Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

And y'know...particularly wrt the current state of the swaggering, IDGAF GOP, this "Kislyak who now? Ohhhh him, well, I might have, like, said hello to him once or twice, I don't know, it's all so fuzzy" prevarication sticks out like a sore thumb.

A summary: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation

A friend of mine is trying to get an aviators license and says Trump's visits and airspace restrictions every weekend is making it impossible

Trump is here visiting a Pine Hills school. Christ. They will not like him there lol

i can say, with a certain equivocation, that josh marshall may be onto something there. something big. but then again, we know that there is more information which could change things completely. but for now, we have to rely on the simplest explanation, which - and i'm not saying this is necessarily true - could explode into something either infinitely large or infinitesimally small, which of course has the same effect, depending on one's cosmological perspective.

In more mundane matters of Defense pork:

"The Ford is a poster child for how you don't build a ship," says Ray Mabus. He was former Secretary of the Navy during the Obama administration. "They were designing the Ford while they were building it -- not a good way to build a ship," Mabus says. "This is just a dumb way to build any type of ship, particularly something as big and complicated as a carrier." Started during the Bush administration, the Ford incorporated new technologies, including an electro-magnetic launch system to replace the traditional steam-powered catapult. "Not only did the price go through the roof, but the schedule just became terrible because there were so many new technologies, because it was so unproven and it wasn't completely designed," Mabus says....

The president*'s proposed increases in defense spending are pure examples of what Barney Frank used to call "military Keynesianism." He is more direct than usual at pitching the defense budget as an economic stimulus, and there already are rumors that he may fold the new defense spending into his long-awaited infrastructure improvement plan in order to inflate those numbers. Watch the trickeration unfold if this happens.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53576/trump-aircraft-carrier/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-gerald-r-ford-poster-child-for-how-you-dont-build-a-ship-says-former-navy-secretary/

If you continue to act guilty, it's probably safe to assume that you're probably guilty even if we don't yet know exactly what you're guilty of.

This is a bad theory in policing, don't know why it'd be better for politics.

and it didn't work for Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb, recall.

What did they have to be guilty of?

dressing in white for an album sleeve

after Labor Day

Ha.

Well, put it in the context of my second point, re: the current general swagger of the GOP. Some fucker who will brazenly spearhead racist initiatives like the last 50 years never happened suddenly gets a case of the stammers wrt his discussions with a Russian ambassador and we shouldn't read that as a sign that something's fishy?

here's what the intellectual wing of conservativism is posting:

Betsy DeVos was subjected to widespread ridicule when she suggested that “potential grizzlies” were a reason that a Wyoming school might want to keep firearms on location. But the senator who asked her the question just found out why she thought such a contingency was possible.

On Tuesday, Connecticut, home to the asker of the question, Senator Chris Murphy, had two schools put into “secure school mode” after a bear was reported to be roaming the area. Democratic politicians, liberal pundits, and late-night comedians had a field day with DeVos for her contention that state and local authorities should have the latitude to set their own rules about school safety. Senator Murphy, a vociferous advocate of gun-control, used the opportunity to voice his opposition to the presence of guns in or around schools.

Happily, the bear moved away from the schools, which were opened later that day. A good ending to the story — for Chris Murphy most of all.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445474/betsy-devoss-grizzlies-comment-not-unfounded-chris-murphy-thought

Have we mentioned this piece of fun?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/why-the-alt-left-is-a-problem

Did you guys know that "Alt-Left" is a thing? And that Jill Stein, Oliver Stone, and Jacobin are all in the group together?

Shit, why didn't I get the invite? BRB, checking the recycling bin.

The Carter Page interview mentioned upthread really is amazing.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/carter-page-i-don-t-deny-meeting-with-russian-ambassador-889043011736

"I may have met him possibly. It might have been in Cleveland”

those are great hold steady lyrics

carter page looks like if chris hayes had made a lot of shitty life decisions. he and stephen miller are so prematurely aged. nothing but the best people :)

interesting correction in that new yorker piece on putin/trump

The U.S. officials who administer the system that Putin sees as such an existential danger to his own reject his rhetoric as “whataboutism,” a strategy of false moral equivalences. Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser under President Obama, is among those who reject Putin’s logic, but he said, “Putin is not entirely wrong,” adding that, in the past, “we engaged in regime change around the world. There is just enough rope for him to hang us.”*

~~~~
*An earlier version of this passage wrongly indicated that the U.S. is known to have funded Russian political parties.

Carter Page and the Dodgy Dossier!

a regular at the top universities in moscow was comrade combover's foreign policy advisor. where's the birth certificate?

Whataboutism is the new hotness.

Engage in lazy-ass, boring tu quoque for fun and profit!

today in slapstick

President Trump on Friday attacked Democratic calls for a probe into his contacts with Russia, tweeting a photo of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The 2003 photo shows Schumer and Putin eating doughnuts in 2003 during Putin’s trip to New York to attend the opening of a Russian gas company’s station.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/322209-trump-tweets-photo-of-schumer-with-putin-hypocrite

still waiting for the promised face buzzsaw

https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/837730437564936192

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141108/no-thing-alt-left

I hadn't noticed that "alt-left" crock was by James Wolcott. He was much smarter writing about The Uncle Floyd Show 35 years ago for the Village Voice.

Schwarzenegger is leaving Celebrity Apprentice. His official statement:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6BCe-MUoAAG4ha.jpg

it's weird to think that I actually would prefer one Celebrity Apprentice host as president over another

wolcott's ok on ballet these days

it's weird to type the sentence "our current president has nowhere near the moral intelligence, empathy, or political experience of arnold schwarzenegger" and actually mean it

bring on President Stewart

Kristen Stewart?

Kristen Stewart?

[Lyle Lanley voice]: Ennnnnh, sure, why not

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DKCozjPVWdk/hqdefault.jpg

"Damn you, Alt Left! How dare you mock my poor Oscar-winning Meryl?!"

no no, Patrick Stewart* for president, Kristen Stewart for UN ambassador

*becoming a citizen

isn't oprah the frontrunner?

http://www.redbrick.me/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rod-stewart-homepage-slider.jpg

holy fuck cancer was bad to Christopher Hitchens

xxxpost

Stuart, from Minions

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/412gbAqVdiL.jpg

J.E.B. Stuart

http://www.civilwar.org/education/assets/images/stuart_web.jpg

Charles Stuart

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1557433254/Uk-charles1_400x400.jpg

Not gonna get started on, say, Steuart Smith

Trump sees no difference between Schumer's meeting with Putin and his own shady business dealings. What a fucking moron.

tbf the donuts were filled with money

corrupt crullers

Corrupssaints

corrupssians

@tinyrevolution
The difference between now and 1974 is we don't really need any secret Oval Office tapes to know this

https://twitter.com/tinyrevolution/status/837762483511242753

Third tweet and the POTUS still can't spell 'hereby' correctly.

sad lol @ this graphic

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/03/RussiaWeb.jpg&w=1484

Very murder-board

it's not like the liberals are perfect, with benghazi and hillary's private email server