US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

I mean, if I were the White House trying to spin something, my spin would almost definitely involve the House Intelligence Committee comments, because if you're already trying to convince someone to leave quietly, you couldn't ask for a more perfect excuse to come along

The Maggie Haberman snotty response has been that people are still pretending this White House is anything close to logical or normal.

And by the way, I apparently called it. After her interrogation Trump reportedly berated her, calling her stupid.

to trump, the greatest sin is admitting that you lied

you're supposed to stand up for what you said, no matter how clearly untrue or idiotic. if you stick your fingers in your ears and yell "LA LA LA" for long enough, people will give up and start getting mad about something else.

I am fully capable of believing this happened in some form, doubtless with plenty of other factors involved:

Hicks to self/others for some time: "This is all fucking up my life, the guy I was dating is a fuckup, my legal bills, man I gotta leave here at some point."

*testifies to Congress and talking about lying*

Trump to Hicks: "FUCK YOU."

Hicks: "I'm out."

people are still pretending this White House is anything close to logical or normal

The bigger problem IMO is people not realizing the Trumpoid base regards the churny chaos as a feature, rather than a bug.

I mean, firing people is kind of his jam, and has been forever.

TALKING about firing people, or having other people fire people. Firing people to their face, eesh, too much conflict for Liddle Donnie!

I see several explanations for Hicks' departure:

1. The White House is a pressure cooker that even in this farce of an administration spits up and chews out those that work for it, especially those least prepared for it. Being called to testify in what may be the biggest criminal probe in American history may or may not have been the icing on the cake.

2. She apparently had intimate relationships with more than one member of the senior staff, including, some have suggested, the President himself, who reportedly has recently been dismissive of her dignity in connection with same, something another workplace might deem actionable conduct. She therefore determined, on top of 1, that the costs of her work environment outweighed the benefits.

3. She is or has been facing serious criminal liability for her role in drafting false public statements that may become the basis for charges of obstruction of justice, and has resigned out of objection to having been put into such a position and/or to concentrate upon same or avoid continued work for those against whom she may have flipped.

4. She is an asset of the American intelligence community installed at the heart of Trump's operation or cultivated after reaching it to gain intelligence on an actor suspected of coordinating criminal financial and domestic political activity with agents of a foreign state. She resigned after being suspected or when her services were no longer needed.

The last is probably a ridiculous theory whose legal ramifications are not what would be desired by intelligence actors who might also pursue criminal charges.

this is a lot of thinking to waste on hope hicks

Then we may as well ignore the question in the thread title and get back to making up silly nicknames for our Commander in Chief.

Simon otm

Hicks and people like her: Who the fuck cares? Mouthpieces.

but that's gabbnebism for ya

aka 'Versailles syndrome'

this is a lot of thinking to waste on hope hicks

― Simon H., Thursday, March 1, 2018 3:59 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was more typing than thinking involved.

You don't say.

No, I type. Rather fast at that.

I think Hope Hicks is my second favorite Trumpling to think about, after the Mooch. She's like Gary from Veep, but imagine if Gary was made Director of Communication? Nobody would believe that.

I shook my head when y'all fantasized about the Mooch last July too.

Hope Hicks was a (very young) PR professional before joining Trumpworld, and from a long line of same. It's worth noting, though, that her parents work for/with people who you would not necessarily think of as Trump folks. They met as Congressional staffers in the '80s, he for a "liberal" (and apparently closeted) Northern Republican, she for a blue dog rural Southern Dem, and he went on to work for Roger Goodell, not exactly Trump's best friend, then left after she went to Sauron to help head up the very-Clinton/Gore-tied Glover Park Group. She too came to the Trumps from a substantially Clinton/New York Dem-Tied PR firm. Does this mean she or her parents are secret progressives? No. He's a former oil and tobacco image smoother who donated to Romney in 2007, and his current gig may simply be working for the NFL on the outside, while she may well be an apolitical child of privilege who just lucked into a very unique position. But neither are James Comey or Robert Mueller.

NEWS: The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have privately concluded that the HPSCI majority leaked Mark Warner's private text messages to Fox News. https://t.co/pn9uLfGtZN

— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) March 1, 2018

LINE BREAKS FFS xp

if that's true that's fucking outrageous

xpost

/evergreen us politics thread content

Hahah this is my kind of internecine warfare.

I apllaud moo vaughn just for the chutzpah. #nolinebreaks

Oh, the punishment's far from over.

John Kelly on leaving DHS to become White House chief of staff: "The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the Secretary of Homeland Security, but I did something wrong and God punished me I guess." https://t.co/rBphMQ7Awn

— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) March 1, 2018

Nunes needs to be thrown overboard in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean based on that leak report

Romeo-Nunez – then a 16-year-old student at St. Michael’s Academy in Manhattan – said at the time that Trump did not do anything to stop the attack. She recalled to The News on Thursday that she had just come out of a store at 45th St. and Ninth Ave. when the incident was ending, and that Trump arrived a few minutes later.

"A car pulls up, he gets out, people acknowledge his presence," she told The News Thursday. "He's looking around, seeing what's going on. Then he got back in and left."

The beatdown was never reported to the police.

Romeo-Nunez said she always wondered who the other unidentified witness was, but said that person's account was not true. The assailant "was running away" as Trump got out of the limo, and the attacker and Trump never spoke to each other, she said.

FFS what will it take to get Nunes the fuck out of there at least in regards to the Committee? he's a goddamn liar and obstructionist and it's been demonstrated over and over again.

one of the great honors of my life, being the Secretary of Homeland Security

this is what you're really going to hell for you piece of shit

he's a goddamn liar and obstructionist and just the sort of chairperson Speaker Ryan intends to keep on the job

He's worth creating a new ocean for, true

"He might be a goddam liar and obstructionist, but he's *our* goddam liar and obstructionist!"

What possible penalties could Nunes receive?

at what point do Nunes actions veer into obstruction or does it not really work like that in his particular position?

heh xpost

In other news, is there a good way to donate to the striking teachers in WV?

There's a strike fund - one sec.

https://www.gofundme.com/wv-teachers-strike-fund

What possible penalties could Nunes receive?

Theoretcially? Expulsion from the House. Or censure. Or a sternly worded public reprimand from the Ethics Committee. Or a few sharply disapproving looks from his colleagues as they pass in the hallway. Or an all-day lollipop from Speaker Ryan.

xpost Thanks. Also, can anyone vouch for this one?

https://www.gofundme.com/stoneman-douglas-yearbooks

Best I can do is say: looks legit!

xpost to Aimless then I'm betting the later takes place

*latter

“The New York Times, a prominent purveyor of leaks, is highlighting anonymous sources leaking information that accuses Republicans of leaking information,” [Nunes spokesman] said. “I’m not sure if this coverage could possibly get more absurd.”

this is some astounding, next-level disingenuousness

Dow dropped 500 points after tariff announcement

unpatriotic Wall St fuckers

AshLee Strong, spox for Speaker Paul Ryan, on NYTimes story on Intel Cmte/Nunes leak: “The speaker heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”

...

Dem Congress really needs to be making public statements about this to keep the story afloat. so it will at least be clear that Ryan is willfully letting it continue

I think a big part of the animus towards the Parkland students is they represent a coming generation for which the fact that some shithead puts on a suit and sits behind a desk on television means jackshit, beneath the slurs against them there's a genuine panic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/unhinged-or-unleashed-white-house-stabilizers-gone-trump-calling-his-own-shots/2018/03/31/19447ae2-343b-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html?utm_term=.8a7ce72680e3

he got rid of the scotch tape, too

Trump is domineering his strategy regarding the expanding investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, in effect acting as his own lawyer. He is clamoring to reject the counsel of his attorneys and sit for an interview with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and malign him by name.

you're the boss, trump

the Sinclair stuff would probably bother me if it didn't remind me how infuriated I was when Clear Channel was buying all the radio stations and the idea of the local FM station was going the way of the dodo back in the 90s, or to stretch that further, every time I found out a regional microbrewery got bought by Miller or AB, etc.

Now you have more ways to listen to talk shows and music than ever (and there's more craft beer than ever!) and the fact that an of incurious sack-like subset of Americans still consumes whatever flavorless retrograde grog is poured in the general vicinity of their gullets is just not something I can get mad about much anymore. It's like getting mad at earthquakes when you live on the ring of fire. Plus local TV news, who the fuck even watches that?

who the fuck even watches that?

There are people who leave their televisions on every waking minute. I'm pretty sure some of them are tuned to news, now that what passes for news has become almost 100% entertainment-oriented.

I'm not questioning the existence of such creatures, as above. It was meant more in the sense of "lol local tv news, is that like Vine"

xxxposts: this is extremely dangerous to your democracy

Just to check, is that the ‘acts as own lawyer’ stuff there, Stan?

no, the Sinclair TV news script that ends with "this is extremely dangerous to our democracy"

Plus local TV news, who the fuck even watches that?

About a hundred million people, heavily skewed towards old people, i.e. the ones who actually vote.

after reading the Amazon headlines this morning it occurs to me that this presidency is like a murder mystery where the first half of the show runs through all the people with a motive for killing the asshole victim

oh eephus thank you I'd never heard that observation before

those people who actually vote must be the reason Mitt Romney won in 2012?

Local TV news is also a staple of lounges/waiting rooms/dining rooms of places too cheap to pony up for cable...which, in way, is a good thing, because if they had cable, 90% of the time it'd be on Fox News.

oh! I've never left the house in the 39 years I've been alive so

now that I know that the old people who actually vote are watching Sinclair broadcasting in their lounges I must agree that sounds extremely dangerous for our "democracy"

i get your angle tomboto but there's a lot of space between 'Sinclair is the death knell for democracy' & 'Sinclair's content has zero effect on the world'

also i think the comparison to clear channel in the 90s is a moderately decent one, insofar as both involve consolidation of media overlords and the narrowing of content. also, clear channel buying everyone out totally sucked for radio, and still sucks today. i don't get the comparison to beer companies buying each other out at all

as always, i admit my inherent bias toward caring about how old people are brainwashed by their tvs because my parents are old people who are brainwashed by their tvs. they watch local news every day and trust them more than the national broadcasts. i know i need to stop trying to change their minds but i still care. but the obvious counterpoint is that even if sinclair was dissolved and all the local stations somehow went back to being owned by local entities, my parents would still vote republican. their behavior would still be the same. there would just be one less daily 30 minute voice reconfirming their bullshit every night.

The common thread is that none of these are worthy of freaking out about because over the long term they are largely meaningless. The consolidation of control over relatively minor, quotidian aspects of our lives is the kind of thing people need to not freak out about in general, because the difference between Sinclair running things and the government running things is who you think is more accountable to you and what kind of oversight you're comfortable with. I think that's the argument worth having, not whether one entity should be in charge of most of some stuff (moot), or if some cranks forcing TV talking heads to read a script is a real threat to our institutions (which are moribund and crumbling as it is, for reasons much more frightening than oligopolies).

Anyway: John Bolton is the national security advisor and Trump is going to Korea soon.

the other part of the common thread is that I used to care immensely about stuff like this and when I look back on what has actually happened that's changed the world, wow, I was dumb.

He is risen, Hallelujah

Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. “Caravans” coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2018

those "caravans" in full

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2015/06/22/18/15-LGBT-Caravan-Rex.jpg

Remember when the epithet "flip-flopper" used to be contemptuously applied to politicians who compromised on their earlier stated positions? Trump doesn't even bother to have reasons for jumping around from one position to another. He just uses agitation as a substitute for direction, as in "look at all that commotion; he must be getting things done!"

oh no, the DACA deal, we were so close

"catch & release" is yet another dehumanizing euphemism

man I guess I'm either weird or old for always watching at least 10 mins of localnbews, usually in the mornings

Do u vote tho

i knew about the bullshit new "are you a US citizen?" question on the 2020 census, but i didn't know about this other stuff:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/13/593272215/for-the-first-time-2020-census-will-ask-black-americans-about-their-exact-origin
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/01/582338628/-what-kind-of-white-2020-census-to-ask-white-people-about-origins

https://i.imgur.com/76OENDK.png

For the 2020 census, the U.S. Census Bureau is changing how it will ask black people to designate their race. Under the check box for "Black or African American," the bureau is adding a new space on the census questionnaire for participants to write in their non-Hispanic origins, according to a recent memo from the head of the 2020 census. "African American," "Jamaican" and "Nigerian" are listed as examples of origins on a questionnaire the bureau is testing for 2020.

The change means many black people in the U.S. may have to take a closer look at their family trees to answer what can be a thorny question: Where are you really from? While many black immigrants can cite ties to a specific country, that question is difficult, if not impossible, for many U.S.-born African-Americans to answer.

The bureau has not responded to NPR's questions about why it is making this change to both the "Black" category and the "White" category," which will also include a new write-in area for origins.

looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true

atlantean

he's a secret census overlord

xp

cash grab by ancestry.com imo

seems like there's a lot of public interest in this sort of information these days, good move that's quite a bit overdue

The Sinclair news anchor hivemind is eye-rollingly untroubling in a world where like >50% of the American population possesses the skepticism and critical thinking skills to look askance at such a ridiculous maneuver. If that country ever existed, it's clear that it doesn't at this particular time.

I’m sorry for being sick of ostensibly intelligent people having no memory and no ability to do math. That country exists right now. We live in it. Read the fucking polls and remember the popular vote.

For fuck’s sake.

Dude, people on every side of the election were taken by propaganda that flattered their worldview. Even ostensibly intelligent people have to make the individual effort to avoid being conned.

Sorry, not that many people voted for Jill Stein.

wheres the new thread at

For April I like, "big drug and people flows."

"Getting more dangerous"

US Politics, April 2018: Getting more dangerous (looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true)

looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true

― Karl Malone, Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, the one good thing the Dump Admin is doing.

Of course, it wasn't their idea - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/04/federal-officials-may-revamp-how-americans-identify-race-ethnicity-on-census-and-other-forms/

cash grab by ancestry.com imo

― El Tomboto, Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:31 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe the 2000 census, etc. was too - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2008/acs/2008_Brittingham_01.pdf. They were founded in '83.

a-a-a-and... that's a wrap!

don't we usually lock these?

yes. it's time to move on.