US Politics, February 2018: Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxposts even the people who are paid to pore over these stats on a daily basis wouldn't conclude "bye bye Democratic wave" based on the latest.

unless there's a mandatory 8 month hibernation coming up that I wasn't aware of

Actually, what we should really be talking about is the fact that the one guy with the power to instantly end life Earth has a very diseased brain

― frogbs, Friday, February 2, 2018 8:47 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that he is bragging about acing a dementia screen might be more embarrassing than his whole electoral college bullshit

not that anyone really needs reminding but the last ten (eleven, really) questions of the MOCA are: remember the five words we asked you three minutes ago, and name the date/month/year/day/place/city

the whole point of the test is that virtually any human without dementia will get close to perfect score

just so you all can follow along at home: http://www.mocatest.org/pdf_files/test/MoCA-Test-English_7_1.pdf

I guess the Dems will have to run some non-generic candidates. Admittedly not their strength.

naming Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in a larger obstruction of justice case that targets one or more associates.

Classic revive from the '70s!

xpost Come on, this is the first test Donnie was able to pass without his daddy paying off a teacher. Let him have this.

I wonder if he hung it up on the fridge next to his finger paintings.

xp Morbs I dunno I wonder if there won't be a real appetite for vanilla after all this

Lantern jawed centrist "not a criminal"

I dunno Hadrian, what flavor was HRC?

Rocky Road?

today's white house propaganda email was titled "African American History Month and the Bonds of Patriotism"
i'm sure it's just a little freudian slip

"Conspiracies have been mostly unnecessary in this country since 1980. Just describe your malfeasance as beneficence and hardly anyone will challenge you."

i agree. look at afghanistan. it's a money machine. over a trillion dollars spent since the start and nobody in the u.s. even blinks. or cares what is happening there.

xp

African American History Month and the Bonds of Patriotism
In his Proclamation this week honoring African American History Month, President Donald J. Trump drew attention to a special theme this year: “African Americans in Times of War.”

“For far too long, African Americans bravely fought and died in the name of freedom, while at the same time struggling to attain equality, respect, and the full privileges of citizenship,” the President wrote. “Because of their love of country, these heroes insisted on serving and defending America despite racial prejudice, unequal treatment, diminished opportunities, and segregation.”

As he did during his State of the Union Address this week, President Trump used personal stories from real Americans to illustrate the significance of this struggle. “We remember soldiers like Sergeant Henry Johnson of the Harlem Hellfighters, the all-black National Guard unit that was among the first American forces to arrive in France during World War I,” the President wrote.

Johnson was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart.

'subtext' seems generous tbh

Prediction is a losing game nowadays but here are some things that would not surprise me:

1. Progressives/Democrats/leftists/coastal liberals continue to be anti-Trump and anti-Republican. They're not necessarily all angry enough to march in the streets every day but those who are politically engaged and committed will vote reliably for the Democrats that are on the ballot.

1a. That phenomenon is great and all, but it remains way too concentrated in urban and coastal districts that were already safely blue. Moving Brooklyn (or whatever) from 94% passionate D to 99% passionate D is not helpful nationally.

2. Rising stock markets and generally rosy economic indicators (rosy, that is, for those who are actually benefitting) may dampen many upscale Republicans' distaste for the Trumpoid style of politics. Individual Republicans may find him personally crude and "not like us." But they like what they're seeing in their portfolios, so they will not rebel no matter how many worrisome Twitter tirades the toddler tyrant unleashes from his golden toilet.

2a. Hate to get all Baffler-ish, but the selective blindness of heartland and Rust Belt white people remains as a persistent issue. A roaring stock market and dizzying corporate profits sounds like a good economy. And if you hear good economic news, you may credit the president and his party, even if you never personally benefit from that largesse.

xp no argument

YMP I think these are all safe bets, the caveat being a market bubble burst before 2020

Which is almost certainly a question not of 'if' but 'when' at this point, yes?

yeah for sure

xp to the tipping thread (god help us)
https://bnanews.bna.com/daily-labor-report/labor-dept-ditches-data-on-worker-tips-retained-by-businesses

Labor Department leadership scrubbed an unfavorable internal analysis from a new tip pooling proposal, shielding the public from estimates that showed employees could lose out on billions of dollars in gratuities, four current and former DOL sources tell Bloomberg Law.

Senior department political officials—faced with a government analysis showing that workers could lose billions of dollars in tips as a result of the proposal—ordered staff to revise the data methodology to lessen the expected impact, several of the sources said. Although later calculations showed progressively reduced tip losses, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and his team are said to have still been uncomfortable with including the data in the proposal. The officials disagreed with assumptions in the analysis that employers would retain their employees’ gratuities, rather than redistribute the money to other hourly workers. They wound up receiving approval from the White House to publish a proposal Dec. 5 that removed the economic transfer data altogether, the sources said.

perhaps tell these fuckers to fuck off here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=WHD-2017-0003-0001

Be really surprised if the bubble bursts before Dems retake either chamber, at which point they will promptly be blamed by a roided-up echo chamber. the Trump-hostile MSM will mostly shrug and say “well it’s hard to argue with that”. Dems meanwhile will strongly agree to disagree and pout.

this indictable treason was only alleged two days ago

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/582099085/journalist-details-israels-secret-history-of-targeted-assassinations

2020 seems a long way away at the pace time is moving at the mo. where o where is paul virilio?

love a contextual virilio shout-out

*even the Trump-hostile

why haven't they released the memo yet?

Dems: [reasoned, point-by-point analysis of factors resulting in unfortunate state of affairs]
Reps: 'It's the Dems' fault! They're buttholes!'
Result: Dems take the fall, because we're all perpetually in third grade

i want to know why president clinton didn't just fire ken starr, the way the crazy GOP is talking these days

because ken starr was running a legit investigation, not a horrible partisan witch hunt like mueller, so clinton didn't have a leg to stand on

why haven't they released the memo yet?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, February 2, 2018 4:34 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reading this AM that more august members of the GOP have been impressing caution upon the orange one

prob bc his party would have bailed on him

if there's one thing trump does well, it's taking advice

Well, as long as Stephen Miller gets that last word in...

It's not so much 'advice' as, like...I dunno, 'programming'?

'Do this.'
'Okay, sounds good.'
'No, don't do that. Do this instead.'
'Okay, sounds good.'

will is correct - it's easy to forget that 90s Clinton happened to be the president but wasn't as entrenched in the party establishment as he and Hillz are now. In 94 they were seen as exciting new blood, almost insurgent compared to the D power structure that preexisted them

seems likely that the events of the last few days will end up looming as large in the overall investigation as the comey firing, the trump jr meeting.

this is excruciating. it's nice that more of the GOP is telling him not to do it (in addition to the fbi, the justice dept, etc), but is there any doubt that once it's released the GOP will by and large stand by their man and execute the plan (using the memo as an excuse to ignore any findings/recommendations of mueller)?

is there any doubt that once it's released the GOP will by and large stand by their man and execute the plan

No.

Put your hand in the hand of the yam who has the plan to spam the land with yam

If there’s one thing the GOP doesn’t mind it’s insurgency in the service of plutocrats and racists

jonathan swan @ axios:

Inside the Trump administration, sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be.

What we're hearing: There is much more skepticism inside the administration than has been previously reported about the value of releasing the memo, according to sources familiar with the administration discussions.

Trump still wants to release the memo. But there are a number of people in the White House who are fairly underwhelmed, and there's internal anxiety about whether it's worth angering the FBI director and intelligence community by releasing this information.

What’s next: Trump will almost certainly approve the memo’s release. The internal debate, now, is more around whether to make further changes to the memo — redactions to protect sources and methods — on the advice of the Intelligence Community.

so: good chance Trump saw the memo, didn't understand it, assumed it was as incriminating a Smoking Gun as all his supporters have made it out to be, and approved its release. But everyone else knows, yeah, not a Smoking Gun, not incriminating, not worth all this fuss. so he's going to release it anyway, it's going to be a bust, and the new conspiracy theory is that this will not be the real memo, there's something even more real floating out there, we just have to look for it. And then they will have hearings.

#releasethememo lol

real memo is clearly being housed on Hillary’s secret illegal server

they should run the memo by Punxsutawney Phil and see what he says.

if he sees his shadow, six more weeks of release the memo.

“7 more years of bullshit”

ok, so I guess he officially declassified it? If he did, can't the Democrats or whomever now release their own memo with impunity?

starr couldn't be fired by the president; he was an "independent counsel" and that office has subsequently been abolished afaict

despair without emotion
political Nostradamuses
ILX thread grief
wishing dead our nemeses

pundit tweet freak out
morbs & tombot shout it out
dirtbag leftie cash this way
what else do I have to say?

sources who've been briefed on the Nunes memo expect it will be underwhelming and not the “slam dunk” document it's been hyped up to be

Ah, so the previous hype will now be skeptically pooh-poohed by the people who hyped it in the first place, because The Story Needs To Change.

THIS JUST IN: Some officials have claimed that The Memo will cure cancer.

BREAKING: Some have claimed that claims that The Memo's ability to cure cancer is overblown and misleading.

THIS JUST IN: Those who claimed The Memo's anti-cancer properties are overblown are, themselves, known cancer advocates.

BREAKING: Pro-Memo / Anti-Cancer groups have claimed that anti-Memo / pro-Cancer groups are soft on cancer! Film at eleven!!!!!

THIS JUST IN: Our sources are now saying that The Memo has nothing to do with cancer, and that the sinister forces who are arrayed against the release of The Memo are actually rooting for AIDS!

at this point The Memo is simultaneously nothing and everything. It's Schrodinger's Memo.

Never forget: two weeks ago the discussion centered around the FBI's Secret Society of Hogwarts Members. That story's discredited too, which is the point: keep bullshit flying, confuse the public.