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

They might as well have hired the Fyre Festival dude. For sure he could land a prison catering contract. He might eve have personal incentive to improve the quality.

kind of weird for Trump to tweet out condolences for the family of Edwin Jackson, a Colts linebacker that he couldn't pick out of a lineup...

So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson. This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2018

oh

Of course the first vehicular homicide in recorded history was committed by an undocumented immigrant, of course it was.

We cannot let this happen a second time. Build that wall!

I've been telling people for ages that Tuesdays are bad news and just look: rain. Sad!

he is literally saying that immigrants are bad drivers isn't he

I wasn't able to tease that much nuance out of it personally, but I guess it could be inferred from what I interpreted as 'my xenophobia and racism, let me show them to you'.

God, he really is just the worst thing that could've happened to this country short of its wholesale destruction (still to come!).

if somebody said in my home what the president of the united states says on twitter on the reg i would take them aside and have a little talk with them and explain that they need to be more respectful. it wouldn't be comfortable and i wouldn't want to do it but i would have no choice. but i'm not able to do that with trump, none of us are, he just barges into our mental space every day and says whatever toxic, vile shit he pleases.

Apparently "less government" not working so well in The OK.

Oklahoma now has 91 school districts that can only afford to open schools four days per week; drunk drivers in the state can keep their licenses bc there are no bureaucrats to take them away. Remind me about the SW/Sun Belt growth model everyone’s touting? https://t.co/gQofRvZlcn

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) February 6, 2018

Jed Purdy has thoughts, in 13 posts:

...maybe our recent version of hyper-capitalism is a form of norm erosion against the very norms that democracy needs -- most of all, the institutional capacity of democratic government to stand as check on and shaper of the market itself. Maybe this politics is what it looks like when the market, as an all-encompassing form of life, burns down its own house.

Thread: Political Economy of "Norm Erosion"
1/Maybe underappreciated in the "norm-erosion" discussion is Trump's briefly infamous general-election debate blurt that paying no federal income taxes "makes me smart."

— Jedediah Purdy (@JedediahSPurdy) February 5, 2018

ugh i can't believe this guy is still a thing

talk about ivy league credentials going a long way

I vaguely recall his stunt origins, but this was a cogent mini-analysis of Nakedpowerpolitics, I thought.

Republican voter support of the FBI drops to 27% in a new poll. Fucking rubes.

crying a river for the FBI rn

Can't wait until Trump goes on a tweetstorm about his vehement distaste toward the act of respiration.

GOP-ers nationwide: 'Breathing is a liberal conspiracy!' (holds breath, dies)

like lots of interesting things, this seems obvious once it's been revealed

https://i.imgur.com/zKR0sUg.png

check out that scarlet bacillus on the right

@nickconfessore
In case you are still debating whose party it is now.

Thank you @DonaldJTrumpJr —we’re working hard alongside @realDonaldTrump conservative agenda in Texas to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain https://t.co/lgYU7f0zlL

— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) February 6, 2018

The stock market just noticed that an unstable lunatic is president of the United States.

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) February 5, 2018

On second thought, the stock market has decided it doesn't care that an unstable lunatic is president of the United States. $1.4 trillion in handouts, baby!!
— February 6, 2018

Per pooler @toddgillman, Kelly says Trump has yet to read the Democratic memo “No, no, it’s quite lengthy”

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 6, 2018

there is no chance he read the Nunes memo either

Reading? He has people for that.

neither have ANY pictures

Why read it, it’s going to be on television

ughhhh ok but what's on TNT right now?

Re: That G.P. Bush tweet--Dan Patrick, Lt. Gov. of Texas, is already running campaign TV ads wherein he boasts of fighting the "liberal agenda", which is illustrated by (A) news footage of Patrick meeting with Trump, and (B) Patrick making his pitch standing next to a restored '50 Chevy pickup truck (bringing to mind this ilx chestnut fuck fred thompson & his red pick-up truck).

illustrated by (A) news footage of Patrick meeting with Trump, and (B) Patrick making his pitch standing next to a restored '50 Chevy pickup truck

"I stand by this gas-guzzling, polluting, unsafe, hopelessly outdated relic from another time... and I also like old pickup trucks."

You neglected to note the pair of artificial testicles dangling from Trump's undercarriage.

What is this noise on Carter Page being a double agent/FBI plant into the Trump campaign?

^ just throwing clouds of dust around, to confuse matters as much as humanly possible.

Here we go...

Trump calls for shutdown if Congress doesn't pass border-security measures

“If we don’t get rid of these loopholes where killers are allowed to come into our country and continue to kill...if we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown,” Trump said at a White House roundtable focused on the gang MS-13. “We’ll do a shutdown, and it’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of.”

...

[Rep. Barbara] Comstock, considered among the most vulnerable Republicans in this year’s upcoming midterm elections, stressed bipartisanship on the issue and told the president that “we don’t need a government shutdown on this."

"We really do not," she said. "I think both sides have learned that a government shutdown was bad. It wasn’t good for them, and we do have bipartisan support on these things.”

Trump replied to her that “we are not getting support from the Democrats. I mean, you can say what you want. We are not getting support from the Democrats.”

"We have to strengthen our borders, not by a little bit but by a lot. We are so far behind the time. And by the way, the world is laughing at us because they can’t believe these policies,” Trump said. “We’re going to get it stopped. And if we have to shut it down because the Democrats don’t want safety — and unrelated but still related, they don’t want to take care of our military — then shut it down. We’ll go with another shutdown.”

xp: Hah, I figured... I expected it to be from LMensch but it wasn't.

"And by the way, the world is laughing at us because they can’t believe these policies,” Trump said.

hmm

and unrelated but still related

an example of John Kelly's moderating influence on the president:

During the impromptu, 18-minute gaggle, Kelly also went into a lengthy and vigorous defense of the Trump administration’s broad framework of what it would like to see in a Dreamers deal. Kelly called the plan “generous,” particularly the provisions that expanded the universe of Dreamers eligible for a pathway to citizenship from the estimated 690,000 current DACA recipients to 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants who came here as minors. That expansion covers immigrants who some say "were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses" to register for the program, Kelly said. “I can’t imagine men and women of goodwill who begged this president to solve the problem of DACA, as generous is that [Trump's proposal] has been, I can’t imagine they would vote against it. I mean, this is more than they could’ve imagined.”

If 1.8 million DACA-eligible youth were given a reasonable path to citizenship, I'd trade that for Trump getting his fucking wall that won't do much except waste money, sit there and be ugly for decades. But that's not the straight-up horse trade that we'll ever get. The republicans will hold out for a half dozen more poison pills at least, beyond the border wall.

Meantime, lots of fun here

NEW from @GabrielSherman: Trump is getting frustrated with his West Wing team—and Ivanka “wants to clean house” https://t.co/UnUrmous2C

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 6, 2018

One Republican close to the White House described Trump’s frustration with Kelly, who came to the office with zero political experience, this way: “It’s like Kelly views Trump as a mushroom. He wants to keep him in the dark and feed him a bunch of shit.”

That 'mushroom' line is quite an old one. I first heard it in the mid-90s.

Goes back to the 60s, I think.

My grandpa had the mushroom quote painted on a sign in his workshop. On the reverse side it read "when you're up to your ass in alligators you know it's time to drain the swamp." The sign was a relic even back when I was a kid.

xp: 60s could be right.

According to sources, Trump speaks regularly by phone with a braintrust that includes Sean Hannity, Jason Miller, Corey Lewandowski, Reince Priebus, and R.N.C. Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.

a pathway to citizenship (for) 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants who came here as minors

If that were an earnest offer from a trustworthy White House, I would be, um, pleasantly surprised. As things stand? lol as if.

Maybe we should send all those idle NYT reporters back out to their beloved rural diners and have them ask "What would you say about a politician who offers a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?"

One presumes the answer would be "Hell no, that's amnesty! Good thing we have Trump in there to hold the hard line!"

"Uh, that's actually Trump's plan."

"Really? Huh. Guess he's playing some kind of long con strategic 4d chess like that Dilbert guy says. Hashtag maga!"

oh so reporters are pushing the Ivanna-will-save-Trump bullshit again eh

Ha, seems more like she's wanting to save herself, honestly.

and her husband