US Politics, October 2019 — I guess statement you could say with thread. I made a thread. The thread was PERFECT.

to be clear, the overt booing itself is fantastic

The quick camera switch to military personnel captioned THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE once the jumbotron people realised there was booing is yet another example of this draft-dodging fuckwit hiding behind Our Brave Boys, yuck yuck yuck.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EH-kvVwWsAASD2M?format=jpg&name=small

sweet I've waited for this take all day

Schadenfreude is an understandable if impotent gesture with an administration this despicable; I understand the impulse. I also get how it might make others fume to see people slacktivist cosign the UTTER TAKEDOWN OF LIL DONNY TRUMP rather than actively fight his policies. Basically we're all horrible, but they're more horrible and getting angry because our horrible edges toward their horrible inspires a different level of horrible, still far inferior to their horrible but perhaps equal to the horrible that is our new horrible.

ps fuck the internet and computers, i'm gonna go listen to spotify and watch plex instead

Nationals fans made a rudimentary political mistake: Expressing opinions about Trump in a stadium, instead of a rust belt diner.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) October 28, 2019

Frankly i think all political memes are overwrought garbage, even if i agree with the message. I usually block people that do nothing but post that shit without comment all day.

Some ate funny but those tend to be the exception.

The more the right wing punditocracy explains away the booing, the more widely and more often the booing will be disseminated, helping it to take on an independent life in people's minds as "that World Series game where everyone in the stadium booed Trump". The Republican flaks'd be better off burying the story than trying to disarm it.

A stadium full of Americans booed their president, and that's okay, and here's why.

Not just memes. The erotica tweet KM posted upthread is a great example of what I'm complaining about.

xxp

Kay Hagan has died.

he's not getting removed, but this was a pleasant read https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/it-feels-like-a-horror-movie-republicans-feel-anxious-and-adrift-defending-trump/2019/10/28/b4510698-f75f-11e9-a285-882a8e386a96_story.html

I feel like the Post has been running one of those stories almost daily recently. I hope the reps they're siting really are feeling the squeeze, but am somehow not convinced.

I like Robert Costa as a reporter but he's run a variant on this story once a week.

not sure what the off-the-record Senators hope to accomplish by putting their quotes out there

Sometimes you send a message in a bottle in hopes of rescue.

Except this bottle is broken and it's traveling through sand.

i always figure that's more of a favor between senators and costa - they want to maintain a non-negative relationship with costa (and other reporters writing their version of "Trump becoming unhinged" for the week) but don't want to make the big idiot mad, so they go off the record

another asshat

Coming in the middle of our national pastime’s championship series, the “Lock him up” chant was some of the most striking evidence to date that we live in a country where portions of both parties believe the leaders of the others should be in prison. https://t.co/GP6hMs5UzV

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) October 28, 2019

I mean, when said leaders commit crimes, yes

but her emails

Gee it's almost as if one side was chanting to lock up a political enemy simply because they didn't like her and the other actually wants their enemy locked up because he has committed crimes that a non-sitting President would be sitting in prison for

Xpost DAMMIT

You could arguably prosecute Hillary Clinton for something that happened during her tenure as Secretary of State but it's very, very unlikely to be successful, largely because she is such a process freak that you would likely need to change the law to make her actions retroactively illegal; on the other hand, I would bet money that Trump committed tax fraud as a private citizen.

the most striking evidence to date that we live in a country where portions of both parties believe the leaders of the others should be in prison.

ah, the observant insight haver has logged on.

truly, we live in a society

Your honor, we feel that it's only fair and balanced to consider whether there might not be a reason to incarcerate the plaintiff, as well.

there was also that whole NYT tax fraud investigation thing from last year that literally zero people on the entire planet cared about:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

2015-present is basically just ""You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order!"

It's 2019. Our national pastime is soccer or basketball if it's anything.

Coming in the middle of our national pastime’s championship series, the “Lock him up” chant was some of the most striking evidence to date that we live in a country where portions of both parties believe the leaders of the others should be in prison. https://t.co/GP6hMs5UzV

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) October 28, 2019

i know costa writes the same article all the time, but this is good after reading the most recent one

A real beauty, via @playbookplus

President DONALD TRUMP urged Republicans this morning to drop their crusade on the process....

“I'd rather go into the details of the case rather than process. ... Process is good, but I think you ought to look at the case."

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) October 28, 2019

My wife took a nice picture of the protest in progress downtown, hope this link works:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NF9AyUhVS11Y9FXL6

Nope.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/V64rFt7dcoFOBRzKGApVJLLZkwWoo-ApnbW7ngyi8QHoCQJIss4ni0-dHYTGtcWgZkzu8tndDWAo_R4Ir55k36HB5xnPR6UUgMl4Rh3TrqqOv1K5BOgxjPE0lC9GrNDBmdNeiu-IpuU=w2400

Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the top Republican on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, will not seek reelection next year — another sign that GOP lawmakers are pessimistic about retaking the House majority in 2020.

Nice pic. I'll see if I can get a view of it from my building (also pictured) as I won't be getting out of work until it's over.

I've watched Greg Walden's career since the beginning. He clearly decided that the way to get along was to go along and he rose into a powerful leadership position among House Republicans basically by eating every shit sandwich he was offered by those who outranked him, even when it hurt his constituents - like Paul Ryan's wretched bill to replace the ACA. His constituents are getting restless. He's gittin' out while the gittin's good. It's a good choice for everyone concerned.

MST3K is here to save us all:

TIRED: reminding @JoeNBC that these situations are completely different

WIRED: reminding @JoeNBC that he should *also* be locked up for killing his young aide in 2001 https://t.co/sXbAUXDSM1

— Bowl of Slimy Eyeballs Corbett (@BillCorbett) October 28, 2019

These reactions are so predictable but so annoying. I thought we’d decided to blame millennials for the death of irony

Just saw that Gaetz, of all people, was one of the few people of either party to come to the defense of Hill (however self-serving it could be, in his case):

This is just absurd. The only person who seems to have a gripe is @RepKatieHill’s soon-to-be ex.

Who among us would look perfect if every ex leaked every photo/text?

Katie isn’t being investigated by Ethics or maligned because she hurt anyone - it is because she is different. https://t.co/Czrc2k8z8X

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 24, 2019

remains stunning to me that people text/send photos with incriminating evidence to one another; i don't even talk shit over the phone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NttlPwNKd_M

You want amazing? If it weren't so lame and embarrassing this would be the stuff of kitsch dreams. Hipsters are going to have a thrift store field day in a few years.

The Trump campaign began selling merchandise Monday riffing off the Disney movie “Hocus Pocus,” deriding the impeachment inquiry as a witch hunt.

Limited edition “Stop the Witch Hunt” T-shirts and “fine art” posters hit the online campaign store by early afternoon, after first being announced by Breitbart. The items recast Schiff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the witches. In a crystal ball below them, Trump grips an American flag.

“HOAXUS POCUS!” says the description. “The Greatest Witch Hunt in the history of the USA continues. The only people scared this Halloween are Shifty Schiff, Nervous Nancy and Democrat Hack Jerry Nadler about their chances in 2020!”

Keep it classy, President Trucknuts.

Missed Opportunity for 'Jumpy Jerry'.

...or 'Jealous Jerry', or 'Jelly Jerry'.

"Hoaxus Pocus" rolls off the tongue like a cinderblock.

Hoaxus POTUS, come on!

Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the top Republican on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, will not seek reelection next year

amazingly great news, fuck this guy forever

The sexual assaults alone should be enough to shout 'Lock Him Up' at Trump for the rest of his live.

Oh yeah, forgot the detail that he bragged about those assaults. But no, nobody can ever say he deserves to be punished for stuff like that.

CNN correspondent Kyung Lah said today a GOP operative told her they have over 700 revenge porn pics of Katie Hill.

Imagine Republican men passing around these naked pictures and leering at them. This is sick.

No wonder she resigned. She must feel like her life is over.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) October 28, 2019