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

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

summit back on

this is all so stupid

kim jong un's back on the "very honorable" list, eh?

hey remember when Obama bent the knee and assured wall street there would be zero retribution from his admin for their cratering of the world's economy? and then how corporate america spent the next 8 years whining about "uncertainty", implicitly (and some very explicitly) laying the blame for a sluggish recovery at this feet?

haha that was fun

I feel like such a fool for prematurely selling all my challenge coins.

More detail on propping up uneconomic coal plants.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/doe-plans-to-order-guaranteed-profits-for-coal-nuclear-power-plants#gs.LxHabMg

Quote from the heritage foundation at the end hopefully supports this theory:

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.

― On the Wingers of Love: The Kip & Debra Story (Old Lunch), Friday, 1 June 2018 11:53 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink]

This story seems to fit our paranoid times. Raise the rhetoric, raise the blood pressure and seemingly some are going bang.

The blind fold detail with an immigrant worker is such a strange detail.

https://nypost.com/2018/06/01/paranoid-millionaire-charged-in-death-of-worker-hired-to-dig-personal-nuke-shelter/

What was on this guy's CD player? "Paranoid Chant" by the Minutemen.

Whomp whomp

new SCOOP from Singapore: The U.S. is trying to find a discreet way to pay for Kim Jong Un’s luxury five-start hotel: https://t.co/jk9WVgBYBc

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) June 1, 2018

> Democracy Dies in Darkness

Or if you have adblock installed

(that link gives me a page containing just the Washington post banner)

Sure hope 'discreetly' means 'on the American taxpayer's dime'.

can this, or any of this, be corrected still?

open that shit in incognito/private mode, my guy

xxp

Are we paying for Kim's hookers too?

Are we paying to have some substance rubbed on anyone's face?

Donald Trump says his letter from Kim Jong-un was “a very nice letter”.

Eight minutes later, he says he hasn’t opened it yet. pic.twitter.com/ZOgqODlsY7

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 1, 2018

This is some kind of rodeo alright

they gave him a comedy oversized envelope. he likes it because it is yuge. the content does not matter to him, because he does not, and possibly cannot, read. he certainly cannot process anything he does read.

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!!