US Politics January 2019: we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger

plays with the MSM like a kitty with yarn

Lol some national emergency.

You see the trick is to keep harping about a non-existent national emergency until you've managed to create a legitimate, unrelated national emergency in the interim and then you can just pretend like that was the emergency you were alluding to the whole time.

NB airports are not required to use TSA to run their security checkpoints iirc

Remember that time a horde of illegal immigrants snuck over the border with those planes and threw them at the WTC? That is the crisis we're trying to forestall here, and if it means letting TSA agents go home and play Xbox all day so be it.

The worst was when that guy ran all the way from Oaxaca to Atlanta to ruin the Olympics

plays with the MSM like a kitty with yarn

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 11, 2019 3:26 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IDK I feel like the MSM makes out pretty good during all of this. So many clickable stories- and they don't really look bad reporting what someone says and then what they say later instead.

trump fu says he locks out TSA, threatens to shittweet airlines unless they operate and somehow pick up slack, we have a series of terrible crashes, then demands we try the TSA "strikers" for murder.

the question is if everything the OG says is subject to change, is anything he utters really news

Here's some unalloyed good news.

Sandy Hook families just won a court victory against Alex Jones that gives them access to InfoWars internal financial documents. https://t.co/BLJYOsuyqf

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 11, 2019

nice

Thank you, that is a wonderful note on which to end the week.

NB airports are not required to use TSA to run their security checkpoints iirc

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Friday, January 11, 2019 3:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes but transitioning to a private contractor requires their approval and usually takes at least four months.

who’s they

TSA. They have to prove that their private contractors use the same security standards and that security standards would not decline, they also have to submit a detailed analysis as well.

Been done obv but not something any airport can up and do next week.

If the TSA are not working, then airports that are using private contractors cannot have the TSA rigorously approve the contractors that the airports are using to replace the TSA, though, surely

Eh. If this goes on too long, air lines and airports may just stop giving any ducks whatsoever, and just wave us all through the metal detectors.

"Yeah, leave your shoes on, peeps. Go ahead, whatevs, get on whatever plane you like. Sit where you want. Bring whatever you want. Who cares? Hell, anybody want to do some bong hits? Turns out pilots can get some truly righteous weed. Who knew? Anyway, boarding on gate five is a flight to, uh, somewhere. The flight crew is taking a vote on where they're headed. Hop over there if you like surprises."

only Trump could be stupid enough to declare a wall emergency and not thereby rescue his own dumb ass from the shutdown https://t.co/fpodc0o2BJ

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) January 12, 2019

lol

You have to remember that, first of all, Trump truly believes that every federal civil service employee is a Democrat, so that screwing them over cannot hurt his ratings popularity. And as for all the (presumably Republican) business owners who cannot access vital government services and are livid about it, he does not have enough imagination to believe they even exist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

Who knew!

Useful thread

This headline is a really dangerous misrepresentation of what the article alleges https://t.co/PdNVx3mjDG

— Pwn All The Things (@pwnallthethings) January 12, 2019

Timing, as it were.

Nunberg, who sat w/comm. staff for 4 1/2 hrs, said asked repeatedly about how Trump formulated his policy positions regarding Russia. https://t.co/dOfQAgqtMd

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) January 11, 2019

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-if-obstruction-was-collusion-new-york-timess-latest-bombshell

i thought that was a clickhole at first, as if the FBI were literally opening a door to the inquiry, located in a vehicle

xp

“He could say, ‘Look, I’m going to get what I want and then I’m still going to screw you,’” a former White House official told POLITICO.

“It’s making Democrats feel pain instead of declaring a national emergency, opening the government up, and making it so they don’t have to give anything,” the former official added, while scratching underneath his collars.

Kinda feeling this

I know it's a big deal that the FBI made a US president a target of a counterintelligence investigation. But it also feels so "duh."

— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) January 12, 2019

Yeah

I just realized I've shared like five things from AOC on FB and now I'm wondering if I appear, to my conservative relatives, as stupid and annoying as they do to me when they post Trump garbage, and I wonder whether they too see this similarity.

the funny thing is that I don't really worship her; I think she's smart and impressive and cool and all but she's also said some pretty dumb things and i worry that the left ignoring that is like when the right ignores ... well everything. not that I think AOC is actually dumb or is Michelle Bachman or our President; but I do hope she starts getting basic facts straight.

haven't caught anything bad since she said McCain was a great American

F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Kinda feeling this

yeah, me too. the first half of 2017 was so surreal because there were things happening like that all the time, the comey firing, the lester holt interview, the hangout sesh with Lavrov and Kislya a few days later where US media was banned but russian media was allowed in, and every day felt like it was possible that trump would just straight up declare allegiance to russia and tell his troll army to grab their guns and fight for their new motherland or whatever. it would be insane for the FBI not to investigate

lol, i forgot about the classified stuff that trump "accidentally" shared during that same meeting with Lavrov and Kislya (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/trump-intel-slip)

she said McCain was a great American

too bad; maybe someone better will come along soon

"...while scratching underneath his collars" lol

This is one of those moments where I honestly can't tell if this is a huge story or not even a blip (the NY Times thing). I have zero frame of reference anymore.

my local paper ran the same story or a syndicated version of it, and i don't follow them too closely but their comments section is reliably populated with conservative cranks on any number of topics - so i don't know what baseline to measure this against, but so far in the first 100 comments they're calling trump traitorous, believing the story, etc., even though there are some comments (pretty cautious / defensive sounding) toeing a fox news 'witch hunt' type line

Trump says you can call his wall 'peaches' for all he cares
Trump says you can call his wall 'peaches' for all he cares

Movin to the border, gonna eat me a lotta peaches

trump sat alone in a leather seat, totally motionless except for his tweets

wondering what to make of a govt body that has been as suspicious of the President as to launch that investigation turning into a smokescreen for one of his dubious projects a year and a bit later. Do the FBI gain anything from having Kavanaugh on the Supremne court or anything.

ha tbh probably so

(in the long run)

Mortgage industry lobbied Treasury to get furloughed IRS employees who process mortgage applications to be decalred essential and put back to work and aid with industry fees. Meanwhile fed government janitors with no such influence are still not working or getting paid

“I said, ‘Look, this is starting to be a problem for the lending industry,’ ” Broeksmit said. His group, one of the most influential trade associations in Washington, represents 2,300 mortgage companies, brokers, commercial banks and other financial institutions. Broeksmit said he asked whether the IRS clerks could come back to work, saying “Could you make these guys essential?”

Phillips declined to comment on their exchange.

The answer came the next day, Broeksmit said: The IRS employees would be called back to work.

After hearing concerns that the program had gone dark, top Treasury officials called senior officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget to consult on a solution, according to people familiar with the discussions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/could-you-make-these-guys-essential-mortgage-industry-gets-shutdown-relief-after-appeal-to-senior-treasury-officials/2019/01/11/9071e9d8-152c-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html?utm_term=.e5a5338d9218

phew, was starting to worry the next worldwide financial collapse might be delayed

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/424974-poll-majority-of-republicans-say-shutdown-is-embarrassing-for-the-country

Unlike the entire past two years, right GOP?

oh boy, already getting into it with friends who are Gabbard fans on FB

gonna be a long 21 months

gabbard is a kind of unusual figure