US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[shosta]

In Seattle the local NPR station had a sponsored ad for the Central Intelligence Agency and then said to go to cia.gov/careers.

[Mandark]

I don't think the polygraph was meant to prove anything, but to preempt the inevitable "well why doesn't she take a lie detector test!?" bullshit.

[seagrams hotsauce]

In Seattle the local NPR station had a sponsored ad for the Central Intelligence Agency and then said to go to cia.gov/careers.

record that shit breh. r/chapo chum bait right hurr

KUOW?

[Maiden Voyage]

KEXP?

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/DEScott_zz/status/1042170138173366273/

 

[james]

Cuomo's America is dirtier than most 3rd world countries.

The race for the Democratic nomination for Coney Island’s Assembly seat is the only one in the state without a clear winner — or even complete results — after the Sept. 13 primary, and locals will likely have to wait until the end of the month to find out who nabbed the nomination.

As of press time, Mathylde Frontus is holding a less-than-one-percent lead over Ethan Lustig-Elgrably, with 3,060 votes to his 2,990, according to the State Board of Elections. Of the results that have been reported, the number of blank ballots was 20 times the current 70-vote margin currently separating the two candidates.

But four of the 84 precincts in the 46th Assembly District — all of which had their polling places at PS 90-The Edna Cohen School — had not yet reported any results as of press time, and fifteen other precincts had reported only 75 percent or 50 percent of their total results.

...

On Sept. 15, two days after the primary, Frontus hosted a rally in front of her campaign office demanding finalized results of the election. And later that same day, Lustig-Elgrably issued a statement also calling on the board to issue the full results.

https://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/41/38/bn-coney-assembly-primary-ongoing-2018-09-21-bk.html?

The establishment guy was losing...so they simply stopped counting votes.

[Nintex]

Oh well back to politics

Do you want some burgers kid?

“Got it?” Trump said as he handed two meals to a person in a car, adding: “Have a good time.”

The comment caused one MSNBC reporter to speak out off camera.

“I think he just said have a good time!” the reporter gasped.

https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/status/1042407784212561920

[naff]

I know y'all like to be hyperbolic, but Texas was pretty blue last election. Hillary lost by 600k votes vs 1.2 mill or so for Obama previously. There's precedent for being hopeful about the future of Texas.

https://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/texas-is-the-future/ (just open their pieces in an incognito tab)

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1042394554996011013

Great to see that both parties have come together.

[james]

I see you Corey Booker and Kristen Gillywhatever, voting for more war

[shosta]

In Seattle the local NPR station had a sponsored ad for the Central Intelligence Agency and then said to go to cia.gov/careers.

record that shit breh. r/chapo chum bait right hurr

KUOW?

KEXP?

Friend of mine actually tried this, went nowhere KUOW

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/9hb372/seattle_npr_sponsored_by_cia/

"Discover the truth." 

[team filler]

[ToxicAdam]

Every narcissist wants their time they are living in to feel special.

[benjipwns]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/19/donald-trump-final-days-220139

Trump’s Final Days
One day, whether next year, or in 2021, or in 2025, he’ll be asked to leave the White House. What if he won’t go?

What if, after having moved into the White House and gotten comfortable, Donald Trump refuses to check out when his term ends?

Preposterous, you say. No president, not even Trump, would dare to defy 200-plus years of political tradition—not to mention the Constitution—to illegally overstay. But how sure can we be that our norm-busting president won’t attempt to shatter this inviolable standard, too? He and his lawyers have already advanced the specious legal idea that the chief executive can’t be charged with obstruction of justice, thereby placing him above the law. Who’s to say that Trump’s legal advisers might construct some pretext—a national security crisis or charges of election fraud—that would place him above the Constitution and cement his place in the Oval Office?

The fear that a president might not go at his appointed time has a precedent. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, encouraged by columnist Walter Lippmann, contemplated taking dictatorial powers at the beginning of his first administration, but then reconsidered.

So if Trump couldn’t postpone an election, could he just ignore it? The nation would erupt, of course. Even great numbers of his supporters would abandon him. But never underestimate Trump’s audacity. In 2016, he reserved the right to reject the results. The fact that he won made his rejection moot. But what scenario might play out in 2020 if Trump lost but denied the results? Would he endlessly filibuster the states for recounts? Appeal to the Supreme Court and ignore its ruling by claiming squatters rights to the White House?

Not even Trump would go that far, right? Even though he’s taught us to expect the worst from him, I’d like to think that he’d pack the Bekins van and move back to Trump Tower after losing. But what about the long shot of the House impeaching him and the Senate convicting him? Would he honor those judgments? Again, I’d like to think so, but my faith wobbles. His sense of victimhood, displayed daily on Twitter, predicts that he might interpret his constitutional defenestration as a coup by the Deep State, a coup that justified his counter-coup. Trump’s backers—see these pieces in the American Conservative and the Federalist as well as a commentary by Bill O’Reilly and an interview with Steve Bannon—have already poured the foundation for such a notion with their talk of the “coup against Trump.” Likewise, all the talk about using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office can’t help but have boosted his baseline paranoia.

The president’s cheerleading for anti-democratic authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Xi Jinping and Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and the mutual admiration pact he’s signed with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un does not bode well for an orderly transition of power in 2020 or 2024 or whenever his eviction notice is served. Because nothing is off the table when Trump’s operating, let’s hope current Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has read deeply from the Nixon histories and has issued the appropriate order to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[TakingBackSunday]

I have that thought basically every day

[shosta]

We would just move the White House back to its original location in Philadelphia.

[Mandark]

A classmate of Ford says that people talked about the incident in the days after it happened.

Kavanaugh made a speech that included the laugh-line "what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep." When a transcript of the speech was submitted to the Judiciary Committee, that line was deleted.

Huffington Post and the Guardian both have stories up about how female Yale students were told "it's no coincidence" Kavanaugh's female clerks all looked like models, and were offered advice on how to dress to get a clerkship with him. There are multiple sources and HuffPo got to read a Gchat transcript of a conversation one of the sources had with her friend about it right afterwards.

One of the people passing on this info was Amy Chua, who previously wrote a piece for the WSJ titled "Kavanaugh Is a Mentor to Women."

Guys, this isn't great.



edit: Kavanaugh's rollout (including that Chua op-ed) really focused on how he's a Good Guy, getting women to vouch for him, making a big deal of him coaching girl's basketball. Maybe that's just because with the spectre of overturning Roe v Wade, the GOP's problems with women, the all-male conservative bloc on the Supreme Court, and Collins/Murkowski being potential spoiler votes (ha ha), they wanted some political cover.

But it would also make a whole lot of sense as a PR strategy if you were aware that there were certain types of rumors around this guy. I want to say there's no way they'd nominate someone knowing that was a potential problem right in the middle of #metoo, but...

[shosta]

Trump telling Spanish pm to build a wall across the Sahara to stop Africans is one of those things that's so cringey, I didn't want to know about it

[Rufus]

Trump telling Spanish pm to build a wall across the Sahara to stop Africans is one of those things that's so cringey, I didn't want to know about it

Tsk, Nintex sleeping on the job.

[Mandark]

"lol, epic fuckery, watch the Dems get tricked into talking about the Sahara wall and losing the midterms, beast mode!"

There ya go.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Maybe throw in 20 lines of brilliant sketch comedy dialogue.

[close]

[Rufus]

It's not the same without at least two Twitter embeds.

[team filler]

I have that thought basically every day

I lol'd 

[team filler]

 

[Van Cruncheon]

A classmate of Ford says that people talked about the incident in the days after it happened.

Kavanaugh made a speech that included the laugh-line "what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep." When a transcript of the speech was submitted to the Judiciary Committee, that line was deleted.

Huffington Post and the Guardian both have stories up about how female Yale students were told "it's no coincidence" Kavanaugh's female clerks all looked like models, and were offered advice on how to dress to get a clerkship with him. There are multiple sources and HuffPo got to read a Gchat transcript of a conversation one of the sources had with her friend about it right afterwards.

One of the people passing on this info was Amy Chua, who previously wrote a piece for the WSJ titled "Kavanaugh Is a Mentor to Women."

Guys, this isn't great.



edit: Kavanaugh's rollout (including that Chua op-ed) really focused on how he's a Good Guy, getting women to vouch for him, making a big deal of him coaching girl's basketball. Maybe that's just because with the spectre of overturning Roe v Wade, the GOP's problems with women, the all-male conservative bloc on the Supreme Court, and Collins/Murkowski being potential spoiler votes (ha ha), they wanted some political cover.

But it would also make a whole lot of sense as a PR strategy if you were aware that there were certain types of rumors around this guy. I want to say there's no way they'd nominate someone knowing that was a potential problem right in the middle of #metoo, but...

i'm pretty sure kavanaugh's nom is elite powerbroker tit-for-tat between kennedy, him, and a couple select oligarchs or "institutional consultants". someone should dredge up and trawl his legal rulings and referrals for low-key cases with big names or shadow corps on the dockets.

suffice to say, he and kennedy negotiated this nom with some folks who owe him -- probably even kennedy.

[Mandark]

I dunno about a specific tit-for-tat, but his ideas about the administrative state could make the whole fucking EPA unconstitutional.

[curly]

Burn down all elite law schools and sow the ground with salt

[Nintex]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/19/donald-trump-final-days-220139

Trump’s Final Days
One day, whether next year, or in 2021, or in 2025, he’ll be asked to leave the White House. What if he won’t go?

What if, after having moved into the White House and gotten comfortable, Donald Trump refuses to check out when his term ends?

Preposterous, you say. No president, not even Trump, would dare to defy 200-plus years of political tradition—not to mention the Constitution—to illegally overstay. But how sure can we be that our norm-busting president won’t attempt to shatter this inviolable standard, too? He and his lawyers have already advanced the specious legal idea that the chief executive can’t be charged with obstruction of justice, thereby placing him above the law. Who’s to say that Trump’s legal advisers might construct some pretext—a national security crisis or charges of election fraud—that would place him above the Constitution and cement his place in the Oval Office?

The fear that a president might not go at his appointed time has a precedent. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, encouraged by columnist Walter Lippmann, contemplated taking dictatorial powers at the beginning of his first administration, but then reconsidered.

So if Trump couldn’t postpone an election, could he just ignore it? The nation would erupt, of course. Even great numbers of his supporters would abandon him. But never underestimate Trump’s audacity. In 2016, he reserved the right to reject the results. The fact that he won made his rejection moot. But what scenario might play out in 2020 if Trump lost but denied the results? Would he endlessly filibuster the states for recounts? Appeal to the Supreme Court and ignore its ruling by claiming squatters rights to the White House?

Not even Trump would go that far, right? Even though he’s taught us to expect the worst from him, I’d like to think that he’d pack the Bekins van and move back to Trump Tower after losing. But what about the long shot of the House impeaching him and the Senate convicting him? Would he honor those judgments? Again, I’d like to think so, but my faith wobbles. His sense of victimhood, displayed daily on Twitter, predicts that he might interpret his constitutional defenestration as a coup by the Deep State, a coup that justified his counter-coup. Trump’s backers—see these pieces in the American Conservative and the Federalist as well as a commentary by Bill O’Reilly and an interview with Steve Bannon—have already poured the foundation for such a notion with their talk of the “coup against Trump.” Likewise, all the talk about using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office can’t help but have boosted his baseline paranoia.

The president’s cheerleading for anti-democratic authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Xi Jinping and Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and the mutual admiration pact he’s signed with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un does not bode well for an orderly transition of power in 2020 or 2024 or whenever his eviction notice is served. Because nothing is off the table when Trump’s operating, let’s hope current Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has read deeply from the Nixon histories and has issued the appropriate order to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

If Trump lost he'd just do what he always does when his schemes collapse. 'Take the money and run'.
You'd find an empty white house, with no paintings, no interior, phones, computers or anything.

However in the run up to an election he's expected to lose. Who knows what he'll do. Start a war with Iran, ban all German car imports, launch a probe (or drone strike) into CNN, pardon himself and his family. 


You guys forgot the best part about Trump's African wall

Donald Trump suggested the Spanish government tackled the Mediterranean migration crisis by emulating one of his most famous policies and building a wall across the Sahara desert, the country’s foreign minister has revealed.

According to Josep Borrell, the US president brushed off the scepticism of Spanish diplomats – who pointed out that the Sahara stretched for 3,000 miles – saying: “The Sahara border can’t be bigger than our border with Mexico.”

[Mandark]

Washington Post published an op-ed by Kathleen Parker titled "Is there a Kavanaugh doppelganger?" which is not satire.

We've officially reached the "what if there was a vortex" point.

[james]

Burn down all elite law schools and sow the ground with salt

If Kav were a Democrat nominee, Republicans would be running ads about how horrible it would be if we let another elite private school trust fund baby who is detached from REAL American be allowed to make decisions that impact us all.

"Would you want a man who never worked a real job in his life deciding your future?"
"When you were 16, you were working odd jobs to help your family make ends meet. Between mowing lawns, delivering papers, and busing tables, you learnt the real meaning of hard work and the American dream. Meanwhile, Kav was attending a $40,000 per year elite private school where the only job was getting blackout drunk"

[kingv]

A classmate of Ford says that people talked about the incident in the days after it happened.

Kavanaugh made a speech that included the laugh-line "what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep." When a transcript of the speech was submitted to the Judiciary Committee, that line was deleted.

Huffington Post and the Guardian both have stories up about how female Yale students were told "it's no coincidence" Kavanaugh's female clerks all looked like models, and were offered advice on how to dress to get a clerkship with him. There are multiple sources and HuffPo got to read a Gchat transcript of a conversation one of the sources had with her friend about it right afterwards.

One of the people passing on this info was Amy Chua, who previously wrote a piece for the WSJ titled "Kavanaugh Is a Mentor to Women."

Guys, this isn't great.



edit: Kavanaugh's rollout (including that Chua op-ed) really focused on how he's a Good Guy, getting women to vouch for him, making a big deal of him coaching girl's basketball. Maybe that's just because with the spectre of overturning Roe v Wade, the GOP's problems with women, the all-male conservative bloc on the Supreme Court, and Collins/Murkowski being potential spoiler votes (ha ha), they wanted some political cover.

But it would also make a whole lot of sense as a PR strategy if you were aware that there were certain types of rumors around this guy. I want to say there's no way they'd nominate someone knowing that was a potential problem right in the middle of #metoo, but...

One fun interesting thing.

About 10 days ago, Amy Chua had a “medical emergency” cancelled all of her classes for the rest of the semester and can’t be reached for comment about the story that was published this morning where she said Brett K likes hot chicks for clerks to prospective clerks.

What convenient timing.

I’m sure she is very sick 

[Mandark]

Ed Whelan, "respectable conservative" is speculating that the attempted rape happened but it was a specific classmate of Kavanaugh's, who he named and posted pictures of on Twitter. Based on basically no evidence other than "they look alike, right?"

How are you going to talk about the risk and consequences of false accusations and then do that? What the fuck, man.

[Nintex]

Ed Whelan, "respectable conservative" is speculating that the attempted rape happened but it was a specific classmate of Kavanaugh's, who he named and posted pictures of on Twitter. Based on basically no evidence other than "they look alike, right?"

How are you going to talk about the risk and consequences of false accusations and then do that? What the fuck, man.

His thread is interesting. He even seems to have found the house it may have all happened in.
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042893987747713024

And a guy who somewhat looks like Kavanaugh that had the same group of friends (who also don't recall Kavanaugh being present at the gathering) that lived there at that time.


But if all they've got to go on is drunk college get togethers that no one quite remembers the details about it's going to be a difficult case for all parties involved.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1042907712978333696

[close]

[Mandark]

of course we could count on fucking nintex to take this shit seriously

jesus

[Nintex]

of course we could count on fucking nintex to take this shit seriously

jesus

I said no such thing. I think it's horseshit. But it is going to be difficult to figure this out if everyone involved was intoxicated at some party decades ago and somehow has to remember that particular party.
How much do you remember from parties that happened 5 - 10 years ago? At some point it just all blurs together.

I remember a girl slipping from the bar she was dancing on and her being carried out in a stretcher but I can't quite recall if that happened on the same day some guy I knew from college threw up on his girlfriend while they were dancing.
Both events happened (some of my buddies from that time also remember it) but we're not sure if they happened a week, month, year apart or during the same night.

[Mandark]

His thread is interesting. He even seems to have found the house it may have all happened in.

not taking it seriously, right

you're the dumbest motherfucker alive

[Nola]

Given the story that has been laid out, including it being at a party, with a second witness, with the therapist notes, there is so far way more to go on to try and corroborate or disprove aspects of the story then say, most of Cosby's accusers or many of the accusations against some of the pretty heavy hitters that pretty much everyone accepts as likely having happened.


But none of that shit matters when Republicans show themselves to be no different then the scum we saw during the Anita Hill hearing and won't even ask the therapist to testify, or demand the friend to speak on the record, ask the FBI to reopen their background check into Kavanaugh, to speak to potential people that corroborate or exonerate Kavanaugh's presence at the party. The fact that Republicans are doing what they are doing, based on any audit of this party from any moment in the last 50 years, pretty much makes the likelihood of this accusation having merit that much stronger.

[kingv]

Any Chuas next book is going to be Battle Hymn of the Mama-San about how she sent hot young women to be Kavanaughs law clerks.

[Great Rumbler]

i'm pretty sure kavanaugh's nom is elite powerbroker tit-for-tat between kennedy, him, and a couple select oligarchs or "institutional consultants". someone should dredge up and trawl his legal rulings and referrals for low-key cases with big names or shadow corps on the dockets.

suffice to say, he and kennedy negotiated this nom with some folks who owe him -- probably even kennedy.

It's been mentioned before that Kavanaugh had a ton of debts prior to his nomination that have since magically vanished:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/the-many-mysteries-of-brett-kavanaughs-finances/

[agrajag]

Of course I don't believe that bs, it's all baloney.

*proceeds to write paragraphs justifying said bs*

[kingv]

Kavanaugh is definitely one of the the swampier swamp creature yet. His whole biography bothers me.

It’s just filled with “I’m where I’m at solely because of connections that started because I had a rich daddy”

I suspect that his dad is who paid off his debts, but curious that he wouldn’t just say that because his sport tickets story is total nonsense.

A guy with a $200k/year salary runs up 200k in credit card debt that his friends owe him but his wife hasn’t drawn and quartered him yet?

[Steve Contra]

The guy who wrote that crazy conspiracy theory that blames some poor lookalike guy is posting is the president of The Ethics and Public Policy Center

[Joe Molotov]

Any Chuas next book is going to be Battle Hymn of the Mama-San about how she sent hot young women to be Kavanaughs law clerks.

Tiger Moms are tough.

[curly]

Washington Post published an op-ed by Kathleen Parker titled "Is there a Kavanaugh doppelganger?" which is not satire.

We've officially reached the "what if there was a vortex" point.

My main takeaway from that thread was that this guy concedes that Ford's memory of the house's layout is accurate but he wants us to believe she forgot the identity of the guy who assaulted her.

[curly]

https://twitter.com/andrewperezdc/status/1042944340497195008

lol the conservative establishment is just as dumb as the yahoos who watch fox news

[kingv]

My house has a bathroom upstairs and a short landing on the stairs. Literally shaking rn.

[james]

My house has a bathroom upstairs and a short landing on the stairs. Literally shaking rn.

Some of us dont have a fucking house so try and THINK before you post

[CatsCatsCats]

https://twitter.com/andrewperezdc/status/1042944340497195008

lol the conservative establishment is just as dumb as the yahoos who watch fox news

AND DID NOT ANSWER HIS DOOR

we live in a country where some asshat can claim what this one did and people will come to your fucking house over it

 

[james]

Where was Benji on the night of that party?

WHY IS NOBODY ASKING WHERE BENJI WAS?

[team filler]

[team filler]

[benjipwns]

Where was Benji on the night of that party?

WHY IS NOBODY ASKING WHERE BENJI WAS?

depending on the actual date of it, my alibi is that I did not yet exist

[VomKriege]

Where was Benji on the night of that party?

WHY IS NOBODY ASKING WHERE BENJI WAS?

depending on the actual date of it, my alibi is that I did not yet exist

How convenient. Couldn't you come up with something more credible like a doppelganger ?

[benjipwns]

Don't even get me started on that monster.

[VomKriege]

One's a doxxer... The other is too.
Double Doxxing
Coming soon to a theater near you... And your public records.

[Maiden Voyage]

(Image removed from quote.)

I entered my zip code and got 0 results back. I entered another nearby area and got some results. It seems to only be pulling officials in office and not any candidates.

[kingv]

This Ed Whelan shit is crazy.

This whole thing makes it look MORE like he did it, then Tried to come up with some crazy ass story to cover it up. If Dems won back the house they are going to have a field day investigating this, and the Republicans are goddamn nuts to not withdraw him as the nominee.

[Joe Molotov]

What if Lester Holt was talking to a Trump doppelgänger during the interview where he admitted to Obstruction?

[kingv]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/yale-law-dean-expresses-enormous-concern-over-kavanaugh-reporters


This sort of makes it sound like Amy Chua got really ill because Yale was about to investigate her.

What sort of illness do people get that makes them suddenly take extended hospitalizations that are months long?

I feel like it almost has to be a mental illness type of thing.

[benjipwns]

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/sen-whitehouse-tells-cnn-democrats-will-investigate-kavanaugh-and-fbi-if-they-win-majority/

“Well, first of all, there’s a factual dispute here which is that she said that young Kavanaugh molested and assaulted her, and he says that he didn’t,” replied Whitehouse. “There was a witness in the room who has never been subjected to a proper investigative effort of any kind. He has not been interviewed. He’s never said anything under oath. There were supposedly other boys, there’s a whole investigative process that can and should take place.”

“And you know what? This is such bad practice that, even if they were to ram this guy through, as soon as Democrats get gavels, we’re going to want to get to the bottom of this,” he told Tapper. “You can’t ignore a crime victim’s claim that something happened, refuse to investigate, throw her up into the stand without the least bit of support for her, without the least bit of effort to corroborate what she says, and then walk away from that has if you’ve behaved at all properly. There isn’t a prosecutor or a victim advocate in the country who would tolerate that.”

Tapper then followed up to clarify his remarks. “We’re out of time, but I want to make sure I understood what you just said,” he said. “If the Democrats win back the House and/or the Senate, Democrats will investigate what happened, the charges that Professor Ford is laying out, even if that means investigating a Supreme Court justice at the time?”

“I am confident of that,” Whitehouse confirmed. “And I think we’ll also be investigating why the FBI stood down its background investigation when this came up in this particular background.”

Sheldon Whitehouse was a U.S. Attorney, how does he not know how the FBI works?

[benjipwns]

And who knew the Tiger Mom would come back like this, the Trump writers pull the most obscure former characters out of nowhere.