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

"we have videos of a woman calling herself masha evil tying long pieces of string to voting levers in polling places across the country and then pulling on the other end of the pieces of string right before voters cast their ballots. do you still think donald trump won the election fairly?"

trump voter: "well he IS a maverick"

xpost the software architect of all your pain

this NYTimes editorial comes REALLY close to supporting the #SandersLeeYemen bill but never actually gets around to doing it, instead says the bill "must force serious debate and accountability".

"Debate" https://t.co/toa0E1441J

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) March 20, 2018

Hoping that @KamalaHarris, @SenatorShaheen and @clairecmc will join @SenFeinstein, @SenWarren, @SenGillibrand, @tammybaldwin and @SenDuckworth in voting to support #SJRes54 TODAY to help save the lives of millions of women and children in #Yemen. https://t.co/MxHasxGl6V

— Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 20, 2018

thomas frank wrote something really long that i didn't finish:

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/04/four-more-years-2/

Susan Sarandon Makes a Scene.

Reaching back to: "The left may hate Trump, but they'd be glad to set up their own dictator".

Very Freudian language there. Seems to me that Erick is implicitly saying that Trump is already a dictator, who the right claims as their own.

ha exactly

As long as he maintains the correct tribal affiliation, they will accept Trump as their whatever he feels like being. Priestfrotterer? Toddlerdevourer?

The left would gladly install their own preschoolteacherimpaler. Gladly

scoop w/ @CarolLeonnig: Trump legal team seeks to add star GOP attorney Theodore B. Olson https://t.co/4nxWjC6K9T

— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 20, 2018

and

I can confirm that @gibsondunn and Theodore B. Olson will not be representing @realDonaldTrump

— Ted Boutrous (@BoutrousTed) March 20, 2018

tough luck, scoops mcgee

They came. They sought to add. They failed.

Meantime...

EXCLUSIVE/BREAKING: Former Playboy model Karen McDougal sues to get out of “catch and kill” deal with National Enquirer parent Co. silencing her story of affair with Trump https://t.co/NIwJA1bneI

— jimrutenberg (@jimrutenberg) March 20, 2018

why have so many people seen the furry furher's dick

so uh is there any evidence to suggest trump voters care if he had affairs or not

Well right now the likes of Jerry Falwell Jr. seem to think he's still a man of god, so.

I don't think any liberals care either. I think the focus is trying to find if he tried to silence people through illicit means.

that better be the focus at least, cos "affairs" = a non-starter of a controversy

either that or they're wanting to upset Melania enough to where she turns on him and reveals all his dirty laundry

It's sort of an extension of the crime/coverup corollary. It's not that he had affairs, it's more what he did to have them covered up. And by extension what other unseemly stuff he may have covered up as well. Like, if there were threats, or if he forced women to have abortions ...

if this development gets pics of Trump's brazole declassified, I'm going to hold a lot of people responsible

BTW, IL primary is today, and while it's not the most exciting of elections there are a few things worth paying attention to. The first is the Gov, to see which Dem is potentially primed to take down Rauner. The other is the IL-03 race, where a (more or less literally) grandfathered-in conservative democrat (Dan Lipinski) is being challenged from the left by upstart Marie Newman. If she can pull off an upset in a safe, guaranteed blue district (this is where the GOP alternative is an actual Nazi) it might hint at future prospects for candidates to challenge from the left.

xp the only hope would be to destroy the illusion that white American evangelicals have any moral authority, but I think anyone who has that illusion anymore is old and not likely to be voting in many more elections.

but white Americans being freed of even the illusion of moral authority is not going to be good for non-whites so basically bleh

ew

Big Stormy story in the WSJ includes details of a phone call between Cohen and Stormy’s lawyer and 2011 polygraph results https://t.co/yepOPs8wd7 pic.twitter.com/gtgLzk2DcR

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 20, 2018

josh is there a primary for the IL AG?

Not only is there one, a friend of his is in it.

yeah that's why i'm asking him!

also jfc this looks like an isis video

Hmmmmm........#basta #searchforthetruth #whosenext? #buckle-up pic.twitter.com/frvAmT7MBf

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 20, 2018

Not only is there one, a friend of his is in it.

just voted for him about an hour ago! wish i lived just a couple blocks south so i could vote for newman (or more accurately, against lipinski). newman would definitely be an improvement but tbh she's an ex-advertising executive and acts the part

an isis video.. or fetish porn. xp

xpost Yeah, there are a billion people running for AG (well, maybe 8?) because this is the first time the seat has been open in 15 years. I've got a friend running, our best friends have a different friend running, neither may have a good chance. I suspect it will be Kwame Raoul, who has the support of the Dem party (and currently occupies the state senate seat formerly occupied by Obama, fwiw).

The events leading up to the 2016 election proved that voters were willing to overlook a hell of a lot of sordid ugliness to vote for Trump and against Hillary. But over 3 million more people voted against Trump and for Hillary. And since getting into office, Trump's approval ratings have been in the toilet since week one.

I'm fine with piling up more and more evidence of Trump's vicious nature.

It is defeatist to believe that, just because you think that Trump's approval rating ought to be near zero and it stubbornly flirts with 40%, that the drumbeat of disgusting personal stories about him 'make no difference' to Trump's support. If Trump were as personable as Reagan or even G.W. Bush, Trump's approval would probably be around 50%. His self-evident volatility and nastiness are what undercut his popularity, not his policies.

xpost Looks like a scene from Videodrome.

This is why this shit matters:

President Trump must face a defamation suit filed by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos after a Manhattan Supreme Court judge denied him immunity through his job as the nation’s commander-in-chief.

“In Clinton v Jones the United States Supreme Court held that a sitting president is not immune from being sued in federal court for unofficial acts,” Justice Jennifer Schecter wrote in a ruling released Tuesday, citing the sexual harassment suit that led to the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“It left open the question of whether concerns of federalism and comity compel a different conclusion for suits brought in state court. Because they do not, defendant’s motion to dismiss this case or hold it in abeyance is denied,” Schecter ruled.

The decision means that Zervos, who in 2016 accused then-candidate Trump of groping her and pressing his privates against her in 2007, can pursue her defamation case against the president for suggesting she made up the allegations for “10 minutes of fame.”

The drip drip drip has to start somewhere. White Evangelical Women, Core Supporters of Trump, Begin Tiptoeing Away

Barbara Lee vs the DeVos

https://splinternews.com/watch-betsy-devos-get-torn-to-shreds-for-her-pitiful-an-1823925811

Hey, don't forget that Betsy DeVos sucks too

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/us/politics/education-secretary-devos-reorganization-plan-union.html

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will go before a House panel on Tuesday to defend her agency’s budget, including a sweeping overhaul of the Education Department that has strained relations within her agency and with Congress — and defies the White House’s budget office.

In recent weeks, Ms. DeVos has clashed fiercely with department staff members over the plan, which they say she tried to withhold from Congress as she imposed on the department what they call an illegal collective bargaining agreement.

Ms. DeVos will testify before the House Appropriations Committee, whose staff was told a week ago that her office had withheld vital information from it regarding the department’s budget for the fiscal year that begins in October. The budget request calls for a 5 percent spending cut, eliminates dozens of programs and pitches a $1 billion school choice proposal. It also includes a shake-up of several divisions that is already underway.

xp haha

Lee wasn’t impressed. “Madam Secretary, you just don’t care much about civil rights of black and brown students,” she concluded. “This is horrible.”

When Mariotti wins the AG nomination by the single vote I cast this afternoon, h can thank Josh and Ned's tireless retweeting itt for making me aware of his existence.

Also worth noting that IL has a wacky tobaccy referendum up on today's ballot. Puff tuff, brothers and sisters.

My wife was pretty excited by this referendum on the ballot today. I gotta figure it's just a testing the waters sort of thing. Voting was quick and easy and I'm thankful for the crew at our precinct.

Hey, don't forget that Betsy DeVos sucks too

This could never, ever happen.

Ben Carson, ladies & germs

First of all, when I assumed the position, I was told that, traditionally, secretaries redecorate their offices. I came in, I looked at it—you know, I’m not really big into decorating. If it was up to me my office would probably look like a hospital waiting room. But at any rate, I invited my wife to come in and help me downstairs at the sub-basement. We have a bunch of used furniture, we went down, made a couple of changes, had some drapes added, which were down in the basement also, and some blinds for the window. The total cost for the renovation: $3,500. A few months later, I was told that the dining room set needed to be changed. I said, ‘Why?’ Because people are being stuck by nails, a chair collapsed with somebody sitting in it—it’s 50 years old. I said, ‘OK, we could potentially do that.’ I ask my wife also to help me with that. They showed us some catalogues; the prices were beyond what I wanted to pay. I made it clear that didn’t seem right to me. And, you know, I left it with my wife, I said, ‘Help choose something.’ But I said, ‘The money that is going to be used—we need to take care of the deputy secretary’s office, and whatever’s leftover, take care of the dining room furniture. It was very important to do that. I realized that. But I had so many other important things to do at that point. I had no assistant secretary, I had no deputy secretary, I was running from place to place dealing with a lot of important issues, so I really wasn’t all that concerned about furniture. The next thing that I, quite frankly, heard about it, was that this $31,000 table had been bought. I said, ‘What the heck is that all about?’

https://splinternews.com/ben-carson-women-be-shopping-1823925488

If only this department had, like, a staff. That is not the secretary's wife. Are we to believe that if anyone in HUD needs a new desk chair they go to Mrs. Carson, because no one else is capable of dealing with it?

i guess i should stop being surprised by how fucking insane people are but still

They said that Christian voters who backed Trump had been derided as unthinking, unsophisticated hypocrites, but for many of them that only affirmed their resolve. One of the women said that her parents had come to the United States illegally from El Salvador and that she was born a short time later. Her father is now a citizen. She supports Mr. Trump and his hard-line plans on immigration.

I kinda believe that Ben Carson doesn't remember buying a $31,000 table

Next documentary up:

https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica

No lie about this, of course:

Mr Nix also belittled representatives on the House Intelligence Committee to whom he gave evidence in 2017. He claims Republican members asked just three questions. “After five minutes – done.”

“They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” he said.

trump is not going to like this because it implies all the things the campaign did (crimes) were somebody else's idea, and he's going to tweet that they were all his

BREAKING: *CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SUSPENDS CEO ALEXANDER NIX

— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) March 20, 2018