The September 2019 US Politics Thread is great Great GREAT GR8

yeah ok that's what I thought. i work with bot protection and DDOS defense systems all the time in my job. Glad to know my assumption was correct. I feel for anyone who works at that company to get dragged into this shit.

This morning I wondered if the 'whistleblower' and the whistleblower's sources are the same people who released that statement ... 2 years ago? about people in the WH trying to keep Trump from his worst impulses. Though I wonder how many people survived in their jobs around the WH after that happened.

xxp how is Bill Barr himself not “deep state” by any definition?

There is a kind of karmic hilarity to the fact that in order to protect Trump, his staff centralized the materials that could doom him in a highly classified system that can't be erased or manipulated without a record of access by a very small number of people.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 28, 2019

So I don't know that anyone can answer this, but what would it take legally-speaking to pull all this stuff from the super-secret server? Is there any real way to show that these calls don't contain material that needs to be protected?

Only one thing is known - a bunch of people over the age of 120 will determine the answers

They are trying to stop ME, because I am fighting for YOU! pic.twitter.com/xiw4jtjkNl

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2019

"the democrats want to take away your guns, they want to take away your healthcare, they want to take away your vote, they want to take away your freedom, they want to take away your judges, they want to take away everything"

sorry to post attempted propaganda, but look at what he reteweeted earlier:

Sen. Graham: “to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane”https://t.co/pBdQzqhVGx pic.twitter.com/wbS9JKVsUl

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 25, 2019

graham looks AWFUL there! how is that not worse than nixon during the debate with JFK? he looks like he's shitting the entire time, he obviously doesn't believe anything he's saying. it's crazy how many people seem to trust "lindsey"

At what fucking point will Fox and the GOP look at each other and be like “hey, maybe time to cut him loose.” What kind of future do they see in this? Utter nihilism.

They're hoping they can prove laws don't matter. The future they want is corporate fascism with the rule of law and democracy utterly destroyed. They do not know how to cling to power in any other way because a sizable majority of Americans want something different.

As with all of Lindsay Graham's public utterances, I hope his responses to the media were to the liking of whoever has a gun pressed to his mother's temple.

Michael Keaton to play Lindsay in the inevitable Trump biopic

good morning!

would it take legally-speaking

This is always been sort of a "how many divisions has the pope" situation. Basically, everyone in the Executive Branch works for the President. Almost certainly, everyone who holds a gun does. Currently, they are not going to exercise force against their boss, even theoretically. As long as that remains the case we need public opinion, and the abstract appeal to abstract concepts like "rule of law."

Those concepts are cherry-pickable in the extreme. The cultural right (which is pretty well-armed) loved them in the Obama era and now? Not so much. Now they see judges as "tyrants in black" and the House majority as illegitimate, so they have no reason to respect rulings coming fro. Either of those sources.

The biggest issue as I understand it is that classified server is super-secret double-probation top-tier classified, so it's not just a matter of dumping it out. The abuse of power in this instance is that there is by all means stuff in there that really probably *should* be there - secret kill lists, etc. - but these turds dropped in stuff that had no place there.

Optics:

The only two Secretary of States in history to be subpoenaed during impeachment inquiries https://t.co/D1YSvy0KwI

— Adam Blickstein (@AdamBlickstein) September 29, 2019

kissinger never recovered iirc

Kissinger looks like he's waiting for a chance to belch after his meal of a kindergarten-aged child an hour earlier.

Kissinger looks like he is contorting himself to hide in a giant vase that only he can see, and Pompeo looks like he is pretending he can't find him.

Anyway, per what reasonable people have pointed out:

Anyway, the “what if we fire up their base” conversation makes sense in a *midterm,* when both parties’ vote tends to decline; anything that wakes up the other team is bad.

In a presidential year, the other team is turning out anyway.

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 29, 2019

The president has retweeted a bot that takes his tweets and retweets and rewrites them to be about sharks pic.twitter.com/jiobGi0Jem

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) September 29, 2019

i wonder how much historians will point to this presidency as the beginning of the end of american hegemony

xpost That may be peak 2019 social media

xp a lot, imo

I suppose it depends on how palpable the sense of relief is when he's gone. "thank you" vs. simply "thank God."

he will not be gone until he's GONE

thx Clinton

Lol it could be worse, Chelsea could be running for office.

2028 is just around the corner

woke up, it's a Chelsea mourning

Personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday that he won’t cooperate with House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) in his investigation into President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal.

During an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos asked Giuliani if he would cooperate with Schiff’s investigation into Trump’s attempt to pressure the president of Ukraine to work with Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden.

“I wouldn’t cooperate with Adam Schiff,” Giuliani said, arguing that Schiff should be “removed” and replaced with a “neutral person.”

“So that’s your answer, you’re not going to cooperate?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“I didn’t say that. I said I will considerate it,” the lawyer responded.

“You said you wouldn’t do it,” Stephanopoulos pointed out. “You said you will not cooperate with Adam Schiff.”

“I said I will consider it,” Giuliani insisted.

the rudy hypnosis content you crave can only be found on ilx premium. it is called 'this is hell and so are you'

https://i.imgur.com/5oRQVuX.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/nCBGXsu.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/GTiBTpj.gif
https://i.imgur.com/5uEjmw6.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/jkf1DUI.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/4SqpnpE.gif
https://i.imgur.com/IZQKI7I.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/Dgzq3bR.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/5dfIuxo.gif

Nosferatuuuuu

AAAAAAAA

It's kinda unclear at times whether he or Trump is the more impaired of the two.

or actually, in order to make the flow of the living embarrassment flow more smoothly around the perimeter in a clockwise fashion,

https://i.imgur.com/5oRQVuX.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/nCBGXsu.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/GTiBTpj.gif
https://i.imgur.com/5dfIuxo.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/jkf1DUI.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/5uEjmw6.gif
https://i.imgur.com/Dgzq3bR.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/IZQKI7I.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/4SqpnpE.gif

to the left of your screen, the cursed apparition of chuck todd appears to only those who are also cursed. rudy cannot unsee it

Thread, there is indeed a deep state, and it is GOP gerrymandering, obstruction & court-stacking:

1/

Funny story. The @FEC puts out a "Weekly Digest" of everything we do, an immensely helpful public resource. Check it out, and subscribe, here:https://t.co/a4yomX2yEJ

— Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) September 27, 2019

nice work ZS!

Chait I know, but stopped clock, this quote is pretty much all the analysis you need of the Ukraine thing and he response:

“They are not-very-bright guys who also happen to be genuinely nuts.”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/ukraine-scandal-trump-downfall-impeachment.html

It's still an open question whether there will be any consequences for Giuliani or anyone else who refuses to cooperate. The mainstream Republican viewpoint is that any Democratic power is by definition illegitimate, so it could be a rough road.

Of course
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/463570-gop-rep-clarifies-comments-he-was-first-house-republican-to-support

Well!

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign made an extraordinary request to executives of top news channels on Sunday, asking them to no longer book Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on their programs.

In a letter addressed to the heads of the major news and cable networks, as well as top news anchors, two top Biden campaign advisers make the case that by peddling routine falsehoods about the work of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, Giuliani’s presence on the airwaves is editorially untenable.

I think that Chait article nicely summarizes the basic factual narrative that, if anything can, will put the noose around Trump's neck and take down large numbers of the flunkies he has surrounded himself with. It does not read like a diatribe, but more like the opening statement of a prosecutor, detailing the crime they are about to prove to the jury.

loooool can’t wait for this guy to be Our President

“Our morality doesn’t come from government, it comes from Jerusalem.” Dan Crenshaw, U.S. Representative#qotd #quoteoftheday #totd #thoughtoftheday pic.twitter.com/KdykncdZW8

— CUFI (@CUFI) September 28, 2019

It took me a minute to parse that. Is the confusion intentional?

jerusalem is where the apocalypse is going to start, soon. trump reigns as king cyrus. um, DUH

I can't even look at that Karl Malone multiple Gulianis gif, have to pass by it

https://i.imgur.com/jkf1DUI.gif

lol

"our morality doesn't come from our government. It comes from Jerusalem. My eyepatch comes from Party City"

It's so amazing that as soon as someone accuses Trump of something, there's a realization that the accuser has engaged in the very thing they are accusing Trump of doing. What are the odds?!!!??

no YOU tell US what the odds are!!

At least for the last couple of days reporters have been pretty good at stopping the GOP when they start spouting nonsensical talking points.