US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

xp
Crying Down Syndrome children, so, you know...

this guy doesn't merit an RIP thread but hey I'm glad he's dead anyway
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/television/article/Nevada-pimp-who-starred-in-HBO-series-found-dead-13311893.php

posted here because he will obviously no longer be in the running for his state legislative seat this fall

otm and thank god

"He had been celebrating is birthday at a hotel in the rural city of Pahrump that Hof had said would be attended by porn star Ron Jeremy, rapper and reality television star Flavor Flav and Joe Arpaio, the former six-term sheriff of metropolitan Phoenix"

where do you go when you die if you already lived in hell?

re: the earlier discussion even approaching that meme in improbably good faith: don’t employ your fucking children as memes, it’s gross

I dont think the kids’ down syndrome was at the forefront of her mind but she should have taken twelve seconds to think about whether this was a nice or respectful way to depict her child

when has Sarah Palin taken any seconds

forefront, not even sure she has a onefront

As I mentioned in the obituary thread, I met Hof once in a work context. He was like a character out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

"He had been celebrating is birthday at a hotel in the rural city of Pahrump that Hof had said would be attended by porn star Ron Jeremy, rapper and reality television star Flavor Flav and Joe Arpaio, the former six-term sheriff of metropolitan Phoenix"

where do you go when you die if you already lived in hell?

I would be a little bit interested in overhearing a conversation between flavor flav and joe arpaio

execs at a few reality tv production houses in L.A. just perked up their ears

Julian Castro? I know nothing about him. Thoughts?

BREAKING: Trump tells AP that Saudi Arabia being blamed for missing journalist is another case of "guilty until proven innocent."

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 16, 2018

Wtf! Ugh

FFS turkey is insisting again they have clear evidence of this. NOTE: I hate the Turkish government and think they are as bad as the Saudi government so maybe there is some tiny, tiny sliver of doubt here, but I thought the Saudi's owned up to this last night?

FFS turkey is insisting again they have clear evidence of this. NOTE: I hate the Turkish government and think they are as bad as the Saudi government so maybe there is some tiny, tiny sliver of doubt here, but I thought the Saudi's owned up to this last night?

everybody involved here - the Turkish gov't, the Saudis, the US gov't - are grade A assholes so I sort of don't care what happens and at no point will anything resembling "justice" ever be remotely close to being served

Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate before he disappeared. That fact alone...

Mr. Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul around 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 2, for an appointment to pick up a document.

Under the strain of his voluntary exile from Saudi Arabia, his marriage had ended in a divorce, and he had since become engaged to a Turkish woman. Mr. Khashoggi needed certification from the Saudi authorities of his divorce so that he could remarry in Turkey; the wedding was planned for the next day.

The Turkish authorities have released video footage of him walking into the consulate, but they say there is none of him walking out. The Saudis, while insisting that he left the consulate safely, have not offered any evidence.

Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancée waited for him outside the consulate for hours.

everybody involved here - the Turkish gov't, the Saudis, the US gov't - are grade A assholes so I sort of don't care what happens and at no point will anything resembling "justice" ever be remotely close to being served

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 17, 2018 12:26 AM (seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ding ding ding. Trump's said he prefers hauling in a couple of billion in arms sales. Mohammad bin Salman is a ruthless ruler. And Erdogan's Turkey is one of the worst led nations in history.

USA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia: the true axis of evil.

These fucking arms sales a god damn joke it's not even like it's a lot of money in the grand scheme.

tbh I don't care much about this story -- more American perfidy. Woulda happened under Obama, totally commonplace in the Poppy Bush and Reagan administrations.

v true

This kinda thing should have provoked outrage then too.

it did.

yep

and it didn't matter.

How often did cable news cover Obama's support of the war in Yemen?

Ding ding ding. Trump's said he prefers hauling in a couple of billion in arms sales. Mohammad bin Salman is a ruthless ruler. And Erdogan's Turkey is one of the worst led nations in history.

USA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia: the true axis of evil.

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, October 16, 2018 10:33 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you forgot israel

really the only difference this time was Trumps' forthrightness in stating that it wouldn't interfere with any "deals" from the jump

Yes. Listening to "Morning" Joe guests this morning mourn the end of American exceptionalism and a belief in Reagan's shining-city-on-a-hill made me cackle into my smoothie.

tbh I don't care much about this story -- more American perfidy. Woulda happened under Obama, totally commonplace in the Poppy Bush and Reagan administrations.

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 16, 2018 6:59 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this really the case? I don't mean giving Saudis a pass on human rights in general, but dismembering a dissident reporter in your consulate? Seems p clear that MBS feels he has an even more special kind of cover than his predecessors because Kush, "fake news," press as enemy of the people etc.

agree. would this have happened under Obama without some reckoning?

One of the suspects identified by Turkey in the disappearance of Khashoggi was a frequent companion of MBS, three others have ties to him https://t.co/yOW3o5FrAy

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) October 16, 2018

Honduras and El Salvador were abattoirs in 1984.

we shouldn't give up on calling them to account

xp No doubt, but there's something about the brazenness and stupidity of this murder that seems correlative to the shamelessness and idiocy 45 projects all day long

awww

Chief Justice Roberts tonight went out of his way to address the "contentious events in Washington" in recent weeks. Said he won't criticize the political branches but wanted to emphasize how the judical branch "must be very different". Very rare for him to comment.

— Ariane de Vogue (@Arianedevogue) October 16, 2018

Woulda happened under Obama, totally commonplace in the Poppy Bush and Reagan administrations.

seems mostly otm, however there seems like a decent chance that trump and/or his son-in-law could be directly implicated in this one. previous presidents knew enough to let other people take the wheel when it comes to letting to murdering journalists . it also seems like other administrations would have had a #benghazi level scandal afterwards. we'll see his this one goes, but most likely it will just be tossed onto the bin of the many corrupt things trump has been involved with that republicans never mention again.

I'd gotten so used to proclaiming 'con artistry' as Donald Trump's one demonstrable skill that I've been remiss in acknowledging his equal skill at gracefully traipsing between the raindrops of each and every scandal that would certainly have sunk the career of any other politician. It's getting to the point where I'm almost willing to accept a supernatural explanation because, well...for fucking fucksake, already.

trump was conjured by voodoo economics

In keeping with my ongoing thought experiment: imagine any former president offhandedly calling a woman 'Horseface'. Even wholly divorced from this particular context (the context where the woman is a pornstar the president has basically admitted to having paid money to sleep with and then more money to hush up), just imagine. Imagine. Or, y'know, not even a former president. How about a senator. Or even just a congressional candidate. R. Budd Dwyer committed suicide on live television over less than this. But Donald Trump will be sleeping soundly tonight, wholly untroubled in soul or by the horrified entreaties of polite society.

^^^

R. Budd Dwyer died for somebody's sins, but not the modern GOPs.

The court actually has been mostly bad for anyone not wealthy, white and connected and many of the the decisions people mention to defend the court are decisions people like Roberts think are terrible. https://t.co/zitBEDrRmT

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 17, 2018

The yield to political pressure thing is important though, because it’s Roberts foreshadowing the court going farther to the right than the majority of Americans want it to, and he wants to preemptively frame those decisions as acts of integrity rather than partisan goals.

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 17, 2018

and he could just as easily have implied that the Court responded to Political Pressure in 1937 when the Court started going FDR's way.

The SCOTUS is magic and it only works if you believe in it. There’s a reason almost nobody knows what “justiciable” means.

somewhere lurking in the deep background of the SCOTUS's magic act is the government's monopoly on force which ultimately backs up its authority. but the whole apparatus works far more smoothly when the face of authority is acceptable to the great majority and the foundational threat of force is scarcely noticed or needed. that's what putatively has Chief Justice Roberts, um, 'worried', so they say.

previous presidents knew enough to let other people take the wheel when it comes to letting to murdering journalists .

secret of trump is he appeals to people who don’t mind journalists getting murdered

“secret”

JUst reading through some of the twitter links I got yesterday. & therefore being reminded that trump really needs to retire this guilty until proved innocent thing. If he's used it in places where the guilt was pretty obvious already then I think it takes on the colour of the cases he's used it in, so he might as well just state I know I'm covering this up.

Probably has already taken on the 'yes, this is an obvious lie' flag.
(just thinking of obvious semiotic substitutions)