Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

Every time they reiterate the facts in these things, a) it demonstrates that they've been paying attention to all the same tin-hat stuff as us and b) it further embarasses and humiliates Trump. Not that he cares, but his place as a suspect laughing stock is secure in the books. Assuming anyone will be reading by the time he's gone.

sally yates is extremely attractive

Yates implying pretty strongly that there was collusion

Sort of the first bombshell: Graham asked Clapper if he still did not know of any evidence that Trump campaign colluded with Russians. He said no. He asked the same question of Yates, and she said she couldn't say because classified.

getting pretty nervous for the senate version of the AHCA

This is a useful state of play re that:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/house-senate-republicans-health-care_us_5910ad87e4b0104c73511162?9q

something will pass the Senate but reconciliation rules and Senate perogatives mean it will look p different from the House bill. Whether or not Meadows can keep the Freedom Caucus united behind it, who knows

fuck these asholes and thier stupid quesions about leaks and unmasking

i'm taking only limited comfort in the "senate bill will have to go back to the House" scenario because i think the landscape looks different when the thing arrives already having passed the other house. whichever ""moderates"" were iffy about voting for something controversial that might not ever become law are off the hook of that particular worry, and maybe at least some freedom caucus types are less likely to be hardliners over the last 2% when 98% of what they want is in front of them.

that still leaves the question is how much the senate bill looks like 98% of what the freedom caucus wants, but i don't think we'll see as much of the "ryan caught between two irreconcilable factions" problem that we saw with version 1.0. idk, i mean it could still be a big clusterfuck but i'm not ready to be totally sanguine about it.

xps The Freedom Caucus loves to shit in the sandbox, while the Senate loves to stand on its assumed dignity, so this will be a very pertinent question.

John McCain wrote a pro-human-rights editorial in the NYT, lol

american foreign policy: a play in four acts pic.twitter.com/W84M4bgNFr

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) May 8, 2017

from the current vantage point I would say it looks likely some form of repeal is going to pass and become law. it won't be as odious as the House bill but it will still be bad, and Dems should try to kneecap it at every turn. But there's a lot of moving parts here, and it's going to drag on for months, so it's difficult to predict specifics.

xp

what a weird way to pronounce Riiiiiiiischa

lol of course all they want to talk about leaks and unmasking

I will go ahead and predict that I probably won't live out what would've otherwise been the natural span of my life because of today's federal-level scrotes. The precise means of my abbreviated life, though, could be any number of things. Don't stop believin'!

lol of course all they want to talk about leaks and unmasking

http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mask-depicting-british-airways-ceo-willie-walsh-is-placed-into-a-mens-picture-id102622861

xpost I guess one could argue that the human lifespan has been artificially prolonged by things like access to adequate healthcare, so this is a more authentic, salt of the earth direction we're heading in. It's like the Blue Collar Healthcare Tour.

Lol and Cornyn complaining that Susan Rice is not testifying, because she needs to answer a lot of questions.

at, not and.

ok this has been 2/3rds about unmasking so far, the GOP does not give one shit about foreign interference

Color me shocked!

Republicans will probably brag about the extent to which they've been compromised by foreign agents in future elections.

lol no shit

Cornyn now grilling Yates for not upholding the Muslim ban

digging into foreign interference gains the GOP little or nothing, politically speaking, and because governing the country is essentially hard work with meager political payback, unmasking and soft-on-terror accusations look the most promising to today's GOP.

Have they gotten around to asking Yates why she's at a hearing instead of in the kitchen making delicious baked goods for her husband?

No one who self-identifies as a republican can die soon or violently enough to suit me at this point.

Cornyn now grilling Yates for not upholding the Muslim ban

― frogbs, Monday, May 8, 2017 3:53 PM (three minutes ago)

yeah that was some bullshit grandstanding

Ted Cruz, right back to leaks.

So she's being reprimanded for believing in and trying to support the constitution?
Was hoping her appearance was going to set things straighter but now looks like bent rules.

cruz now ugh

cruz is looking especially gruesome today

ted cruz is a fucking scumbag

fucking piece of shit with the EO crap

yates just sonned him on the statutes

so cool nothing at all coming from this except a bunch of idiotic memes & talking points about leaks

Cruz has...gained a bit of weight since the primaries last year.

you guys are following this was closer than 99.9% of the population. the headline is "flynn was compromised and the WH knew".

...okay?

XPS He discovered feelings and now eats them

Yates owns so much, she's really killing this imo

she is unflappable

that said I should have known that the GOP was gonna make this about unmasking and Hillary's emails, because of course they would

yeah, but many people thought Trump beat Hillary in the debates, so it's mostly showtime for senators

Clapper just said this is not about leaks it's about Russian influence on elections

yeah that was pretty explicit. leaks are "ancilliary issues" and interference is "transcendent"

do they seriously *have* to answer every question? can't they just respond with a simple "how is that germane to the issue we're here to discuss?"

also, clapper sounds just like Nick Offerman.

gotta say it was nice to see Cruz get humiliated once more

Sasse asking some good questions here

Cornyn and Cruz just left the hearing, lolololol

where does it fucking say this hearing is about the goddamn executive orders

senator kennedy from louisiana is a gigantic dumbass and acts like he's worried that everyone will realize it at the same time