Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

good mourning!

Trump is a moron.

I don't know whether to blame the phone or voice-to-text - likely both - but apologies for my jumbled posts these days. They're like dada sound poems.

TPM:

One of the most interesting explanations I ever read of the CIA's behavior after the Kennedy assassination came from, of all people, Norman Mailer.

Mailer thought that the CIA resisted any probing of its possible role in the assassination not because they were involved but because they couldn't be certain they weren't. In the early 1960s, the CIA was tied up with so many sketchy players and bad guys (certainly in the swirl of the mob, anti-Castro emigres, the Texas far-right and left-wing moles) that they couldn't be totally sure it didn't somehow connect back up to them. They didn't want to find out. Certainly they didn't want anyone else to find out.

Whether this was true as a factual matter or not I don't know. But as a theory it provided a plausible explanation of odd behavior, a shrewd take on human and bureaucratic nature, all while making no outlandish factual assumptions.

An interesting 'innocent' explanation of Trump's behaviors with regards to the Russian hacking is similar.

Say you're Trump. You have nothing to do with this. You know nothing about it. But think about all the crooks and gamers and sleazeballs around your campaign. There's Manafort, Stone, Page ... all their associates, not to mention your business associates with ties to Russian organized crime. (Stone publicly said he had some sort of a backchannel to Wikileaks.)

If you're Trump, how confident are you that a real investigation wouldn't turn up anything weird? Probably not very.

I do love how months and months later, Trump's concession is, fine, I'll sit down for an intelligence briefing. It's all very
http://www.liveforfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/they-live.jpg

Woodja lookit these two BFFs

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/29/29-glenn-greenwald-tucker-carlson.w710.h473.jpg

"We will not expel anyone," Putin said in a statement on Friday. "While keeping the right for retaliatory measures, we will not descend to the level of 'kitchen', irresponsible diplomacy."

He even invited the children of U.S. diplomats to a party in the Kremlin.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/01/23/17/putin-boy-kiss.jpg

Vladimir Putin kissed child like little girl

The diplomatic children thing is because CNN reported that the school most of them go to was being closed by the government in retaliation, incorrectly as it happens.

So THAT's how he sucks out the souls of children.

so a number of prominent republicans (Ryan, McConnell, McCain, Graham) have responded critically to the Russia sanctions, saying that Obama did not act quickly enough or harshly enough. I think this response is interesting because it seems like these criticisms may be aimed at Trump as much as at Obama. In other words, rather than attacking Trump's position on the topic directly, it's almost as if they are using Obama as a stand in to let Trump know he's on notice if he doesn't take the Russian issue seriously.

I feel like whatever happens to go wrong in the coming years, the spin will be relying on speaking about what wasn't done during the Obama presidency until whoever is asking just gives up and drops it.

tom i'm just messing with you bud come on lighten up a bit

yeah when I find myself getting the Morbs on these threads I need to remind myself to learn how to use the "second thought" thread

yesterday was indeed a very long day though

What merit does Putin even have when he says they won't retaliate? The country that did secret hacking spy stuff and was discovered promises not to do any more top secret hacking spy stuff?

I feel like whatever happens to go wrong in the coming years, the spin will be relying on speaking about what wasn't done during the Obama presidency until whoever is asking just gives up and drops it.

this is what Cameron and Osborne did in the UK for 6 years and sadly it worked like a dream

An interesting 'innocent' explanation of Trump's behaviors with regards to the Russian hacking is similar.

Say you're Trump. You have nothing to do with this. You know nothing about it. But think about all the crooks and gamers and sleazeballs around your campaign. There's Manafort, Stone, Page ... all their associates, not to mention your business associates with ties to Russian organized crime. (Stone publicly said he had some sort of a backchannel to Wikileaks.)

If you're Trump, how confident are you that a real investigation wouldn't turn up anything weird? Probably not very.

This is why he isnt taking briefings imo. He doesn't want to inadvertently say something incriminating. Helluva way to kick off a presidency.

I think it has more to do with the fact that he can't concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time. Hasn't he already said things that would be incriminating if they weren't made up?

Woodja lookit these two BFFs

I was waiting for this moment to reveal itself.

Lol trumps tweet today. Openly praising Putin for his response to the sanctions.

We'll all be speaking Russian this time next year.

This has been a pretty good prank on America, you have to admit.

actually, I think you'll find that YOU'RE the puppet

fucking lol, he even pinned the tweet so people see it right away

I believe matryoshka is the preferred metaphor.

the likelihood that Trump has massive financial interests in Russia OR he's being blackmailed has got to be approaching 100% at this point, there's no other explanation is there?

Maybe he just thinks it's funny to give off an impression of grotesque impropriety and watch people's heads spin. Who knows

There's no decent explanation for any of this shit tbf

The man doesn't laugh! He doesn't believe in it

this is what Cameron and Osborne did in the UK for 6 years and sadly it worked like a dream

Though, tbf, it worked like a dream because the opposition never challenged them whenever they blamed everything on Labour's 'overspending'

Also the entire media repeated the Cameron and Osborne line and trotted it out at every opportunity like it was fucking gospel.

... which I hope, and assume, will not happen in the US.

aye i'm sure the american media will maintain its impeccable track record of tenacious, interrogative reporting

i've lost the thread on all of this shit. greenwald and tiabbi saying the evidence put out is weak and calling out the left for scapegoating Russia; blah blah. who has read it here? I will trust whatever you guys say

trust Dennis Perrin's Tweets, akm

What we know, for certain, is that the Democrats lost the election that they won by 3 million votes because everyone hates them, and they are liars, who are wrong, and unAmerica in their beliefs, which they do not possess, being wholly mercenary.

Trump will be a good Presidetn, because he has embraced the Russian leadership, and he got more Real Americans (white people living within a few hours of the Great Lakes) to vote for him, by several thousand.

The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.

Also, the only guy on the Democratic team who knows how to throw a punch just figured out, as he's retiring, that the youngest person on his bench is 70.

The Year Liberals Fell In Love With the CIA All Over Again

(ie why i will always hate liberals more than right-wing lunatics)

yeah I think we figured that out, you big brave courage man of true progress

you know it

kill America

the Intel Gangster God first obv

Can you help kill America from San Angelo, TX? I would like to start a fundraiser to relocate you there, it's a perfect location from which you can help us plan the resistance

come on Morbs when has the CIA ever let us down

i don't do TX aside from Austin

(and never during SXSW)

I gave up my part in the Resistance in '84 when our doom became apparent

Like you ever had a part in anything

i was a gay activist, fyi, until they made me vomit all the time.

ban marriage

The Year Liberals Fell In Love With the CIA All Over Again

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Saturday, December 31, 2016 3:19 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

this line is ridiculous, man.

the evidence that putin's government interfered with our election to some degree is pretty strong, but apparently i'm supposed to doubt it because...it would mean agreeing with the cia, and liberals aren't supposed to do that, even when they're right?

from my pov this is an example of the cia actually doing something in keeping with its original charter and purpose: gathering intelligence from hostile foreign powers. i admit i didn't realize that for some leftists the analysis doesn't go any deeper than "cia bad."

I'm still dubious, as per this Taibbi article:

This report is long on jargon but short on specifics. More than half of it is just a list of suggestions for preventive measures.

At one point we learn that the code name the U.S. intelligence community has given to Russian cyber shenanigans is GRIZZLY STEPPE, a sexy enough detail.

But we don't learn much at all about what led our government to determine a) that these hacks were directed by the Russian government, or b) they were undertaken with the aim of influencing the election, and in particular to help elect Donald Trump.

The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439