At the risk of stating the obvious, the July 2019 US Politics Thread is horse-sh*t

plus, maybe things have changed in the interim but it's well-known by now that the Gore campaign received debate prep materials swiped from the Bush campaign and then turned them over to the FBI.

People keep yielding time to Nunes so that he can play fast and loose with fact.
Well maybe he'll do something useful inadvertently which seems to be about the only good he's ever done innit?
He's a Republican otherwise I might ask if he was ever a decent anything.

Nunes has been pretty ineffective. I think the ranting Republicans on the other committee did better.

what hostile foreign govt's attack?

Have you read the first few pages of the mueller report?

Not the whole thing. Just the handful of summary pages for vol 1

I know you’re keying in on trump’s direct involvement in the Russian hacking efforts (or lack thereof, as the report concludes), but much of Vol 1 of the report summarizes an investigation into that attack, which is ongoing. I think granny was correctly pointing out how slimy it is that republicans could care less about that.

I highly recommend to anyone in the entire world: read the first few pages of each volume. Apparently it’s just me and like 3 other people who have accomplished this insane task

hi!

and i'm noting that if there were similar events but they had benefited a democratic candidate we wouldn't be horrified in fact we'd likely be annoyed at the opposition for making a big deal out of it

I read about 70 pages around a Henry Green novel. Their prose styles have similarities.

Several of the GOP have even buddied up to Russia in the wake of things being uncovered over the last few years too.

and i'm noting that if there were similar events but they had benefited a democratic candidate we wouldn't be horrified in fact we'd likely be annoyed at the opposition for making a big deal out of it

― Mordy, Wednesday, July 24, 2019 2:16 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are you actually fucking serious rn

and i'm noting that if there were similar events but they had benefited a democratic candidate we wouldn't be horrified in fact we'd likely be annoyed at the opposition for making a big deal out of it

― Mordy, Wednesday, July 24, 2019 3:16 PM (one minute ago)

gtfo I would not be annoyed at the guy pointing out and laying out the facts that Russians helped Hillary get elected

"Broaden the aperture"--check out the big brain on Adam Schiff.

1) there were similar events, and the Dem candidate reported them to the FBI
2) who cares if "we" would be "horrified", that's totally missing the point. Dems should point out that Repubs have 0 interest in a "report on Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election", which is what the Mueller Report was, ie it wasn't a "report on Trump campaign colluding with Russia". For a party that bangs on endlessly about patriotism, this shows hypocrisy; that they don't care about protecting our elections if it may in any way implicate their guy. That their only interest here is to protect their guy, not the country.

you can't really lay out like 4 nested hypotheticals and call it 'noting'

wait wait slow down are you saying the Republicans are guilty of hypocrisy?!????

*grabs smelling salts*

oh shit they might be! i gotta look into this

lol I knew that reaction would come. everyone here knows that's beyond obvious. but Dems often fail to point it out and take them to task on it. this is yet another example.

chutzpacrisy

is my sniglet for the day

you're welcome

The Deplorable Zeroes of Chutzpacrisy

Both Sides Do It at it again.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/Both_Sides_%28Phil_Collins%29.jpg/220px-Both_Sides_%28Phil_Collins%29.jpg

White house lawn, how unpredictable really.
Couldn't he just die , in extreme pain or something.

I’m thinking death on the can, Zinger burger in his hand.

Death on the can
Zinger burger in his hand
You're planning for a war with or without Iran
Building a police state with the Ku Klux Klan

Republican doublethink is scary.
Just listening to the press conference.

Well, this is interesting.

They'd better not miss

It's hard to predict what story comes out of these things, but for what it's worth--and this is Canada, so take it with a grain of salt--when I was in the car after the hearings, the story on Toronto's big all-news station was collapsed into 1) Mueller made clear that Trump wasn't exonerated (not that that wasn't clear already), and 2) he can be charged once out of office. If it's not a right-wing outlet, maybe those are the two easiest headlines to grab onto.

That's what I saw even splashed on POLITICO's front page.

yeah I don't think this is a "win" for Trump the way the idiots on CNN are saying it is. lets not forget that "Mueller totally exonerates Trump - Barr" was the first headline to come out of this thing

like yeah the whole Mueller-as-savior-of-democracy thing is pretty embarrassing in retrospect but I think most people aren't brainbroken enough yet to realize that laws literally do not apply to powerful Republicans

Is this all you’ve been talking about all day

I was following Boris’ cabinet announcements to make myself feel better as an American

In the “I’m not alone” sense

Sadly very different than the “I’m never alone bcz Jesus” sense

frogbs: I was out and didn't see CNN tonight, but--while they may have had a couple of people on saying the hearings were good for Trump--I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have been their overall conclusion. Whatever you think of CNN, they despise Trump there (many run-ins between Trump and their news people, Jim Acosta most prominently). Their four evening shows obsessively enumerate whatever lies he tweeted that day every single night. So much so, it's oppressive. They had one thing up on their crawl machine during the entire hearings: "Mueller: Trump not exonerated." They didn't change it once.

So the new GOP spin seems to be that Mueller couldn't exonerate Trump anyway it wasn't a thing he could do. He didn't have the power.
Not the facts when examined don't exonerate him as Mueller responded to Barr's initial announcement with.

🤔🤔🤔

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier who is being held on federal sex trafficking charges, was found injured and in a fetal position in his cell at a New York City jail, sources close to the investigation told NBC News on Wednesday night.

Epstein, 66, was found semi-conscious with marks on his neck in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan some time in the last two days, the sources said. Epstein is on suicide watch, two sources said.

Two sources told NBC News that Epstein may have tried to hang himself, while a third source cautioned that the injuries weren't serious, questioning whether Epstein might have staged an attack or a suicide attempt to get a transfer to another facility.

Nothing to see here!

I was following Boris’ cabinet announcements to make myself feel better as an American

Good luck with that.

And please, it's Bojo now.

NO CUTE NICKNAMES.

yeah, part of the normalisation process innit? JUst want to get the guy out as fast as possible.
Both sides of the Atlantic need rather sweeping revolutions, innit.
Or just surrender to the continual spin.

I believe we call him Britain Trump?

I was saying Boooris

That Republican press conference last night was quite absurd wasn't it?
Shades of the playground, at least in the support of trump. Imagine you had been President and done nothing wrong for 3 years and had somebody witch-hunting you? Like not continually and almost endlessly finding new ways of showing off how utterly corrupt and corrupting you are. But like sitting there being all innocent, not breaking down government, destroying the nation's reputation across teh globe and being a general laughing stock.

I guess I'm not seeing much actual concentrated GOP where they're not already being shown in a position of wrongness so I'm not getting the underlying epistemology. & i think it was during that press conference that Nunes was talking about Democrats existing in another world, since they didn't see things the same way. Interesting inversion, innit?

back to epstein's very normal, definitely-not-an-assassination-or-a-warning suicide attempt for a sec

Another inmate in that jail, where Epstein is being held without bail, has been questioned about the incident.

NBC reported that the inmate was Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Orange County, New York, police officer who was arrested in December 2016 and accused of killing four men in an alleged cocaine distribution conspiracy.

Sources told WNBC that Tartaglione claimed that he did not see anything happen to Epstein, and said he did not touch him. Tartaglione’s lawyer told the station that his client and Epstein get along with each other, and that Epstein was seen at the jail Wednesday and appeared to be fine.

Tartaglione has pleaded not guilty in his case. Prosecutors announced in March they would seek the death penalty for the ex-cop.

*thinkyfaceemjoji.png*

lmao toilet paper usa does it again

As Donald Trump addressed a rightwing crowd in Washington on Tuesday, the audience roared in support – but it was a doctored onscreen display that ultimately took center stage.

At a student summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA, the president stood before what looks, to the casual observer, very much like the US presidential seal. A thorough examination by the Washington Post, however, reveals some odd tweaks to the image.

First, the eagle has not one but two heads – making it look a lot like Russia’s coat of arms. And instead of holding arrows, as the bird does in the US seal, it’s holding golf clubs.

In other words, a proud presidential symbol was apparently reworked to shame Trump over two of the biggest targets of anti-Trump criticism – Russian involvement in the 2016 election and excessive golfing – and it was displayed behind the president for all to see.

How this happened remains a mystery. The Post spoke with a White House representative who said officials hadn’t seen the image in advance. A spokesperson for Turning Point USA, meanwhile, told the paper he was stumped as to the origins of the image, characterizing it as “a last-minute A/V mistake”. “I can’t figure out who did it yet,” the spokesman said, adding that he didn’t know where the image had come from.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/45dd557db62183d6d05272275e257bc16bfd3591/0_132_3000_1799/master/3000.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ead1d987054569abade0fb673a529e3a