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

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.

"Thank you Kim, the letter is very nice. Very interesting. I'm told it's for me! That's very generous."

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cf/9c/13/cf9c138b4d1622d9382e96c72daa34b6.jpg

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

well, good mourning!

lol

Don’t worry it’ll be over in 6 years

Don’t worry it’ll be over in 6 years

― flappy bird

don't even joke about that, i can't live through six more years of this shit

Don’t worry it’ll be over in 6 years

Florida will!

eh if the economy stays "strong", or even if it takes a hit following Dems taking back House or maybe Senate, allowing the GOP/ Trump/ complicit MSM to effectively place blame on them, i could easily see Trump winning again in 2020.

this is who we are now.

Fuck off, he lost by 3 points, you idiots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZIwwf1onKM

Yeah I wasn’t joking, he’s the incumbent. I remember 2004. Preparing myself now.

eh if the economy stays "strong", or even if it takes a hit following Dems taking back House or maybe Senate, allowing the GOP/ Trump/ complicit MSM to effectively place blame on them, i could easily see Trump winning again in 2020.

this is who we are now.

Although hey if your miserable fantasies come true you won’t have me to kick around any more, that’s for fucking sure.

Fuck off, he lost by 3 points, you idiots.

Killfiled

Here's the thing: how adversely have the lives of most Americans been affected by a Trump presidency at this point? People have become largely inured to the notion of corrupt politicians. They're all crooks, this is what they do, etc. If the actual lives and livelihoods of a significant number of citizens don't appreciably degrade over the next two and a half years, and in a way that is somehow easily attributable to Trump, I honestly don't know if Trump's status as one of the worst living humans is going to be enough to persuade people to rock the boat. Particularly if the Democrats don't offer a compelling alternative (and even more particularly if they think harping on Trump's awfulness should be a significant part of their messaging). I won't be surprised if a lot of right-leaning never-Trumpers hold their nose a second time. Because just like all of the GOP POS-es in Congress, they know that maintaining their control is about more than the paramecium-in-chief.

Clearly, I don't want Trump's reelection to happen (I will be leaving the country if it does), and I don't think it'll happen, but if he even survives that long (which is a super big if), I don't think his loss will be as decisive a rout as we might prefer.

FYI, it makes me almost physically ill to acknowledge pretty much any of that. But my blind optimism is pretty much depleted at this point.

how adversely have the lives of most Americans been affected by a Trump presidency at this point?

Having Republicans in charge of health care law and policy has already adversely affected large numbers of people and the repeal of the individual mandate will drive insurance premiums sky high next year. Trump's new tariffs will adversely affect many more. A lot of these affected people live in rural America. It will interesting to see how tribal loyalty withstands such direct hits.

the appointing of SCJ Gorsuch & the other lifetime-term federal district court judges may have a much more lasting effect on us than any straight policy tbqh.

I do want to stress that I was talking about Trump's perceived real-world impact in the present moment. I do think things will get a lot worse for a lot of American citizens over the next couple of years. It remains to be seen to what extent people hold Trump responsible (when we all know that it's really the fault of Clinton and Obama and Soros and CNN and the monster under the bed and spirit cooking and fluoridated water).

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

Here's the thing: how adversely have the lives of most Americans been affected by a Trump presidency at this point?

― On the Wingers of Love: The Kip & Debra Story (Old Lunch)

god jesus, what on earth is your bar for "adversely affected"? i mean, even if you're one of the approximately 40% of americans who are literally cartoon dogs in burning rooms - roseanne got her show cancelled! do you know what sort of a catastrophe that is?

also, anybody who is seriously speculating about the president being re-elected is catastrophizing and needs to talk to a therapist instead of trying to exacerbate the problem on internet message boards.

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!!