US Politics May 2019: " If I was burned at the stake, I would ask for a mirror"

Actually he's probably planning to point to the Krassensteins permabanning as how Twitter is "working" for the foreseeable future.

i predict a reference to twitter's user policies, ethics team review, etc etc, followed by nothing

come on jack

our good friend jack

really we don't know jack

I guess you can't doctor Trump videos to make him sound drunk worse

some disturbing prognostication from josh marshall this morning:

For everyone who’s been worried about Attorney General Bill Barr’s lawless reign at the Department of Justice last night was the big moment. As you’ve likely already seen President Trump gave Barr blanket authority to access and declassify any and all classified information from the country’s dozen and a half intelligence agencies in his quest to “investigate the investigators” of the Russia scandal.There’s hardly any way to overstate just how big a deal this is or how dangerous it is in the hands of a corrupt official like Bill Barr.

First, this power is totally unprecedented. The President is the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not classified. There are processes in place and guidance he’s supposed to listen to to exercise that authority. But he doesn’t have to. Barr is free to disregard those rules, overrule the heads of the intelligence agencies in question in question or not even tell them what he’s doing.

There’s nothing sacrosanct about the judgment of the heads of these different agencies. The issue is that Barr has an agenda to help the President and punish his perceived enemies. Giving someone like that this kind of power is a recipe for disaster.

Barr has a proven record of selectively disclosing information with the aim of deceiving the public. That was what the Barr Letter was all about and he’s demonstrated that proclivity for deception ever since he took over the DOJ. This is the Barr Letter on steroids. Trump has given him the ability to selectively declassify information to create a narrative of events which supports the President. It goes without saying that if you can choose only the facts you want and sheer them of their context you can create almost any story you want. And that’s what Barr is about to do.

If anyone wants to declassify more information that clarifies the meaning of whatever Barr chose to declassify they won’t be able to. Because that’s up to the President or Bill Barr.

bro

Marshall is right about the extreme potential for abuse of power by Barr in this situation. Creating false narratives to influence foreign politics has been part of the stock in trade of the CIA forever. The same goes domestically for both major political parties. We get lied to and fed distortions on the regular. What's different here is the opportunity for merging the rawest kind of partisanship with the mystical prestige of 'official government secrets'. It's an escalation of a familiar process to a new level, one that has been avoided until now, mainly by the tacit agreement among politicians that it would poison the well for all parties.

It’s been used to further the prerogatives of the national security state not for nakedly partisan reasons as much

It's a problem when people with power decide to just do whatever they want because they're too fucking stupid to see how setting certain precedents might negatively impact even themselves down the road.

As an ornery stinker who likes to sow chaos, I hereby encourage the rampant cutting of brake lines. My enemies are going to be so peeved!

Aw man what, my spine just got crushed because I couldn't stop my car from colliding into a 7-11, how did this even happen

Albert Burneko had another eruption.

The Big Idiot President Is Not Getting Himself Impeached On Purpose, C'mon

Donald Trump is not trying to get impeached. He does not want to be impeached, and he definitely does not have a sophisticated dastardly plot to turn his impeachment into greater personal power or as a strategy to create a more solidified and motivated political base. He does not have a sophisticated dastardly plot to do anything, or any other kind of plot. The man is not capable of sophistication, or any but the basest sensation-seeking dastardliness; it’s all he can do to get the fast food from its cardboard container to the appropriate face-hole. He is a big stupid idiot, is what I am saying, and he likes things that feel good and wants them right now and doesn’t like things that don’t feel good and doesn’t want them ever, and that is the extent of him.

Donald Trump has been portraying himself, accurately, as a degenerate, penny-ante dullard for his entire life. When he opens his mouth, when he talks about himself: “I am a degenerate, penny-ante dullard” is the only thing he can say. When he insists he is actually a tremendously smart man, he is saying “I’m a degenerate, penny-ante dullard.” When he says Buy these fabulous mail-order steaks, really truly high-class steaks, many people, fabulous, do we love them, you hear them saying Trump—big guys, tough, they’re saying—you know, Trump, does he have the best steaks or what, he is saying “I’m a degenerate, penny-ante dullard.” When he makes business decisions, when he makes dinner orders, when he attempts to stand up as normal humans do, when he combs his hair: he has made of himself and of his life a monument to the smallness of his perspective and intellect and character. Because he is a soft, breathless, foam-boned inheritance baby with a brain like a wet saltine cracker, because he has been crippled and made monstrous by money and endless permission and therefore cannot conceive of there being any truth or morality beyond what he wants right now, he never knows that this is what he’s doing and also never will. That’s exactly why it’s the only thing he has ever done.

None of this is a part of some scheme. There is never a scheme. He is not sandbagging. He is not playing four-dimensional chess. Donald Trump is not capable of four-dimensional chess. Put Donald Trump in a thumb war against a department-store mannequin and he will be lucky to escape with a draw. He will call it victory. What’s infinitely depressing is how many of his nominal political opponents will believe him.

The weirdest, saddest, and most unhelpful people, maybe in all the world, are: boomer liberals (like the leadership of the Democratic party, for example) who look upon Donald Trump’s lifelong track record of failing at petty crook shit—doing petty crook shit and not only getting away with it but in many cases declaring his failure a great success, and then being rewarded with greater fame and stature in turn—and insist they are seeing the work of a mastermind, rather than the tides of American life and culture carrying yet another born-rich shit-for-brains white asshole past and above any and all demands and consequences. The idea of Trump is the sucker-ass belief in meritocracy, in hoary old Great Man bullshit, twisted into its most horrible gargoyle incarnation. He’s rich and famous, he’s the president of the country, and therefore it just simply must be the case that he has earned this station for himself, one way or another, via some expression of traits that make him equal to it. He has to be some kind of genius, even if it’s the evil kind. There is no way that a braying worthless dope, a man with no qualities of any kind to recommend him, could have ended up where Trump has ended up.

otm

Pelosi's claim that he is "daring" the House to impeach him is ridiculous. It's either her *own* 4D chess manuever (which I don't understand), or she's claiming as much because it provides her cover for not following through.

Pelosi is slipping down to Schumer level since January

No one with half a brain is attributing any strategic intent to Trump, regardless of the words coming out of their mouths.

imo the establishment dems are terrified that, as with bill clinton, impeachment will lift the president's popularity. i don't think the situations are comparable, but they're always fighting the last war

(also they're scared that when the republican senate saves trump, the media will be all DONALD FULLY VINDICATED IN MASSIVE VICTORY, which is legit)

Yeah, the Democrats should take heed of the bitter price the Republicans paid in 2000 and continue to pay to this day due to their partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton.

^^^^^^^^

meanwhile

Breaking: The Trump administration officially notified US lawmakers that it plans to circumvent normal congressional rules to speed up arms sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE amid rising tensions with Iran. More @WSJ

— Dion Nissenbaum (@DionNissenbaum) May 24, 2019

but yeah let's just let the guy's term play out naturally, beat 'em at the polls etc.

Send 'em some planes and box cutters, while you're at it, Don.

It's also possible to say the last few posts are otm and Pelosi still doesn't have the votes to impeach.

yep that's kinda how it be right now

The comparisons to 1998 are bullshit. Clinton before impeachment already enjoyed an approval rating approaching 60 percent.

Right. Anyway, the votes are not there in the senate, to convict. But she absolutely has the votes in the house—to impeach—if she wants them.

That would initiate an involved process that she could slow-walk as nexessary for political purposes. It would also mean Trump campaigning while on trial, on television. With sworn testimony putting what we already know on the public record.

But she absolutely has the votes in the house—to impeach—if she wants them.

Link?

she's the best speaker since Rayburn, a master whip, but even in the Senate LBJ couldn't whip votes from colleagues whose districts weren't going his way (and he knew when these senators lied).

k3vin k as much as implied in the primary thread that I'm a Pelosi fan boy or something. I want to impeach -- I want Trump in jail. But dudes like Hoyer and the other greybeards in her caucus look more haunted by 1998 than she is -- she has to deal with Trump face-to-face every day, unlike them. Several reps from swing districts were on cable talk shows this morning admitting they weren't moving (yet). What power has she over them?

xxp I mean that's what she does—gets the votes.

I don't believe the relaively small number of house dems who have gone on the record as wanting hearings now relfects anything more than the top-down messaging: "not yet." It seems to me like she and Hoyer are just holding the rank-and-file back.

Pelosi's claim that he is "daring" the House to impeach him is ridiculous. It's either her *own* 4D chess manuever (which I don't understand),

It seems to me the simplest explanation is that she wants the impeachment proceedings to start some months from now instead of now, so that it's not already seen as "old news, that's behind us" in November 2020. If Comey does his "wait I found some new HRC emails, oh no wait it was nothing" act in August instead of October, it would have affected the election hardly at all. (I take it as a given that this Senate will never convict their guy no matter what and he will serve out the rest of his term.)

Wait -- let's not collapse or conflate "hearings" and "impeachment"

Albert Burneko's rant, above, is like most rants: overdone, hyperbolic, claiming that its emotionally satisfying ridicule is a worthwhile substitute for measured analysis. It overshoots its mark and is just as shallow and reductive as Trump himself. But sometimes emotionally satisfying ridicule is just what your mood demands, like binging on ice cream.

I don't understand ice cream

his thesis is solid: Trump is a straight moron and can't strategize beyond the next Fox and Friends

fat, sugar, creamy mouth-feel. it fits the basic profile of comfort food.

of course they did

Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Rulings Requiring Redrawing Gerrymandered Districts In Ohio And Michigan

rampant cutting of brake lines

Sticking BBs in valve stems so tires go flat is faster and arguably not a felony.

Going to be a trip to watch Trump purge the security agencies, fill them with meathead authoritarian loyalists, and then watch the next Democratic president respect their Independence by leaving them all there

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) May 25, 2019

Yup. Can't wait!! :) :)

Biden: He's Reaching

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html

so, just, like, whatever i guess

Trump declares emergency to expedite arms sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE

cool

checks out

good partners, important stuff

i mean i'm pretty sure there are a few Yemenis still alive, there's no time to spare

maggie haberman is trending for sucking again

poor Hope Hicks, trying to find the fortitude to resist subpoenas.

an emptywheel thread on haberman's article

Yeah, I read it -- good shit