the trump gang

the kenyan soetero has ruined so many lives, so many lives

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5775859/Ex-Trump-campaign-adviser-Carter-Page-claims-FBI-surveillance-ruined-life.html

no way

https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/energy-investment-group-claims-350m-capital-commitment-from-carter-page-after-2016-election-414fe7ce33e0

curious how the jarvanka marriage dynamic might change when her dad's a convicted felon, too

more than words

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/michael-cohen-lying-to-congress-plea-deal-devin-nunes.html

Trump gang vs Turnbull ACs Fite!

the acorn doesn't fall far from the treason

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/blue-state-genocide-is-acting-president

^ all that does is take good original reporting by various journalists and run it through a rhetorical filter that spits out phrases like "kibboshing the national testing plan his own buddies had come up with, apparently hoping for a blue state genocide".

But hey, if you go for that sort of thing, knock yourself out!

i'm not sure how i'd characterize this. i feel like, they weren't actively trying to kill blue staters but they liked the idea of "blaming" democratic governors.

these people don't believe they have a responsibility to govern, just to get elected. i was infuriated watching this for three years. now i feel contempt. i feel they did tremendous damage to our society at large, their zero sum thinking infecting even the way people behave with one another online, right and left. (i'm sorry but it's true, point-scoring is the only operative value on twitter and it was not as bad in the before-times).

"if someone else looks bad, that's all that matters! we're even. i cannot be held to any standards while other people—people on your side—can also be criticized." ----- this is the thought trump has hundreds of times per day and other people seem to be thinking this way too, increasingly.

that article about Kush isn't even a new wrinkle to the story, I thought Trump funneling resources to save lives away from governors who criticized him was well-known even before that

absolutely horrendous. i wish he was impeached for this sort of thing rather than nonsense with Ukraine that i don't care about.

punishing american citizens for political disagreements he has with their governor.👍

totally agreed and I think that's a good example of the Dem's failings - like yes the Ukraine thing was pretty clear cut and yes it is effectively treason but I do not think the majority of Americans care about that, not with all the various health & education & climate crises going on and the implicit suspicion that "that's what they all do anyway", hell if challenged I'd bet a lot of people don't actually know it's illegal to do what Trump did. putting all your chips on that and stuff like Russia is dumb. he lies to the American people every day, he's constantly self-dealing on the taxpayers dime, his incompetence is leading a thousand Americans to die each day as we head towards our fifth month of lockdown...that's the shit that matters to people

they make him seem more powerful than he is. (a RUSSIAN AGENT conspiring with FOREIGN POWERS to OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY). like, his authoritarian instincts are borne of the same impulse that motivates everything he does -- ignorance and spite. bannon's not there; it's not a grand reactionary project. he's a deeply disturbed and weak person who loves firing people so much that the government can't operate.

not to say he isn't opening the door to dark political forces. he certainly has done that, and continues to do so. but that is too abstract for a campaign message. and it's unnecessary in a situation where his stupidity and instinctive cruelty has plunged the nation into the worst shape it's ever been in.

the Ukraine thing was pretty clear cut and yes it is effectively treason but I do not think the majority of Americans care about that

I hear this sort of argument a lot and it seems a bit wrongheaded to me. Shouldn’t the Dems only put Trump’s feet to the fire for his corrupt and dangerous behavior regardless of whether the public is paying attention? Or should they only do these things for political benefit?

Sorry, that first “only” shouldn’t be there

well, yeah. that's why such a narrowly focused impeachment hearing was a mistake.

democratic leadership was still playing by the rules and expectations of the watergate era. they thought that if they went with a really broad impeachment (including other obvious things like emoluments clause, tax fraud, the pee tape (jk)), the focus of their charges would be lost and they'd open themselves up to attacks and distractions on multiple fronts. instead, they thought that if they focused on a clearly impeachment-worthy offense (the Ukraine shit), the elephant would be too large to ignore, the dominos would start falling, and they could convince a handful of senators - the susan fucking collins and ben sasse's of the chamber - to join them out of shame. rong!

how do i know what they were thinking, you may ask?

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

you're right. it made sense to me at the time, too, i guess. but i still felt unsatisfied because the offense, while impeachable, didn't get to the core of why trump is an unacceptable president and person.

then again, i am one of the people who was criticized for making too much of trump's "vulgarity." i do think it matters that we have a lifelong con artist and abuser in the white house who doesn't even try to pretend he is anything else.

xp

the sad fact is that no matter what they went with, they would have failed. there's a reason the GOP has a rather bad reputation right now. they are 52 fucking pieces of shit who should be mocked wherever they go until they die, imo. when they actually did what everyone expected them to do - cowardly refused to acknowledge trump's wrongdoing, and deciding to side with a wannabe fascist rather than accept political defeat for their party - it was painful to behold, but we all knew it was coming. i remember making annoying remarks about that consistently, for weeks before the impeachment, saying that it felt odd that we all kind of knew what would happen, like we (We) analyze and debate the shit out of stuff before it actually happens, gaming out the most likely outcomes. and in that process, we begin to cope emotionally (sorry this is some bullshit) with how it will feel for, say, the GOP to side with a fascist against all evidence. by the time the event (failed impeachment) actually occurs, we've already role played the response a dozen times. i STILL think that's intensely weird!

but from that set of circumstances, the fact that everyone expected impeachment to fail, no matter what charges were brought, i think people still divide up into the same sets of camps as they did before impeachment:

- it was bad to do impeachment because it was never going to succeed (counter: it's still important to bring the charges and establish very publicly that at least one political party recognized how wrong all of this was and tried to use the appropriate constitutional mechanisms to remove him from office. that also meant that the 52 fucking pieces of shit who should be mocked wherever they go until they die, imo, had to go on the record in their support for the obviously dangerous president.)

- it was right to bring narrow charges (we saw how that one played out, but maybe that's the best out of a set of bad options)

- they should have brought many different charges, knowing that this would be their only real chance to do it before the election. (counter: i think this is defensible and i do wish that so many other things would have been included in the impeachment charges. and maybe it would have worked, who knows. but i think that in the same way that the hunter biden/ukraine bullshit emerged as a response to the trump/ukraine impeachment charge, there would be equally dubious and distracting counter-responses to any other extra thread to the trump impeachment proceedings. it just seems like a fucking mess)

anyway, long story short, it makes sense to criticize the people who carried out impeachment (i did a bunch, from my couch). but they had a shit sandwich to work with. the true villain here is the dipshit president

I agree with all that but I do think bringing up all the blatant self-dealing and corruption within the Trump org was probably the right thing to do

anyway if the Dems have any leverage right now it's that said bad reputation seems like it's going to directly lead to the GOP getting annihilated in 2020 and if the Dems are willing to play by the GOP's rules then they might get wiped off the map. Tim Kaine alluded to that the other day, I think that's exactly the approach they need to take right now

i don't feel great about the fact that i still remember who all the people are who are in this poll.

goddamn, some of these names are a real blast from the past too. Scott Pruitt! that napping-ass motherfucker! Tom Price! did he ever pay his country back for all those private jet flights?

lol @ napping-ass motherfucker

what an overwhelmingly weird motherfucker

WOW!!! Don Jr. is beyond a mess today. Is this booze or drugs? He can’t even make his mouth work. pic.twitter.com/nMw73L1eYu

— Mystery Solvent (@MysterySolvent) December 13, 2020

i haven't heard him speak that much. he sounds (superficially; tone of voice; cadence) like ted cruz

his sinuses are so rammed with coke that his vowels are squeezed to half-width

That’s just barroom drunk right there. Still incredibly funny. Hope he keeps spiraling.

he always sounds like he's about to cry.

He sounds like he's actively trying to sound more like his dad.

the way he says "nothing shady at all" definitely sounds like his dad

my immediate thought was oh he's straight aping his dad now, it's a v weird contrivance

Don Jr's puppetmaster put his hand up further than usual today

The way he says "tied to China".

He sounds like a bad imitation of James Austin Johnson's Trump impression.

Is there a German word for 'recognizing and having a microscopic glimmer of empathy for the fact that a broken person is the product of abuse but still being all like fuck that shitty walking garbage pile who's chosen to shit their damage all over other people rather than doing a single thing to fix themselves'?

well, there is such a thing as Trümpferhaufenmitleidenschaftsschadenfreude...

It looks to me like a bad imitation of the Bad Lip Reading videos that were popular during the 2016 campaign. The voice doesn't match the lip motions.

Does he have somewhere to stay tonight? Poor guy.. maybe he can crash in Randy Quaid's double-wide.

Appears to be quarantining in a Motel 6.

If what he says is true, I don't see how the Electoral College in good conscience can vote for Hunter Biden.