The September 2019 US Politics Thread is great Great GREAT GR8

No one can predict how voters will react. The safe bet is to do the right thing.

I mean if nothing else, lookit: the Mueller probe resulting in nothing substantive did nothing but make the Blob feel vindicated enough to openly commit high crimes because he felt like he was untouchable. And now we're here. Can you imagine the stupid shit he'll pull when the senate refuses to give him the boot?

They should drag this out as long as possible, dredging up everything they possibly can. He will react by shrieking into twitter all day long, which apparently doesn’t hurt him with his voters, but it certainly doesn’t help.

My point being: even when impeachment goes nowhere, Trump will inevitably freebase undiluted hubris for the remainder of the time leading up to the election, constantly reminding everyone of what a tremendous turd he is, and the GOP will be inexorably linked to every one of his bullshit actions for having given him a pass to continue unhindered.

Maybe idk

This all could backfire. The democrats best play is trying to hold him accountable for as many of his crimes as possible. And then they can say, “we did everything we can but the republicans are protecting a corrupt administration”

a president impeached by the House but exonerated by the Senate will energize turnout for Democrats.

I agree w this for what it's worth. will also energize GOP turnout, is the problem.

Will it, though? If they view their Don as truly Teflonned, individual republicans may decide that their vote won't be necessary to secure his inevitable massive victory.

there are fewer of them

xp

I mean this crystal ball shit is all a fool's game, really, but it's fun to game out the results as if the world still made a lick of sense.

have we posted this pareene take? https://newrepublic.com/article/155182/impeachment-trump-america-deserves-answers. it's the right way of thinking about the goals/tactics IMO.

also i'd be surprised if over 50 senators vote to impeach unless public approval is like 80%.

there are fewer of them

xp

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 27, 2019 12:36 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i was gonna say exactly this!

hi5 toots

I agree w this for what it's worth. will also energize GOP turnout, is the problem.

Nah. They're at maximum white-hot shriek already, all day long. They've hit their ceiling, and it's something like 44%.

they all came out in 2018 and we beat them

boom

Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney

"And the committee has set a schedule of 5 depositions:

October 2: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch
October 3: Ambassador Kurt Volker
October 7: Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent
October 8: Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl
October 10: Ambassador Gordon Sondland"

and Pompeo subpoenaed

And when he says no?

Oh, ok:

Wow: House Intel Committee is preparing for impeachment hearings as soon as next week. Cmte to move as “expeditiously as possible”, @RepAdamSchiff tells CNN.

If WH stonewalls, “It will strengthen the case on obstruction,” he added

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) September 27, 2019

unperson otm re an "energized" GOP turnout --- no republican who was going to abstain or, worse, vote dem in this election is suddenly going to change their mind if we go ahead with impeachment. it'll just rile up ppl that were voting trump 100% anyway

Yeah, and fuck them for being turds.

if this whole thing relies on them subpoeneing and requesting documents and testimony it won't work, Trump will just stonewall and refuse to deliver anything/claim executive privelege. As I said way upthread, the only way this works is if the Dems cultivate a rat/source within the White House that leaks/volunteers info. Otherwise this will get tied up in court and the SC conceivably sides with Trump after months and months of delay.

out on a limb here, but my suspicion is this wouldn’t be moving forward if something of that nature wasn’t already in place

i just did a really loud joker laugh that my former colleagues @mmfa are very familiar with as i read this headline https://t.co/szcWAKQhH7

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) September 27, 2019

Sex won't age me. Alcohol won't age me. Finishing A Little Life won't age me. Explaining things will.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 27, 2019 12:14 PM (two hours ago)

<3

you love to see it etc
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/463445-federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-detaining-migrant-children

lol Rudy was going to speak at a Kremlin-supported thing for cash, with Putin reportedly in attendance, but ... Rudy had to cancel. Sad-face.

How much is Putin enjoying all this?

a borschtl and a peck

And a hug around the neck.

Volker just quit his Ukraine envoy job. I guess something came up?

broken but a student newspaper!

What a scoop by the student newspaper at ASU! Three sources have now confirmed this news to CNN: https://t.co/zKDjgbGifD

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 27, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/carl-bernstein-sources-say-william-barr-preparing-to-deliver-evidence-of-a-deep-state-conspiracy

oh fer chirst's sake

That's literally the only site reporting this

They’re going to try something like this though. Trump and Giuliani already laying the groundwork.

Alleging myriad conspirators at the highest level of government worked for Stalin

They already have tried it. It hasn't caught on.

xp not helpful, as usual

still surreal to see citations like this

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

(that's from the subpoena for mike pompeo)

I mean, if the definition of "deep state" is essentially "career government employees," then sure, most of the government is "deep state" and there are probably some "deep state" actors concerned about Trump. Ironically, not least by Trump essentially fostering his own deep state of shadow government conspiracy theories and enablers. I heard a hilarious NPR piece about the Crowdstrike/Ukraine theory yesterday, where the reporter conceded the conspiracy theory is virtually impossible to unravel because it is so batshit and nonsensical and based on invented bullshit.

Re crowd strike: they simply performed bot and hack protection for the dnc, attacks that were coming from
The Ukraine, no? And somehow In trumps moms ghis became “crowd strike has hilary’s server in the Ukraine”?

tumps mom hgris

derp state amirite

xpost As they tried to explain on NPR (because it is inexplicable), Crowdstrike, which I guess is American and based in CA, was hired to look into the DNC hack. The owner of Crowdstrike may be Russian-American, but somehow, in the game of telephone that is the right wing conspiracy theory echo chamber, it was surmised/guessed/invented that the owner of Crowdstrike or the person that bought Crowdstrike was actually Ukrainian (he's not), and that he was actually the one interfering in the 2016 election, not the Russians. Ergo, the mysterious key-to-it-all server (which does not exist, because all that stuff was apparently stored in various since-decommissioned cloud servers) must be in Ukraine. It's entirely bullshit, and impossible to disprove, because it was invented. Both fascinating and sad.

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/765186504/what-the-cybersecurity-company-crowdstrike-has-to-do-with-the-trump-ukraine-matt

CORNISH: So CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity firm. Their name first came up in the news back in 2016 during the election. Why?

BRODERICK: They were the firm brought in by the DNC to investigate the hack that took place in 2016. And they're most known for being the firm that debunked the initial idea that it was conducted by a lone hacker. They were the people who basically said this was done by two groups of Russian-backed hacking outlets.

CORNISH: So they introduced the idea of it being a cyberattack, basically, from another country, foreign intervention rather than a random lone wolf.

BRODERICK: Yes. They're sort of the ones that started the whole idea of collusion with Russia.

CORNISH: Now, how does Ukraine come in?

BRODERICK: It's very confusing, but let's see what I can do here. So on the Internet, things move really fast. It's like a huge game of telephone. So once this firm caught the attention of the far-right online, they discovered that it was owned by a Russian American man who had previously done some work for a think tank called the Atlantic Council. It's a D.C.-based think tank, sort of works alongside NATO. And it's a pretty innocuous place. It does research on misinformation and digital warfare, things like that.

And there's a Ukrainian oligarch who was on one of the advisory boards for the Atlantic Council. And it seems somewhere along the line, the Ukrainian oligarch became the owner of CrowdStrike. This is not true, of course. But when things are moving so fast online, facts start to combine together, and it becomes very confusing.

CORNISH: So the idea is people who are on the far-right, conspiracy theorists, went looking for a connection, went looking to say, who are these CrowdStrike guys? And once they do enough looking, they're able to find a Ukrainian oligarch who they say, aha, this is the connection. So what about this server that the president implied was somehow in Ukraine? I mean, he - on this call talked to Ukraine's leader and brought up CrowdStrike. What would he be looking for?

BRODERICK: It's a common misconception that there is some sort of missing server from the DNC hack, but it's not true. The hack involved 140 cloud-based servers, and they were all decommissioned in 2016. There was no single server that was, you know, stolen in the dead of night and smuggled to the Ukraine or something. This was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of both the technology involved and the firm involved. And trying to make sense of it is almost impossible because it's not really a logical idea.

CORNISH: You reached out to CrowdStrike. They said, look, we have nothing to do with this. But can I ask, in Ukraine, would Ukraine's president know what President Trump was talking about?

BRODERICK: I have to wonder what the Ukrainian president was thinking when he heard it.

Bill Barr must really get his rocks off on the power that comes from high office and being the 'indispensable man' for the most powerful individual in the world, because he is so obviously willing to do whatever stupid shit Trump asks him to do in order to get into and remain in that position.