US Politics, June 2018: This is a total goat rodeo.

Good mourning! We're still less than 18 months into the goat show.

one more reason to sharpen a special gilded guillotine Just for ted cruz:

Senator Ted Cruz, whose higher political ambitions were dashed by Donald Trump in 2016, is apparently happy to work with the man who once called his wife ugly if it means helping out his own horrible friends.

After the White House announced on Thursday that Trump would pardon Dinesh D’Souza—the conservative commenter, unreformed racist, and peddler of conspiratorial home videos—the Daily Caller reported that Cruz played a substantial role in making his buddy’s felony conviction for illegal campaign donations go away.

Goat mourning!

meanwhile, in virginia:

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.

In a phone call, Larson confirmed that he created the now-defunct websites suiped.org and incelocalypse.today ― chat rooms that served as gathering places for pedophiles and violence-minded misogynists like himself. HuffPost contacted Larson after confirming that his campaign website shared an IP address with these forums, among others. His sites were terminated by their domain host on Tuesday.

On the phone, he was open about his pedophilia and seemingly unfazed about his long odds of attaining government office.

“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it,” he said. “People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”

When asked whether he’s a pedophile or just writes about pedophilia, he said, “It’s a mix of both. When people go over the top there’s a grain of truth to what they say.”

Asked whether there was a “grain of truth” in his essay about father-daughter incest and another about raping his ex-wife repeatedly, he said yes, offering that plenty of women have rape fantasies.

According to Larson’s campaign manifesto, his platform as a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian” candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting “benevolent white supremacy,” as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography.

In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, “We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.” He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they “are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men’s children.”

more here if you can stomach it: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nathan-larson-congressional-candidate-pedophile_us_5b10916de4b0d5e89e1e4824

I'm starting to come around to the notion of just pulling the goddamn Band-Aid off already re: the wholesale dissolution of civilization.

(trigger warning for the rest of that story btw, it wanders into some pretty horrifying territory)

shit's starting to feel a little biblical

it's cool that in just a few months we've had both an honest-to-goodness nazi win a primary in illinois and now an actual paedophile rapist is out there seeking office

i was just gonna say blood meridian is starting to feel like a manual for american society

"wanders into"

xpost Your outlook seems a little overly-optimistic, tbh.

okay, "strides boldly and upsettingly"

This all sounds very Kaufmanesque...

Franz Kaufman

eichmannesque maybe

i'm gonna take the occam's razor view here but i'd be fucking delighted to be proved wrong

Roy Moore was before his time I guess

I've spent the last year and change reading a ton of stuff about the US of fifty years ago, which on the one hand has provided a lot of useful context for where we find ourselves currently but which on the other hand has not gone a long way toward convincing me that our species isn't essentially insane and driven toward self-immolation. In some ways, the Nixon era is starting to feel more and more like a more charming and cozy hellscape than the one we find ourselves in today.

I mean, it's still ultimately a choice on par with deciding which side of your body you want dipped in acid.

gotta be the left side for that authentic two-face vibe imo

The unmentioned catch being that your unblemished half still looks like Tommy Lee Jones.

still an improvement on what i'm working with now tbh

Breaking: Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that would represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.

— Jennifer A. Dlouhy (@jendlouhyhc) June 1, 2018

breaking: Trump administration bans movie streaming services in order to boost struggling VHS rentals .

your free market at work, folks

I predict that the Infrastructure Weeks of the near future will lead to interstate potholes filled with Trump steaks and crumbling bridges held together with Trump ties.

btw congrats to everyone who made money by the president leaking the jobs numbers ahead of time

I kinda support Trump overtly hatefucking the economy like he's been doing this week because I've long predicted that it would take him pissing off the moneyed elites before any real move to chuck him into the street would begin in earnest.

"This'll be the thing that finally takes him down!"

sounds like dirty socialism to me?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/grieving-mother-after-meeting-trump-it-was-talking-toddler/amp

xxpost Yeah, I don't ever say that as a general thing. He's sitting pretty until and unless the people in/with power see him as more of a liability than an asset. If (not necessary when) that day comes, though, getcher popcorn.

.@FLOTUS will NOT be joining the president at Camp David this weekend, per her office.

(Mrs. Trump has joined him on 3 of the 5 trips he's taken there - last was Sept. 2017.)

Her office said this wk she's been working - holding staff mtgs on initiatives/long-term planning.

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) June 1, 2018

shes dead

Being consoled by Donald Trump after suffering a tragedy is probably not unlike treating a wound by repeatedly jamming a knife directly into it.

I've spent the last year and change reading a ton of stuff about the US of fifty years ago, which on the one hand has provided a lot of useful context for where we find ourselves currently but which on the other hand has not gone a long way toward convincing me that our species isn't essentially insane and driven toward self-immolation.

― On the Wingers of Love: The Kip & Debra Story (Old Lunch)

yeah, unfortunately trying to make sense of what's happened to the world in the past couple years has led me to delve really deep into history and in doing so i've found that all the positive values i believed in (democracy, reason, humanism, etc) were always lies.

I dgaf about Melaniagate generally speaking, but this is honestly starting to feel like Shelly Miscavige Mk 2.

I know, I'm just so exhausted that even totally reasonable speculation gives me dreaded OPPO DUMP flashbacks.

xposts

sneaky autocorrect tried to make me post "POOP DUMP".

xxpost Yeah, I don't ever say that as a general thing. He's sitting pretty until and unless the people in/with power see him as more of a liability than an asset. If (not necessary when) that day comes, though, getcher popcorn.

― On the Wingers of Love: The Kip & Debra Story (Old Lunch)

i don't think the question has ever been whether he's an "asset". i mean let's be fair, we're talking about a coup, a Business Plot if you will. such things are fairly dangerous endeavours.

shes dead

Nah, her Win10 Fembot software updates didn't take.

Where's Melania? I want to go there

What the noble Bush 41 did with his pardons was so much worse than what Trump has done because Bush not only pardoned his criminal aides but did so to kill an investigation into Bush himself. Trump may abuse the pardon power that way in the future but has not yet done that. https://t.co/JdnGAIC9iz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 1, 2018

my god, these stories

https://people.com/crime/donald-trump-meets-santa-fe-shooting-families-mom-confrontation/

Trump, 71, repeatedly called the gunman “wacky” while speaking at the gathering, at a Houston military base, according to Rhonda Hart.

“He kept calling him this wacky kid who was wearing a wacky trench coat,” says Hart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was fatally shot along with nine others in the May 18 attack in Galveston County.

At that point, Hart recalls, “I raised my hand and said, ‘I have something to say here. Let’s just get to the mental health part.”

She then explained that her daughter had anxiety, Asperger’s syndrome and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and “took medicine daily.”

“I said, ‘The shooter might have been depressed, but he wasn’t wacky.’ But if that kid needed help, he needed to have proper access to it,” Hart says, “meaning you shouldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act (one of Trump’s cardinal promises) and get them the help they need and take away the stigma of mental illness.”

She says she told Trump, “Mental illness needs to be addressed.”

“I said all that and he didn’t say anything,” she says. “He was just like, ‘Uhhhh …’ ”

I guess w/o Hope Hicks there's no one to give him a sheet of paper with "5. I hear you" on it

he was just living up to his promise to 'have a little fun'

"We are going to Dallas, we are going to Houston. We are going to have a little fun today. Thank you very much," President Trump says as he head to Texas to meet with the families of Santa Fe school shooting victims https://t.co/LJJOcM4YsX pic.twitter.com/2sDFcgdoCX

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 31, 2018

They told him he could come down the evacuation shute when they land at Dallas.

Of course he didn't respond to Ms. Hart's drag of a question. She was harshing his buzz.

Plus also it's real awkward to field inquiries about mental illness when you're a septuagenarian saddled with decades of unaddressed personality disorders.

North Korean envoy at White House hand delivering a letter from Kim Jong Un to Trump at the moment.

Kim and his advisors prob had a lot of fun cooking up just the right mix of vague promises and flattery, so he will swallow it whole.

stuffed with anthrax I hope

xp

that north korean letter in full

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg0CSwqUkAALbf3?format=jpg

jackietreehorn.jpg

More “argument about ice with your centrist uncle” material

THREAD: Amid all of the calls to #abolishICE, I found myself asking, where did it come from? Why did we do it? Maybe we made a mistake. I was there and remember it thematically, but I wanted to remind myself. Maybe it will help others. 1/

— Moira Whelan (@moira) June 30, 2018

Hamilton Nolan gets phone calls from righties

https://splinternews.com/we-get-voicemails-1827231694

Here in San Francisco -- and apparently across the bay in Alameda as well -- today's march was notably light on millenials. I wonder if this was broadly true.

Didn't check IDs, but lots of young people here.

It was a good march, good to be around so many like-minded people, even if it was fucking hot. Got a sandwich at a Vietnamese place after. The woman saw my shirt and asked if I was marching. We talked a bit and she told me she came here as a refugee in 1976 (I think) because it was the greatest country in the world. Then she told me she was sponsoring the asylum claims of two people, one from Cuba, the other from Venezuela, and that it's hard work and time consuming but still worth fighting for. She thanked me for my support, and I've got to admit, it felt good.

At the Baltimore rally, I feel like the median age was hovering somewhere between 35-40.

lotta young folks in Eugene OR but yeah the median was probably closer to what Raymond saw, tons of pissed of elders with signs

felt a tiny bit younger than that here. Maybe somewhere 25 to 35? 25-45?

https://splinternews.com/at-families-belong-together-marches-this-is-what-dem-1827262000

It was fucking fantastic. Hot as heck, but the vibe was positive, lots of socializing and commiserating and hope.

Shout out to chill Antifa crew hoisting a huge banner and supplying free bottled water in an ice chest

Went to the Queens March but was late due to baby nap. Hit it at the end where a small crowd was gathered in a park in Corona. Got to hear Ocasio-Cortez speak so at least I’ll be able to tell that to my grandchildren.

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.

The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that "there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

this is unsurprising and still foreboding

jesus

Enh

Color me skeptical when it comes to US intelligence services and reporting on other countries' movements

It’s in line with what pretty much every NK and arms proliferation expert predicted.

What a nutter. 1) Open-source information corroborates IC claims. 2) In 2017, the IC repeatedly leaked administration plans to launch preventive strikes on NK in order to prevent them--hardly a "war-hawk bureaucracy" move. 3) NK has not agreed to give up nukes https://t.co/tlKqyQJE2O

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) June 30, 2018

The claims the intel community is making are reasonable, predictable--because the Kim summit was a rhetorical show, not a deal for denuclearization, and because North Korea has no theory of security without nukes. Of course North Korea's going do what it can to retain nukes

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) June 30, 2018

Beware the claims of anyone who spends their time trying to discredit the work of Trump's enemies--you know, mainstream journalism and public servants

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) June 30, 2018

Simon, there's a fundamental difference compared to Iraq in that it goes against what the government is saying. Pet peeve but blaming the WMD lies on intelligence really lets Rumsfeld and Cheney etc off the hook.

Also, fuck Glenn Greenwald.

Still I’m in the weird place of rooting for Trump to just ignore it (and John Bolton and Lindsey Graham) completely instead of lashing out and acting betrayed.

yeah, otm

1 in 120 is displaced or asylum seeking. Christ

Color me skeptical when it comes to US intelligence services and reporting on other countries' movements

― Simon H., Sunday, July 1, 2018 2:25 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean I understand being skeptical but if there's any party for whom you should reserve even more skepticism than US intelligence services it's fucking North Korea

Whether it’s correct or not is almost immaterial. DPRK is under no obligation to stop its nuclear programme, aiui, just as the US is under no obligation to delay the opening of the $11bn base in Pyeongtaek or lift sanctions. The agreement reached, as far as I know, was for DPRK to halt test fires and the US to step back from military exercises deemed ‘provocative’ in the short term - with a pact to negotiate further de-escalation. That negotiation is likely to cover things like stopping work on some elements of the nuclear programme and declaring / opening up sites to international inspection in return for sanctions relief and other stuff, but that is all TBC.

Leaving Greenwald aside, the criticism I’ve seen of the leak / framing of the report from people like Tim Shorrock is the suspicion it has been put out there to make the second phase of discussion less likely - by framing DPRK as bad actors (which they are) and Trump as a rube (which he is), it is aiming to turn public opinion against the only viable route to an imperfect peace accord.

You've really got it backward if you think whether or not it's correct is immaterial, while free speculation as to the motives of the leaks is the real story.

Neither story is particularly huge - DPRK continues to do what they have always done pending further discussion, some sources who don’t like the proposed negotiations leak stuff to the press. It doesn’t have a gigantic bearing on the discussions either way.

No, you're right. But the story about DPRK continuing to work on their nuclear program is at least a story, since Trump lied about them doing so. And for some reason, there was a discussion in a lot of media I read whether or not he should be credited for that bluster. The intention behind the leaks is unknown, and is not even a story.

good mourning!

we had a bit of confusion in Boston so some of us who intended to be trained for the civil disobedience action at South Bay Detention center ended up at a sign-making meeting instead. So ... it was arts-and-crafts activism for me this time!

The action itself went ok it seems. About twenty arrested ... all released by 3ish this morning. Onwards!

so there was kind of a 'riot' in Portland

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/06/portland_police_revoke_permit.htm

also, eff Frederik

got a 404 on that link?

"riot" = fascists beating protestors with flagpoles

sorry

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/06/portland_police_revoke_permit.html

paintballs filled with pepper spray? That's a new one to me. I admire your creativity, Portland Police.

i know this isn't surprising at this point, but it's still startling to see them side-by-side

He didn’t even bother to delete the old one pic.twitter.com/A47TuOFfNS

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) June 30, 2018

It’s not though! It’s not remotely startling, covfefe.

Can we make the July thread into less of a mess of dumbfoundedness at the “world burning down?” Duh, of course it is. To the extent our systems allow it to. Also if you talk about trump winning re-election please punch yourself in the genitalia

Where are the 1987 Korea style protests demanding direct popular elections?

wrt anyone using Iraq as a frame of reference for “this is the deep state trying to undermine the president’s peace plan” theories

Brief, remedial class on the drive to war in Iraq: The invasion was pushed by political appointees in the Bush admin who manipulated raw intelligence, previously discounted by analysts, and created a whole new intelligence office to out-hawk what they viewed as a "liberal" CIA.

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) July 1, 2018

"The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information." https://t.co/HyZgVjygqH

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) July 1, 2018

Meanwhile, as McClatchy reported in 2002, anonymous "U.S. intelligence officials said evidence actually suggested that Saddam had been careful to keep al Qaida at arms' length to avoid giving Bush an excuse to invade Iraq." https://t.co/kS34X66Lfy

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) July 1, 2018

But some people believed the White House, seeing the CIA as a den of liberals determined to undermine an elected president's foreign policy.

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) July 1, 2018

If the IC had been as bad and deceitful as Greenwald/Simon says, that Colin Powell presentation would have been a lot more impressive.

I wasn't trying to make a direct Iraq parallel fwiw - my distrust of / wariness towards US intelligence services is more general.

We can tell. Your aptitude as a generalist is undisputed

Do we have a July thread?

generalists are always pushing for wariness

is there no july thread because no one can decide on a title

“Goodlatte 2: DPRK Nuke-a-Dupe”

US Politics July 2018: Let's Eat Grandma

Among contenders upthread were "womp womp", "We Got Space Force" and "I REALLY DON'T CARE. DO U?" of which the latter is the most nihilistically apposite.

i really don't careforce 1

I'm down with the third option MatthewK presented

Shall I

Option 3 for sure.

marches lighter on millenials are marches heavier on voters, and so a good thing.

The new name has always been a surprise.

Just sayin.

US Politics, July 2018: FART

Surprise!!