US Politics December 2018: ~very legal and very cool~

"What other lies have your parents told you? That anyone can be president?"

People keep asking me about the nuclear launch process and the President's power to use nuclear weapons, so I put everything you need to know in this helpful chart. #NoRedButton pic.twitter.com/NQFkGAVbCX

— Derek Johnson (@derekjGZ) November 27, 2017

I’ve seen a lot of smart people be in denial about how unilateral process is. More democrats should be publicly getting behind that “no first use” bill.

*the process is

News is reporting that Trump and Melania went to Iraq to visit the troops. I say bullshit; they filmed it in the same studio where they filmed the moon landing, just put up a tent and brought in some extras in camo.

New also reporting that Iraq is a “war zone” which will be news to the DOD and the Iraqi government.

I think there are areas of western Iraq, near Syria, that could still be considered war zones. I have no idea where the Trumps' visit took place.

Al Asad.

New York Times:

The place Mr. Trump chose to visit is the one theater of war where he has not promised a rapid drawdown of forces — and it is where he claims his greatest military victory, the defeat of the Islamic State in Mosul, the Iraqi city where the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the beginning of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The assault on Mosul by Iraqi forces, backed by Americans, began under President Barack Obama but culminated in the summer of 2017 under Mr. Trump.

Presidential!

President Donald Trump and the White House communications team revealed that a U.S. Navy SEAL team was deployed to Iraq after the president secretly traveled to the region to meet with American forces serving in a combat zone for the first time since being elected to office.

...

Trump flew to Iraq late Christmas Day after facing a barrage of negative headlines over the holiday season amid a partial government shutdown. The president and first lady Melania Trump posed for pictures with U.S. service members at al-Asad air base in Iraq.

...

A pool report during Trump’s visit said the details of the trip were embargoed until the president finished giving his remarks to a group of about 100 mostly U.S. special operation troops engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Syria.

The pool report went on to say that Trump paused to take a selfie with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Kyu Lee, who said he was the chaplain for SEAL Team Five, based out of Coronado, California. The chaplain said Trump told him: “Hey, in that case, let’s take a picture.”

After Trump left Iraqi airspace, the president posted a video to his Twitter account of his time spent with American forces during his visit to Iraq. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” plays over the video and shows the president and the first lady posing for pictures with service members that appear to be from SEAL Team Five. The special warfare operators are dressed in full battle gear and wearing night vision goggles.

The video cuts to team members shaking the president’s hand before cutting to other special operations personnel and support troops.

...

"The deployments of special operation forces, including Navy SEALs are almost classified events, as to protect those men and women that are on the front lines of every overt and covert conflict the United States is involved in,” a Defense Department official told Newsweek on condition of anonymity.

“Even during special operation demonstrations for congressional delegations or for the president or vice president, personnel either have their faces covered or their face is digitally blurred prior to a release to the general public,” the official said.

The president’s video did not blur the faces of special operation forces.

Naturally.

Mark Meadows will probably say "they knew what they signed up for!"

Is Trump an asset. Or is it a detriment.

Whoops!

MCCLATCHY SCOOP: Cell phone signal puts Michael Cohen in Prague area in late summer 2016, via Peter Stone & @GregGordon2 https://t.co/ysz7bbmckG

— Ben Wieder (@benbwieder) December 27, 2018

good morning!

lol is he *still* denying that meeting? what a clown

Well Davis is denying it, but:

Davis, however, is no longer part of Cohen’s legal team. He acknowledged that he has not been fully briefed on what Cohen has told Mueller’s investigative staff in some 70 hours of interviews dating to last August, when Cohen pleaded guilty. Earlier this month, Mueller advised Cohen’s sentencing judge that Cohen has provided substantial assistance in four areas, including in “core” areas of the Russia inquiry. Mueller did not elaborate.

countdown to Trump tweeting about this in 10, 9, 8, 7...

https://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/The-Latest-Sheriff-says-officer-s-killer-is-in-13493719.php

Also, apparently, among the millions of pages of records Mueller's has collected on Russian election interference is a "nude selfie." pic.twitter.com/E8eh3i0jxV

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 27, 2018

countdown to Trump tweeting about this in 10, 9, 8, 7...

okay so it took him an hour and a half

<sigh of relief> he tweeted about the dead cop and not the selfie.

is it normal for court filings to end in rhetorical questions?

NEWS ANALYSIS

Trump Unites the Left and Right, Against His Plans in Syria and Afghanistan

yes, the pro-war, imperialist "left"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/us/politics/trump-syria-afghanistan-withdraw.html

what happens when an illegal immigrant commits a crime after big beautiful wall is built

happy christmas

my second time this week being rejected from an apartment/house in dc bc i worked at fox pic.twitter.com/rybqT52A5O

— Pardes Seleh (@PardesSeleh) December 27, 2018

Seems that our correspondent there was looking at a roommate sitch not a private apartment which like yeah I wouldn’t want to share space with a republican either

why would a conservative need to live with roommates anyway

Wouldn't wanna share a house with people who not only actually write you back to reject you but tell you why.

Definitely got a future with Fox with this kind of acumen
https://www.gofundme.com/help-pardes-seleh-get-an-apartment

oh, she's a treat

me trying to fit in at a bernie rally #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/F09zlNiHfM

— Pardes Seleh (@PardesSeleh) July 24, 2016

1. conservative media person (cmp) sees a craigslist ad for people looking for a roommate, sees that description literally reads "We are *very liberal* and active in social justice/pro-environment/immigrant rights issues."

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 28, 2018

The part that needs more emphasis here is not that she tried to trick some liberals and make them look bad, because she didn't come close to doing either of these things in real life. The real people she is trolling and abusing are her conservative audience, who she is tricking into believing in her good faith and trustworthiness, and whom she's hitting up for money on the basis of self-evident lies and distortions.

Cohen is doubling down on his Prague denial - at this stage of the game, I can't see why he'd be doing this unless he was literally telling the truth. Although my brain is hurting at the concept of a trumpworld figure "literally telling the truth"

the free market extends to ideas. she needs to suck it up

80% of the right wing consists of grifters. its baked in. a literal con man is president fergawdsakes. they deserve the be separated from their money.

Conor Friedersdorf:

"Still, many now say that the United States would be betraying our allies if we leave. It’s reasonable to ask, given the positions of Congress, the president, and the public: Who took on that ostensible obligation on the nation’s behalf? What gave them the right to do so? What other checks are they writing? And is there anything that the public can do to stop them?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/syria-kurds/578956/

further:

Susan Rice, who served as a national-security adviser in Barack Obama’s administration, wrote: “The president couldn’t care less about facts, intelligence, military analysis or the national interest. He refuses to take seriously the views of his advisers, announces decisions on impulse and disregards the consequences of his actions. In abandoning the role of a responsible commander in chief, Mr. Trump today does more to undermine American national security than any foreign adversary.”

Wouldn’t it be better for a guy like that to preside over troops who are stateside with their families rather than deployed in a volatile war zone that he doesn’t understand, even as he shows a new willingness to micromanage?

The stance many foreign-policy hawks are taking is akin to granting that a reckless incompetent has temporarily taken over as on-duty surgeon and insisting that the hospital proceed with its brain operations anyway.

Now, it may be that there’s a persuasive case for staying in Syria a bit longer, until some specific, achievable, near-term goal is accomplished that improves the prospects of America’s Kurdish allies without incurring a greater risk of a world war or doing more damage to the rule of law or the democratic will or unduly endangering the lives of American troops. If so, let’s hear that plan.

Instead, most Syria hawks offer no alternative withdrawal date or evidence that the Kurds will be safer if our forces withdrew in one or five years. And there is good reason to think that part of the reason some hawks want to stay is to thwart Iran’s ambitions for the foreseeable future.

omigod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emJyl6UfJqo

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/423107-majority-in-poll-want-trump-impeached-or-censured

well we don't have mob rule in MAGAland

at least just one mob at a time

beto is the candidate that (white) pr people at non-profits are excited about

White people love to cache Docker layers on serverless build hosts with multi-stage builds

— Patriot Snopes (@patriot_snopes) November 28, 2018

haha that's so true

hahahahahaha I'm white and can definitely attest to that totally relatable tweet

oh no i got zinged by nerdstrom poindexter whatever shall i do

I think NP is outclassing Morbius at posting non sequitur tweets from obscure internet personalities nobody cares about

wah he made fun of the “white people” trope

your entire posting history is an infinitely more tiresome trope

Relax guy

at first I thought you weren't gabbneb but

The guy who you guys remember and still talk about from 20 years ago? Okay.