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

well there's always the international community

good one

You mean besides Russia, right? Still amusing.

While " Get over it " nicely captures the essence of the Trump administration, I still prefer Ron Ziegler's " That statement is no longer operative "

It had a Nixonian elegance that Trump's catspaws can never hope to match

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) October 18, 2019

It's so adorable watching Kevin McCarthy, Meadows, and Jordan whine like anybody gives a fuck

Turkey needs to be kicked out of NATO and the UN. Again, everyone is such a goddamned pussy I don't expect them to do it.

What part of Mulvaney's briefing did you not understand? He very clearly said "get over it", but none of you are taking him at his word!

Mattis made some joeks

Former Defense secretary James Mattis responded to President Trump calling him “the world’s most overrated general” during a meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday.

At the Al Smith Memorial Foundation dinner on Thursday, Mattis opened his speech with a caustic blow about Trump's deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War.

"I earned my spurs on the battlefield; Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor” he said.

The general continued on with more Trump references, stating, “I’m not just an overrated general. I’m the greatest, the world’s most overrated." Mattis was the keynote speaker at the 74th annual event.

"I'm honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I'm the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me,” Mattis continued.

fuck him and his impotent zingers

I'll take my allies where I can find them tyvm

look at this for 20 seconds straight:

https://i.imgur.com/wsyUzfG.jpg

thank you. you are now inducted into the final gathering of the damned

tough guy and might seduce your dad guy

Turkey needs to be kicked out of NATO and the UN.

It's all about the Turkish air bases now. So much easier than running operations off aircraft carriers.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/g8AI8Im4VK8/hqdefault.jpg

lol

tbf the Al Smith dinner always has political types flinging "professionally" written lame zingers

Yes but now we have a president who is unlikely to brush those zingers off as the faintly-amusing fripperies they are. Prepare for a weekend of Trump battening down the hatches!

Mattis's spurs zinger wasn't all that bad.

SAD-dog Mattis, people are saying he may be the lowest ranked general in history, it's true

I know the moment is past but:

Now is the Weiner of our discontent

happy 1,001th day of the trump administration everyone

er, that was yesterday. guess i missed it.

can't believe no one's posted this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWditrKW43o

Well, yeah

kind of devastating series of paragraphs here

After 1,000 days in office, Mr. Trump has redefined what it means to be presidential. On the 1,001st day of his tenure, which was Thursday, all pretense of normalcy went out the window. It was a day when he boasted of saving “millions of lives” by temporarily stopping a Middle East war that he effectively allowed to start in the first place, then compared the combatants to children who had to be allowed to slug each other to get it out of their system.

It was a day when he announced without any evident embarrassment that officials of the federal government that answers to him had scoured the country for a site for next year’s Group of 7 summit meeting and determined that the perfect location, the very best site in all the United States, just happened to be a property he owned in Florida.

It was a day when he sent out his top aide, an adviser who has served as “acting” White House chief of staff for nearly 10 months without ever being granted the respect of earning the title outright, to try to quell the whole impeachment furor, only to have him essentially admit the quid pro quo that the president had so adamantly denied.

It was a day that ended with a rally where one of the warm-up acts, the Texas lieutenant governor, declared that liberals “are not our opponents, they are our enemy,” and the president called the speaker of the House “crazy,” a rival candidate “very dumb,” a House committee chairman a “fraud” and the governor of another state a “crackpot.”

it sure was a day. and really, it's a lot like any other recent day. the last several days (weeks?) have been like this.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/17/lev-parnas-giuliani-ukraine-past-049677

On Oct. 25, 2008, the owner of a property in Florida in which Lev Parnas had been living told Parnas to leave. When the men began to argue and the owner told Parnas he would call the police, Parnas told the man, "If you call the cops, they are not going to find you ever," according to a petition for a restraining order filed by the landlord in Miami-Dade county court and obtained by POLITICO.

He was staying in a Trump condo, btw.

Just imagine if Trump had actually followed through and dialed.

good news! "They're back to the full pause," sez the Peacedealer.

It's adorable that he actually thinks he has any control over the situation.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Trump-says-Texas-made-a-fortune-on-14544214.php

“You made a fortune on the hurricane,” Trump said of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston and much of Southeast Texas in 2017, killing more than 100 people and destroying or damaging more than 100,000 homes.

But Trump — speaking with a smile as the crowd laughed — said all that money that wasn’t enough for U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and state officials such as Gov. Greg Abbott whom he said came to him asking for more.

“‘Sir, we want one more small request,’” Trump said recalling the conversations. “‘It’s not much and we appreciate you listening to us. We want to build a dam in the ocean.’”

Trump said he asked them how much it would be.

“They say it’s only $10 billion, I’m supposed to be happy,” Trump said. “Oh, let’s see can we give Texas an extra $10 billion for some crazy thing that may work or it may not?”

Since Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008, state and federal officials have been studying the idea of a 70-mile coastal barrier aimed at protecting Houston’s shipping channel from hurricanes. Often called the Ike Dike, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it could cost up to $31 billion to build.

Pelosi should alert the press that she meant to say "All roads do NOT lead to Russia *WINK WINK*"

I've typed and deleted a half dozen responses to that rally anecdote but they all boil down to: everyone voluntarily gathered under that roof is a fucking monster, many of whom are clearly champing at the bit to express their monstrosity in deference to their monster king. Obvious, I know, but it just can't be said enough.

$10 billion for some crazy thing that may work or it may not, you say

'Your state sure got fucked up and a bunch of your neighbors died, but you made a lot of money out of the deal so it's cool.'
(RIOTOUS LAUGHTER)
'Your senators wanted more money to help prevent some shit like that going down again, but I felt personally inconvenienced so I told them to fuck off.'
(VOLUME OF LAUGHTER INCREASES)
'I hate every single person in this room.'
(ROLLING IN THE AISLES)

tough guy and might seduce your dad guy

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Friday, October 18, 2019 12:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

damn between this and the Gang Starr joke you are officially en fuego.

https://slate.com/business/2019/10/vanity-fairs-trump-chaos-trades-story-is-a-fantasy.html

Ok that settles it

“They say it’s only $10 billion, I’m supposed to be happy,” Trump said. “Oh, let’s see can we give Texas an extra $10 billion for some crazy thing that may work or it may not?”

hmm...this reminds me of some other really big, stupid wall that costs billions more than that, and that everyone says is really crazy and probably would not work...no, i must be making that up

A majority of voters say the Trump administration should cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll.

The survey, released Friday, showed 63 percent of voters saying the White House should comply with congressional requests for testimony and documents related to President Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

Thirty-seven percent said the White House is well within its powers to reject Democrats’ requests and claim immunity under executive privilege.

Eighty-three percent of Democratic voters said the administration should comply with the congressional requests, compared to just 37 of Republicans who said the same. Independents sided with Democrats, with 65 percent saying the White House should cooperate.

A majority of Republican voters — 63 percent — said the administration can claim executive privilege in denying requests for documents and testimony, while only 17 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents agreed.

The survey comes a week after the White House announced it would refuse to cooperate with the impeachment probe. In a letter to top Democrats, White House counsel Pat Cipollone dismissed House Democrats’ impeachment as unconstitutional and strictly partisan.

Trump is threatening to sue CNN for being mean to him.

This week, right-wing hoaxster James O’Keefe launched the latest of his series of secretly recorded videos, which purport to prove various conservative conspiracy theories but fail. The new version involves a CNN contractor recording employees grumbling about various complaints about the network, none of which establish the plot O’Keefe set out to prove, and some of which suggest the opposite (an employee complains that CNN covers Trump rallies but not Biden ones, which are too boring).

Even some of the conservative movement’s dimmest stars came away unimpressed. The project nonetheless seems to have left an impression on Donald Trump, a devoted follower and purveyor of nearly all the right’s conspiracy theories, a fanatical devotee of cable news, and, incidentally, the president of the United States. Trump has directed his lawyer to threaten a lawsuit against CNN on the basis of O’Keefe’s flimsy video.

The letter claims that O’Keefe has personally disproven CNN’s claim to be a news network dedicated to reporting facts. “In the Footage, your employees
appear to state that CNN attempts to make its reporting appear neutral and unbiased, when in fact its reporting is far from neutral and highly biased against the President.” The letter then moves on to its true complaint, stating (without any evidence whatsoever), “Never in the history of this country has a President been the subject of such a sustained barrage of unfair, unfounded, unethical and unlawful attacks by so-called ‘mainstream’ news, as the current situation.”

Continuing from this extremely shaky factual foundation, Trump’s letter proceeds to a ludicrous legal argument: CNN has violated the Lanham Act, which controls truth in advertising. Therefore, by claiming to be a real news network while subjecting Trump to hours of critical coverage, it has misrepresented itself. For some reason Trump claims he is personally entitled to financial compensation from CNN as a result. Trump plans to “seek compensatory damages, treble damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, reimbursement of legal costs, and all other available legal and equitable remedies.”

Independents sided with Democrats, with 65 percent saying the White House should cooperate.

i was just looking at this pew piece on political leanings of independents, since "independents" always strikes me as an odd third political category, since it encompasses both far left and far right people.

https://i.imgur.com/bMGrF01.png

17% of all americans are "independents" who lean democratic (a view that might describe many people here), 13% lean republican, and only 7% have "no lean" (which i would assume covers both the mythical "centrist" voter as well as people who completely fucking hate both parties (a view that might describe many people here).

so of that "independent" cohort which covers 37% of american voters, 45% lean democratic, 35% lean republican, and 19% have "no lean".

which brings us back to Independents sided with Democrats, with 65 percent saying the White House should cooperate.

65% of independent is basically the 45% that lean democratic + the 19% that have "no lean". that means the only independents who don't the white house should operate are the ones that lean republican anyway. in other words, the same polarization exists with independents as with the two main parties - it's not that democrats and republicans are polar opposites, it's that the republicans are polar opposite of pretty much ANYONE

the only independents who don't the white house should operate

i'm sorry, a mini-boss throwing giant javelins made of steel just bombarded my home while i was typing that. it should say "the only independents who don't think the WH should cooperate are.."

git that money

President Trump’s reelection campaign on Friday started selling T-shirts with the slogan “Get Over It,” a reference to recent remarks made by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

The campaign rolled out the shirts a day after Mulvaney told reporters at a White House press conference that there’s “going to be political influence in foreign policy” and people should “get over it.”

I'm still not convinced independent voters exist

corruption: actually fine

photo from Trump campaign shirt:

https://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/6D9QOIgPy6ARTgH9YwnaGx9LzrM=/800x538/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/IDIUDXTUAD7UXLSUZWVUON5WBY.jpg

i hate donald trump

well, yeah

it's a violation of sacred oaths of data journalism to make charts that show independents in between the two parties, like this:

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

1. many(/most?) of the independent leaners hold views that go beyond the DEM/GOP's positions. they should be visualized as blocs on the outside edges of the chart pulling the parties away from each other, not pulling them inward toward the "center"
2. Independent "leaners" should be split into two distinct groups for each party: far and near groups.
3. putting the political parties on the edges visually reinforces the idea that the two parties represent the edges of acceptable political policies

(it's also a violation to put the republican party on the left side and the democratic party on the right)

this is a pet peeve of mine that started back during the obamacare era when numerous pollsters would ask versions of "do you approve of the obamacare plan" without taking into consideration that there were tons of people who didn't approve of obamacare because they wanted something MORE liberal (public option, M4A, etc)

COME ON PEW, DO YOUR JOB WELL