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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 7:58 pm
by Big Magilla
While waiting to meet Kim, Treat tweeted that Kudlow had a heart attack and is at Walter Reed Hospital.

His Wikipedia page says he died! Wishful thinking, or do they know something we don't?

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 5:09 pm
by Okri
Yeah, this was a uniquely bad weekend on this side of the border. We got our Tinpot Trump in the Ontario Election (analogy: population wise,
Ontario is to Canada what California + New York + Texas + Florida + Pennsylvania are to the USA). The G7 meeting seemed like it was headed south before it started. And the Trump+Navarro+Kudlow vomit afterwards was insane. Canadians seemed, according to polls, behind Trudeau's response pretty well (despite his decreasing popularity, he and Freeland score quite well on trade) and the uniformity of this response across the spectrum gives heart.

I know many of my friends, including myself, are at the point where we scrutinize everything to minimize buying American products thanks to this affront of a human being.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:09 pm
by Mister Tee
I recently found out that my wife's brother-in-law -- a lifelong, deep-dyed Republican -- voted (kicking and screaming) for Hillary in 2016, for the blunt reason that Trump was "dangerous." Anyone who doesn't see that after the past two days will never see it.

As someone wrote today, the man's specialty is coming up with "solutions" to problems that don't exist: a massive crime wave by immigrants, a trade environment that supposedly screws "good Americans" (read: older white guys). To deal with the former, he's thrown our immigration system into vindictive chaos. And for the latter, he's doing his best to blow up NATO -- the framework that has kept Europe (previously all too prone to periodic punishing wars) stable for 70 years. Much of the world is in the heretofore-unthinkable position of relying on the German chancellor to keep the world from blowing up.

I know we're supposed to be "civil" in our interpersonal relationships -- not take politics too seriously. And over the years I've had no problem co-existing with acquaintances/relatives whose ideological positions were far from mine. But this is a crisis of a whole other order. If you're fine with this imbecilic moral monster being our president because it gave your already-affluent lifestyle an even bigger tax break, you're an enemy of civilization, and I think history will not look kindly on you.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:33 pm
by Greg
The big Donald-Trump-potential-pardoning-marathon surprise for me is Martha Stewart. At this point, with her being out of jail for years and back to her career, it could not make any impact on her life. She even publicly supported Hilary Clinton. The only thing I can think of is to thumb his nose at James Comey, who prosecuted her for insider trading.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:40 am
by Big Magilla
I'd like to see them all go to jail. Aside from Manafort, however, I don't think any of the high profile jackasses will spend more than a day behind bars.

Speaking of Manafort, I hope they have enough on Trump without his help. I don't want to see him getting out of jail free.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 7:51 am
by flipp525
In yesterday’s news was also Guiliani openly musing that Trump could literally murder James Comey in the Oval Office and nothing would happen to him. Can you imagine some mafioso type who is under a criminal investigation saying such a thing about a witness in his case? I thought that was just an astonishing, despicable moment. There is no bottom when it comes to Trump and his gang. None whatsoever.

The addition of Guiliani to this circus (after he had gone dark for so long) has really upped the outrage factor in their frenetic messaging. I honestly thought he had made himself scarce because of his own potential liability in this case. If you’ll recall, he somehow knew about the damaging emails coming out against Hillary before it happened and announced it on Fox News. It’s a fact that is easy to forget.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 8:41 pm
by Mister Tee
flipp525 wrote:
The Original BJ wrote:GULP, every day just takes us further and further into uncharted territory.
Assume this is related to him tweeting out today that he can pardon himself?
It's to the point where people need to specify what outrage they're referencing; it's the rare day there's only one absurdity floating in the media ether.

Kudos, BJ, for getting out there and actively working for what we all know is our best chance. I'm of course hoping tomorrow night's primaries yield the right results (though it's annoying the main risk seems to be that California's debatable system of choosing candidates could cost Dems even a shot at vulnerable seats).

To answer Sabin's question about Mueller, how much impact do I think he'll have?: it depends on how strong a case he presents. Each week/month, our sense of the size of the investigation has grown. Not too long a while back, pundits were confidently saying collusion was off the table, obstruction was the only real jeopardy for Trump. Subsequent revelations have rendered that thesis laughable: it's clear Mueller is going way deep into collusion. But we still don't know how far it goes, how many people it covers, how many crimes are involved, how extensive the evidence is. It may turn out that the percentage Mueller is still sitting on, compared to what's already been revealed, is similar to the ratio between what's in plain sight now compared to the amount we knew a year ago (NOTE: I EDITED THIS SENTENCE AFTER THE FACT TO TRY AND GIVE MORE CLARITY; FOR SOME REASON, I HAD A LOT OF TROUBLE PHRASING IT SUCCINCTLY). Given how things have gone up till now -- and based on what numerous anonymous sources have been buzzing over (not to mention what non-partisans like Brennan, Clapper and Hayden have been warning) -- I tend to take the "over": I think there's a lot more to come.

Which doesn't fully answer your question, of course, because what you're really asking is, even if we have streaming video of Trump paying Putin to flip vote totals across the Midwest, would that rouse elected Republicans to do anything? Based on their unforgivable behavior to date, it's easy to take the super-cynical view and assume they'll stay where they are and (in BJ's metaphor) go down with the ship. But I take Nate Silver's position: baked into that view is an assumption that there's nothing that crosses the line enough to change public opinion in a way even Republicans can't ignore. Not every Republican, of course. There's probably an irreducible 25-35% of the country for whom the talk radio/Fox News bubble has served as the equivalent of Radio Rwanda over the past two decades; these are the people Trump rightly said would forgive him killing someone on Fifth Avenue. But there are other Republicans (I know some) who are capable of shame, whose tribal loyalty can be shaken if the revelations are stark enough. This is also true of elected Republicans. A good percentage -- those in gerrymandered districts, or super-red states -- will stay true to Trump even if the country's on fire. But there are Republican Senators in swing states who have to face voters before long -- too few of them this year, unhappily, but many in 2020, which isn't so far off as they'd like it to be. If Mueller comes up with a persuasive case -- Capital T treason, to do a variant on BJ's phrase -- these people can be gettable votes for removal.

As for what Democrats should be doing now, in the teeth of the shameless (and ludicrous) propaganda campaign from the Trump camp...I understand it can be frustrating to hear lies spouted daily without instant rebuttal. It would help if the press did a better job of labelling these lies as such immediately, and repeated the characterization every time the lie was repeated; the fact that they're finding that too exhausting, and slacking on the job, is one way in which the mendacious Trump folk do seem to be winning. But I'm not sure it's doing any irreparable damage. In the end, Mueller's presentation is going to be persuasive or it isn't, and most of these temporal rhetorical victories could end up meaningless.

As for how Dems should be campaigning -- I'll say more on this as we get deeper into the season, but, in brief: 1) Dems should of course campaign on the issues where people hugely support them (heath care above all); 2) at a certain point, "Repubicans won't hold Trump accountable; we will" should be a strong additional selling point; and 3) the pundit certainty that "Democrats can't get elected simply being anti-Trump" is ahistorical -- presidential unpopularity was pretty much the whole shebang in both 2006 and 2010, massive anti-incumbent party wave elections.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 11:57 am
by flipp525
The Original BJ wrote:GULP, every day just takes us further and further into uncharted territory.
Assume this is related to him tweeting out today that he can pardon himself? I feel like he’s floating this as a possibility to get people used to the idea. No one is above the law. This is completely anti-thetical to the very idea of democracy. I’m appalled.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 11:28 am
by Sabin
What if instead of a constitutional crisis we just learn that we don't live in a democracy anymore?

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2018 8:15 am
by The Original BJ
GULP, every day just takes us further and further into uncharted territory.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 8:04 pm
by The Original BJ
Sabin, I DEFINITELY think the MAGA base is a cult. But I do think if the Republican party leadership had taken a different approach in the 2016 election -- honestly, if they took a different approach NOW -- they would be able to persuade a decent amount of Republican voters that bad faith/conspiracy theories is not the way for the party to go. But I think they signed up for the Trump train too, and dragged along a lot of marginal supporters too. I think there was a period when the leadership didn't have to go full Fox News -- maybe not THAT recently, but recently enough -- but the die has been cast completely at this point.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:18 pm
by Sabin
Mister Tee wrote
So, no one appears to be responding to this. Not to say people are obligated to reply to things I post, but...isn't anyone else alarmed by this? 40 years ago, Nixon said "If the president does it, that means it isn't illegal", and the nation gasped at the imperial notion. Here, Trump's lawyers are saying the same thing, to a duly-appointed counsel, and it's no big deal?

I think we're already ankle-deep in the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War -- beyond what we experienced in Watergate -- and it's likely to get much worse very soon. Is it simple despair that keeps people from commenting on it?
It's not despair. There's A LOT going on right now. Right now, people I know are deeply upset about the children being separated by their parents by ICE. Besides, the news cycle is moving insanely fast these day while Mueller is moving right on track. They can't be expected to jump on every whistle from this slow-moving train.

To the rest of your point: I think we're absolutely in a constitutional crisis. But before I speak further on it, I want to cite your middle passage.
Mister Tee wrote
For the record, a dozen sitting Republican Senators voted to expel Bill Clinton from office on a charge of obstruction of justice. I'd like to see each of them explain how they're now prepared to say such a thing doesn't exist.
So... I don't want to see each of them do that, and I'll tell you why. Because it won't matter. They're going to lie. Did you see Guiliani on Chuck Todd when they brought up a video of him talking about Bill Clinton? What did he do? He just lied. And I am WELL beyond the point of laughing at their hypocrisy because as far as I'm concerned, they're winning. The Republican party is the party of Trump and they've either partially or entirely brainwashed far too many Americans for us to entirely come back from. They have successively eroded the public trust with bullshit false equivalencies, crazy conspiracy theories, and the empowerment of human scum in a way I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

So, I guess here's my question: where's your faith in Mueller now? Do you think he's going to bring Trump to justice or not? Despite what you've said about Democrats enjoying the defeatist mindset (and please to that point: I AM NOT ENJOYING MYSELF!), I think we're in uncharted territory. Bill Maher has it right. Donald Trump is an authoritarian with no respect for power, and yes, he probably is above the law.
The Original BJ wrote
But the Republican party as an institution-- its leadership -- is basically a cult now, one that operates entirely in bad faith, thinks small-d democratic rules and norms should only apply to their opponents, and that seeks to protect their dear leader from accountability on everything. The idea that there is some red line that Trump just won't be able to cross with some of these senators and congresspeople is utter fantasy. I think any Democrat (or even never-Trump conservative) who is still in a state of denial about this needs to vacate that state immediately. (And some certainly still are, even after the last 3 years.)
You posted this as I posted my thoughts. Thank you for your volunteer work. I agree with much of what you've said but is it really the leadership that's a cult? I don't think so. The leaders know exactly the bullshit they are peddling. It's just a great big cash-grab for them. The cult members are the people who 100% believe that Trump won the popular vote but it was undocumented immigrants who threw it to Hillary. And you can't convince them otherwise because public trust has been so eroded.

The only people who scare me more than them are the empowered filth of the earth who are coming out of the shadows to run for office.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:07 pm
by The Original BJ
Mister Tee wrote:So, no one appears to be responding to this. Not to say people are obligated to reply to things I post, but...isn't anyone else alarmed by this?
Well... I have spent the weekend knocking on doors (in 100 degree heat) for the Democratic congressional candidate I've been volunteering for over the last few months, who I can't even vote for, in a district I don't even live in, to try to get voters to the polls for the California primary election on Tuesday, to flip a Republican-held seat. So I'm doing the best I can to try to save America!

But yes, this is completely appalling, and the Republican party leadership is going to go along with it 100%. Do you remember that part in Titanic where Leonardo DiCaprio tells Kate Winslet that they have to stay on the sinking ship as long as possible? That's the Republicans right now. They all know the ship they've boarded is going down, and their only choices are to jump into the freezing water and face certain death (i.e. take a stand for basic constitutional principles and face primary challenges, personal attacks from the president, and onslaught of brickbats from the Fox News hate machine), or stay onboard the ship and hope that by the time it sinks, the Carpathia will be there to rescue them (i.e. Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders gets accused of raping 20 women, or something like that).

I'm not one who thinks the Democratic leaders are always doing the wrong thing -- they've stood up admirably to many of the most odious aspects of the Trump presidency -- but they're going to need to step up their game on this issue in a way I'm not sure they're prepared to do right now. One assumption that the Democrats -- and the media, frankly -- really need to let go of is that even a small cabal of Republicans will EVENTUALLY be willing to stand up to Trump when he crosses a certain line -- i.e. when he fires Mueller/refuses to testify/pardons his associates & children/etc. Because they won't. Too often the Democrats -- and I would even include average joe Democratic voters like myself in this -- have tried to view the the opposition as folks who simply disagree with them on issues, and perhaps there was a time when that was the case. And certainly when it comes to individual Republican voters, that may still be the case. But the Republican party as an institution -- its leadership -- is basically a cult now, one that operates entirely in bad faith, thinks small-d democratic rules and norms should only apply to their opponents, and that seeks to protect their dear leader from accountability on everything. The idea that there is some red line that Trump just won't be able to cross with some of these senators and congresspeople is utter fantasy. I think any Democrat (or even never-Trump conservative) who is still in a state of denial about this needs to vacate that state immediately. (And some certainly still are, even after the last 3 years.)

And as a result, the Democrats -- and, again, the press -- need to start making a bigger stink about their concern over Trump's lawlessness and what could lie ahead. I know that there's a tendency right now for many to argue that Dems need to focus only on the Republicans' unpopular policies to motivate voters -- and I DO certainly think running midterm campaigns mostly on the GOP's tax bill and attempt to repeal health care is the right strategy, particularly for local congressional candidates just trying to win over their district. (I've certainly noticed on the campaign I've been working on that very few voters much want to talk about Trump, they're more interested in issues that affect them and their neighborhoods.) But I think there's a difference between national Democrats wading into issues of Trump's character and temperament that don't ultimately really matter to any voters (i.e. the Roseanne/Samantha Bee bullshit), which they shouldn't do, and taking a firmer stand on the corruption and authoritarianism that's being flaunted right out in the open, and that ultimately will have major implications for our country. Because right now it sort of feels like there's the Trump/Fox News take of "No collusion!" and "Witch hunt!" and the Dem take of "Let's wait and see what the investigation uncovers." And sorry, "Let's wait and see" is not the proper message to be pushing with respect to an investigation that has already brought a bucket load of charges, indictments, and guilty pleas already. I am not suggesting that I have the answer to what precisely the Dem messaging should be, but the Republicans and their media machine have succeed for years by motivating their voters with their claims that the house is perpetually on fire, and it would be nice to see Democrats sounding the alarm a bit more for what is so obviously appalling presidential conduct that could potentially have enormously dangerous consequences for the future of the country.

But Mister Tee, I do think you're right that an element of despair does have something to do with it -- I think so many are just so worn down by the daily outrages, by the discouraging feeling that this awful man and his cronies will never face any consequences for what increasingly appear to be at least little-t treasonous acts -- not to mention the rampant corruption -- that things like this just get thrown alongside less outrageous scandals (like Trump coming to Roseanne's rescue, which is atrocious, but doesn't threaten the fabric of the nation) rather than the enormous deals they are.

But again, I'm trying to knock on as many doors as I can to do my part to make sure the November elections put a very different group of people in power in Congress.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 6:21 pm
by Big Magilla
What can we do? Every day the same good people say the same smart things, but nothing happens.

Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 5:03 pm
by Mister Tee
So, no one appears to be responding to this. Not to say people are obligated to reply to things I post, but...isn't anyone else alarmed by this? 40 years ago, Nixon said "If the president does it, that means it isn't illegal", and the nation gasped at the imperial notion. Here, Trump's lawyers are saying the same thing, to a duly-appointed counsel, and it's no big deal?

For the record, a dozen sitting Republican Senators voted to expel Bill Clinton from office on a charge of obstruction of justice. I'd like to see each of them explain how they're now prepared to say such a thing doesn't exist.

I think we're already ankle-deep in the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War -- beyond what we experienced in Watergate -- and it's likely to get much worse very soon. Is it simple despair that keeps people from commenting on it?