT more about. Why hasn’t Rachel Maddow, or anyone at MSNBC, in the countless hours spent dissecting Manafort’s connection, never once mentioned Tad Devine and Bernie Sanders?
Suffragettecity
I think Trump feels he’s ‘one of the boys’ when it comes to autocrats he admires and Putin is successfully utilizing his pet knowing exactly how to stroke the moron.
But Emin releasing his latest song titled “Got Me Good” the end of last month sure did seem like a warning so it is perplexing.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
Yet more proof that Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word “contract.” And that he didn’t read the document, either.
raven
@TenguPhule: When I went deep sea fishing off Maui I found the only Hawaiian charter captain there at the time. He was a bad ass former-jarhead whose boat “Die Hard” Extreme Sportfishing meant exactly what it said. After I landed the fish of my life (that belonged to him, not me) I sat with him up on the bridge for the ride back to Lahina. I had seen some of the shrines on the Hana Highway with AK-47’s and the Hawaiian flag so I asked him abut that. He said “all those fuckers want to be King, if they were they’d never lift another finger intheir life, just lay around and smoke da bud.
schrodingers_cat
@Platonailedit: Britain has been ruled by Eton and Oxford alumni who were to the manor born since forever. This isn’t some new development.
TenguPhule
@Teddys Person:
Sometimes I can see glimpses of the President Hillary Clinton timeline in a mirror.
Its a lot nicer then this one.
Brachiator
@PJ:
You might be right. Russia has plenty of resources and minerals which it can exploit. But the oligarchs get in the way of any rational economic expansion, which keeps things unstable. And inevitably, some oligarch will want to be the next Putin.
TenguPhule
@raven:
This is true. Regrettably, many of our native hawaiians have addiction problems to all kinds of narcotic vices.
Also, the original caste system worked out very well for the chiefs and priests, not so much for everyone else.
VOR
@sgrAstar:
Some years ago the King of Saudi Arabia visited Balmoral. There was ongoing muttering about the Saudi ban about women driving. QE II hopped behind the wheel and drove the car with the Saudi King in it.
Apparently there is a move in the UK to make the Green Day song “American Idiot” #1 just in time for Trump’s visit. When Thatcher died, the song “Ding dong the witch is dead” went to #2 on the charts.
efgoldman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
66. But who knows what’s ahead. Is he a smoker?
H.E.Wolf
@oldgold:
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Smoking doesn’t kill Russians. Other Russians do that for them.
ruemara
@sherparick: That is such nonsense.
Teddys Person
@VOR:
Good on her!!
? Martin
@TenguPhule: I don’t buy that. And it’s not that I doubt your analysis, rather that you need to force those votes to happen. Even when Dems had majorities, they never advanced a bill. They never really even tried. They never wanted their members to be forced to go on the record.
H.E.Wolf
@oldgold:
(If this posts twice, my apologies.)
Wooohooo!!! Thank you for your service!! :) I’m doing a bunch of database volunteering in my locale, and it’s heartening… especially when the teenage volunteers show up in the lists.
Brachiator
@VOR:
Fun anecdote. I bet the queen could hotwire a car and take it out for a hell of a spin. She’s got the knowledge.
ruemara
@Brachiator: She can!
@Anonymous At Work: No, it’s not. It’s not the complete wedge issue that they need like folks believe. You don’t need to repeal for it to be repealed & actually repealing it would give them the aura of accomplishment to convince the rubes that the pain of their idiocy is worth it for Jebus. Think strategically.
Mandalay
@skerry: medium.com offers specific advice on how to protest that racist DA’s death threat:
Litlebritdifrnt
Well we finally got our appointment for DH’s immigration interview. August 20, 8:30 a.m. in Glasgow. Obviously going to go up the day before and try to book a hotel close to the immigration centre. Hope it all goes well because if they decide that DH can’t stay here it is basically a death sentence for me. With my medical issues having to return to the US without health insurance would be it. However, we have the income requirements, we have the documentations we need, DH already has his UK teaching certificate, we are both Veterans, if they turn us down, hmmmmm there are going to be a lot of people who will be badgering their elected officials to sort this stuff out. On the bright side we are going to leave the interview, get on a train and go to Edinburgh for the tattoo. Got to love it.
Jeffro
I read the Chait article
Would love for the IC to execute Plan B any day now.
trollhattan
@Teddys Person:
“Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl…”
I’ll give this to the queen, her timing is usually impeccable.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Here’s the positive news — it’s so much not a big deal anymore that he didn’t bother to make a special announcement. ?
My favorite “coming out” story was Jim Parsons. Journalists started calling him like, “There are rumors swirling that you might be gay!”
His response was something like, I was bringing my husband to industry events for YEARS and introducing him as my husband, but nobody paid attention until I was on a hit show. I can’t come out of the closet when I was never in there to begin with!
TenguPhule
@? Martin:
Because we didn’t have the votes. Every time Democrats held the majority, we had enough “pro-birth” conservative Democrats on record that there was absolutely no way it was going to pass.
Chyron HR
@the Conster:
Because they’re afraid Bernie will wish America into the cornfield again in November if we say anything about his campaign staff, vocal support for the NRA, and/or flagrant white nationalist sentiment?
Platonailedit
LOL.
efgoldman
@A Ghost To Most:
Enough already!
Shit like that will only happen if end-of-the-world-as-know it like you stay passive and allow it to happen.
Bill Arnold
@TenguPhule:
Mixing memes, Radioactive polonium in cigarette smoke
(I have no idea TBH whether the tobacco smoked by Russians is fertilized with fertilizers that contain apatite.)
Leto
@LAO: Masha Gessen wrote about this in June: In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence
Sick fucking bastards.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: The Queen Mum is dead, she was Her Majesty The Queen’s mother. Both were named Elizabeth and the Queen’s mother retained the title of Queen after her husband, King George VI’s death. She was called Elizabeth, the Queen Mother to differentiate her from her daughter The Queen.
rikyrah
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Good luck for the two of you.
Teddys Person
@Mnemosyne: I saw Jim Parsons on one of those ancestry shows. He was delightful and so fascinated by his family’s history. This story only adds to my desire to have a drink with the guy. He seems like my favorite kind of person – someone who’s comfortable in their own skin.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
Fun fact: I first became aware of Tab Hunter when he appeared in Paul Bartel’s “Lust in the Dust” in which he was a cowboy in a love triangle with Lainie Kazan and Divine. If he wasn’t married by then, it was soon after.
efgoldman
@oldgold:
I’ll be sure to let Mr Mueller know of your concerns.
efgoldman
@Betty Cracker:
Where else do grown up cardinals come from?
Mnemosyne
@sherparick:
I’m sorry, white dude Eric Loomis is lecturing a disabled woman of color about how she needs to listen to him about being more intersectional?
He can get the ENTIRE fuck out of here with that bullshit. The people who need to GTFO the way are white dudes like Loomis.
Anonymous At Work
@TenguPhule: Roe vs. Wade will be on the books forever. However, did you not read what I wrote after that? About how it will be a precedent without force? Under Roberts, Roe vs. Wade will stay but states can restrict abortion and abortion clinics so long as there’s a window for abortions to be performed, even if mandatory waiting periods, counseling sessions, simulated-rape ultrasounds, etc. prevent a woman from actually using the window.
That’s the secret to destroying a precedent that everyone’s too scared to destroy. That’s what I said and that’s what I predict very firmly.
Litlebritdifrnt
Thanks Rik, there are lots of stories about how people are denied entry but they never go into details. I am a former paralegal, I have dotted every single I and crossed every single T. If they deny me I will enlist every one of my family members and friends to go after their elected officials to get involved. We meet all of the criteria, according to their rules, we have paid all of the fees that they asked for. We are doing everything by the rules. Everything. If they turn us down, I will, as a proud Veteran of the UK forces, take my case to the media and shame them. Like I said, if they decide that my husband can’t live in the UK and therefore I have to return to the US, they are signing my death warrant. Put that in your nightly news broadcast and get away with it.
Immanentize
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Good luck!
I want to thank you (and everyone else) for the great Edinburgh advice. Went up to Inverness for two nights. A day at St. Andrew’s too, looking at the University. Great trip with perfect weather.
My fingers and toes are crossed for DH tomorrow.
Baud
@Anonymous At Work:
If a state decides to ban abortion outright, Roberts will have to decide whether to uphold it or not. I don’t know how he will vote.
Teddys Person
Ladies and gentleman, a TV president:
source: Raw Story
Platonailedit
eric
@Baud: I dont think it plays out that way. I think you ban it after the 8th week or something nonsensical, so that Roberts can use a state’s rights argument as to the determination as to when the “right to be born” trumps “the right to bodily autonomy”
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan:
Paul Bartel was the greatest.
TenguPhule
@Anonymous At Work:
Did you miss where 4 shits and Kennedy just pissed on precedent and said “Hahaha, No!”
5 shits are going to gleefully tear up Roe and tell precedent to go fuck itself.
Mandalay
@germy:
If that is true then the Russians would have been getting very mixed messages, because this is what fellow freeloader Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) had to say:
All said with the ultimate goal of lifting the sanctions against Russia that Johnson voted to impose.
TenguPhule
@Platonailedit:
if America’s legal standards for convicting white collar criminals were lower, they’d all be in jail.
PPCLI
@TenguPhule:
I’m sure he wants revenge for a bunch of things. But not for the looting spree. He was one of the cleverest of the looters.
J R in WV
Those spoonbills are so goofy looking, at first I thot that bird was flying towards the left of the picture ~!!!!~ Now I see he’s flying the other way, on second look.
Great picture Betty C!!! They are so cool. Sandhill cranes used to be my favorite aquatic – or Great Blue Herons. But Roseate Spoonbill now has that vote, for now at least.
Baud
@eric: You don’t think one of the wingnut states will ban all abortions? Why?
TenguPhule
@eric:
Personhood at conception. Its the grail of the Forced Birthers.
Brachiator
@Leto:
Petty, vengeful and cruel.
I think that Trump gets off on knowing that his agencies can strip persons of their citizenship. It’s also part of his insane, despicable version of running the country like a business. He can fire, people by making them into non-citizens.
It is sickening. And every politician who supports this by supporting Trump needs to be voted out of office.
TenguPhule
@PPCLI:
He resents that he didn’t get all of it.
Baud
@Brachiator: His agencies can’t. It has to go to court.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
What do you mean if? There’s already a case pending which would effectively do just that.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Where Sessions appoints the judges, IIRC.
NotMax
@Yutsano
Tab Hunter Confidential may still be on Netflix. trailer
Baud
@TenguPhule: No, federal court. Not immigration court.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mike in DC:
Not really. I think those those things (DLC bullshit) aren’t great but aren’t really happening in today’s Democratic Party. Loomis is going off the deep end and needs to get a grip.
Baud
@TenguPhule: What case is pending where a state made abortion illegal?
Mandalay
@TenguPhule:
That’s nothing; Trump is getting even for being roasted by Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2011.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
King Bumpy!
:)²
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Corner Stone: Considering how well not taking notes turned out with Kim, why interrupt Spanky? If Trump is such an idiot think someone like Putin wouldn’t be wearing a wire to that meeting for documentation and analyst afterwards, more the fool Trump.
On the other hand what is Putin really going to say to Trump? The Russians must understand Trump’s word is worthless and Trump lives in his own fantasy world.
Platonailedit
Theresa now shuffling her pawns around furiously to save her lameass govt. Hunt, the NHS killer, is the new foreign sec.
efgoldman
@Millard Filmore:
And what if Weasel Face’s lawyers are able to convince some judge the the leak is prejudicial and throws out a case on procedural grounds
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Ah young Padawan, Professor Loomis is correct in context. We gain nothing by acting like Republiklown it’s never worked before, no reason to think it will start working now.
approbel
trollhattan
Again
“Take precautions” because lord knows, Texas won’t. Poor kid.
TenguPhule
@Baud: Iowa. The bill banned abortions after 6 weeks (which is 99% of them). Case is slowly working its way up the federal food chain.
MisterForkbeard
@TenguPhule: Yeah, no shit. If they had any of their documentation in order they might have been able to do this.
As it is, they’ve had to do DNA testing to figure out who the parents are, and there’s been numerous cases of the parents being deported but kids retained, kids being sent elsewhere, etc. Maybe they should jail the Secretary, that could light a fire under their asses.
PPCLI
@FlipYrWhig:
[Sound of Shattering Glass]
Voice of Jim Ross: Oh My God! That’s James Clark McReynolds’ music!
burnspbesq
@LAO:
That’s really disgusting.
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“Work smarter, not harder!”
TenguPhule
@MisterForkbeard:
maybe we could just light a fire under her ass and skip the middleman?
TenguPhule
@trollhattan:
Too late to give it back to Mexico?
Baud
@TenguPhule:
Well, that will decide the six-week limit. The next case will decide the limit at conception.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Aren’t they already testing this out by using their own fucking leaks to do it with?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Ectopic pregnancies cannot be discovered before 8-10 weeks.
Thousands of women will die because doctors will be reluctant to end the ectopic pregnancy that will kill them because “baybeez” are more important than actual living women.
Teddys Person
donnah
Ohio is one state with pending legislation to make abortion illegal under every circumstance:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/opinion/ohio-abortion-ban-bill.html
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@efgoldman:
Could you explain that a little clearer? I’m not saying go GOP-lite. It’s never worked. It seems Loomis thinks that’s what the Dems are apparently doing and that’s not remotely true. What did Tammy Duckworth say about AOC, who I assume refers to Ocasio-Cortez?
Mandalay
@LAO:
Meanwhile, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a self-proclaimed champion of immigrants with immigrant parents, has yet to voice a single word of criticism against Trump’s policies.
With friends like Rubio immigrants don’t need enemies.
eric
@Baud:because you dont have to, to ban it totally in practice. I am sure that there is a contingent that would love to, but i think ALEC (or the like) drafts a bill that gets rid of 99.9% of abortions without addressing the non-existence of the fundamental right to privacy. Then, I think they will regulate clinics to get rid of the remaining 0.1%. I think there are just enough conservatives that want to see birth control continue, while abortions end. Keeping the “right to privacy” keeps the one even while the other is devoured.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Loomis is Corner Stone with a Ph.D.
Miss Bianca
@sherparick: Sorry, but fuck that shit. Yeah, yay, lefty Dems rah-rah, but taking one primary upset from one borough in Queens and declaring that that means it’s time for DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST REVOLUTION, and GET OUT OF THE WAY, “CENTRIST LIBS!”, well…sorry. That’s a bit premature. And I think it’s a bit rich for some white guy academic to be pushing that line of thinking. Just because he’s a labor historian doesn’t make him a member of the proletariat.
Baud
@eric:
I think the base wants a complete ban, so effectively banning 99% of them would satisfy no one.
eric
@TenguPhule: that is what i am talking about. It does not ban abortion, it regulates it (to an absurd degree). Abandoning the right to privacy would then gets states banning birth control and sex. While i think there is a large group that is very okay with that, i dont think that is a force the GOP strategists want to unleash with youngins.
eric
@Baud: My point is that they dont need to, there is next to nothing done inside six weeks.
J R in WV
@Calouste:
I”m hoping that once on the ground in London, Trump becomes unable to move at all because the streets are jammed to a standstill from demonstrations blocking key intersections.
Then they have to take him from the US embassy to the countryside by helicopter, thence to AF1 to leave. A sweet fantasy :- )
ETA: Also, there might not BE a PM by the time Trump arrives, as a vote of no confidence may happen any moment.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@burnspbesq:
LOL
@Miss Bianca:
Exactly. It is premature. And I thought what he wanted the Dems to be (anti-fascist, etc.) is essentially what they already were.
Baud
@eric: My point is they ant to.
Remember, they want to ban the morning after pill as an abortifacient.
Baud
@Baud:
Ant = want
Teddys Person
@J R in WV:Only if they hover a good long while for a forced viewing of Baby Trump
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: thank you. Tammy Duckworth beat an incumbent Republican in a large state that looks a lot more like the national electorate than AOC’s low-turnout primary against an incumbent who looks like he was playing to lose. I like Ocasio-Cortez, nothing I’ve seen suggests she wants to be the object of a personality cult, but there are a whole lot of people who seem to want to join one. I’m not worried about Dems saying “Abolish ICE”, I’m worried about culty litmus tests.
raven
Teddys Person
Activists Find A Perfect Way To Protest Russia’s LGBTQ Hate
Mike in DC
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I saw his comments as directed against a kind of centrist/establishment “brushback pitch” against AOC. A kind of infighting that aids the common enemy.
Millard Filmore
@Mnemosyne:
Since personhood starts at conception, maybe the women can get a restraining order for this little “person” to keep 50 feet away at all times.
TenguPhule
@eric:
I think you are wrong.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
And it crashes because it exceeded the maximum cargo capacity. Because they loaded it for precisely 239 pounds of margin.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Barn owls are small…
ETA:
Baby birds are typically found in nests, they are fed by parents until they are large enough to fly. We had swifts nesting in our bedroom on the (closed) damper, the babies were noisy and had to be fed in there until they were capable of flying up 18 feet of tile chimney. Noisy. Now there’s stainless caps on the chimneys.
Jay
@TenguPhule:
Nope, they are trying to gaslight the media and the public. They are attempting BADLY, WEAK, LOOSERLY, FAKE NEWS!!!!!!!!! to try the case in the Court of Public Opinion,
Ignoring the fact it’s gonna be tried in a real Court of Law, because they have evaded real consequences their entire lives, and think that nothing’s changed.
Jay
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Read Loomis’s own words, in full:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/07/democratic-center-scared
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
Well, duh!
He can’t read it !!!
How can you understand a single page doc if you can’t read it?!?!?!
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
I followed the link to the link to the link to the link that had what Duckworth actually said and — shocker! — it was The Hill stirring up trouble between Democrats again.
It sure would be nice if morons like Loomis would stop taking the bait and lecturing all of the lowly wimmens about how they need to listen to white men every time the Hill or Politico tosses them the bait.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
I have that in the pool under “after the Sun consumes the Earth”.
J R in WV
@Teddys Person:
Who is this Shaun Hamity guy, anyway? ;-)
I’ve never seen him, we don’t get cable service, nor Dish, too many big trees, would rather have the trees than the TV service. Not that I would be watching Faux if we did have 300 channels !!
trollhattan
Oh lord, I hope we get to see this.
Procopius
@TenguPhule: I really should not post an opinion, but I can’t help remarking on, “… everybody above him is a traitor.” Yes, I believe this is true, but I believe it has been true of every high-ranking government official at least since WWII, and maybe going back to John Adams. Heck, considering how he handled the Whiskey Rebellion, maybe even Washington. I’ve started re-reading David Halberstam’s The Best And The Brightest, and the early chapters describe the people influencing the choices. I have dropped a good deal of my critical thinking in favor of confirmation bias, because the personal characteristics he describes explain so well what happened in American foreign policy from 1945 to 1975. This country is run by some evil people, who believe they are doing it for our good.
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
He and his peeps don’t care about any of that any more than our oligarchs do – they figure even if climate change is real, they’ll be long gone by the time it’s a big deal, and if they’re not, they’re rich enough to make sure it won’t affect them like it does the peons.
The bottom line as far as he and his peeps are concerned is that Russia’s fallen from its rightful spot at the top of the world order, they’re pissed about it, and they’re damn well going to drag everyone else down to the same level. And the fuck with whatever eggs have to be broken to make that omelet.
Chris
@TenguPhule:
Not really. Probably 90% of our intelligence agencies’ clout in Washington comes from a long record of being BFFs with right-wing politicians. When those same politicians are the one who turn out to be the problem? Turns out there’s not a hell of a lot you can do.
Chris
@Mike in DC:
I think we can pretty much take it for granted that this is exactly what will happen.
Chris
@Platonailedit:
This has kind of been my take on American politics for several years now, actually. The Democrats are the national maid. Bloomberg type centrists, Jill Stein type leftists, apathetics of every possible stripe, the mainstream media, a shit ton of one percenters, and even a non-trivial number of Republicans have all internalized the notion that they don’t have to vote Democrat, or follow-through on that vote with anything more than voting, because the Democrats will always be there to clean up behind them.
This extends even to Republican politicians who, after spending years whipping their voters into a frenzy on immigration or the ACA, suddenly find themselves in need to delivering on their votes, and end up angrily whining at the Democrats for not cutting them a good deal.
moops
@Mike in DC:
I’m sorry to break it to you, but that is the most likely outcome, not the worst outcome.
There a plenty of much worse outcomes that have a fair chance of happening. Mueller releases his report to the DOJ and it remains sealed and nothing happens. Mueller releases a report that can’t manage to connect the dots and contains no direct charges of traitorous or criminal activities. Mueller releases a report that indicts Trump, and ONLY Trump and Kushner (which the GOP still say “so what?”) leaving the GOP politicians untouched entirely. Trump manages to shut down the investigation, and the GOP enable that move.
Mueller uncovers full-blown money laundering and foreign agent status, and nothing happens.
We bring congressional and senate panels to subpoena witnesses and they just perjure themselves, right to everyone’s face, and there are no consequences. Nothing. It all just dies right there, and the GOP gain in the polls.
moops
A non-trivial part of the US voting population is quite likely on board with a US President aligning us with the Russian fascist state and emulating their form of government here in the US. Bound together by love of authority, fear of minorities, white identity politics, a reverence for the anti-intellectuals, craving weaponry, distaste for modern Europeans, etc.
It is awful to think, but Trump would go up in the polls if he brought that Tyrant to the White House and Trump fawned over him.
The mob lifts up the demagogue, but then the demagogue poisons the mob, and the viscous cycle grows more malignant. The cancer grows.
moops
@Chris:
yup. Get ready Mike. The worst is the most likely outcome.
Thankfully, you don’t need the GOP at all to indict Trump. If Mueller’s report is a well-documented case of crimes and treason, the the DOJ can indict Trump. They don’t need the GOP’s leave to charge him with crimes. The DOJ can charge Trump, Trump can post bail, then continue as President as his trial moves forward. He will likely finish his term before the trial completes. He would not be the 2020 nominee, and would likely be sent to prison unless a Republican is elected in 2020 and grants Trump a pardon.
At no point will he be impeached and removed from office. Trump is going to serve his term. There is no manner that is prevented short of Trump’s health doing him in.
But if the investigation is solid enough, Trump will go to prison. The GOP will start the process of erasing him from their history as with Bush Jr.