US Politics, November 2019: These people are truly sick.

the most infuriating thing about these hearings and all the other ones is the Republicans' assumption that it's somehow a sign of liberal bias to think that Trump is a giant dumbass

This is an interesting tidbit regarding what may happen during a Senate trial. I don't know how likely it really is, but this plus some of the rumors I'm seeing that Trump wants a full blown trial makes me think the Senate phase may be more consequential than it initially appeared.

This changed my take of what a Senate trial will look like. Dramatically. https://t.co/gkrRtT8CGp via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 22, 2019

already know exactly how the trial is gonna go

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

also it seems...somewhat irrelevant.

It’s not particularly relevant to whether Trump committed a crime, should be impeached, is a dumbass, etc. If you’re going to take a consistent line on whether state interference is a big deal, it’s probably not great but Trump and Poroshenko pretty much kissed and made up afterwards.

In his capacity as a defence lawyer (lol) Giuliani is probably within his rights to advance it as a grand conspiracy against Trump, in the same way people advance theories of a grand conspiracy against Weinstein, etc.

xpost If all this shit comes down to Roberts calling balls and strikes, then expect another public "for the good of the country" dump akin to the 2000 election.

already know exactly how the trial is gonna go

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

― frogbs, Friday, November 22, 2019 8:45 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the? china? connection???

my question about that TPM article is, would House subpoenas of Bolton, Mulvaney, Giuliani and Pompeo have any weight in the Senate trial? Would Roberts have to rule on them? Because I don’t see how the republican-controlled Senate itself would have any interest in voting to compel their attendance

Peggy Noonan came off the sauce long enough to bang this out:

What became obvious in the hearings was the sober testimony from respectable diplomats—not disgruntled staffers with nutty memoirs but people of stature who don’t ordinarily talk—about how the administration operates. It became clear in a new and public way that pretty much everyone around the president has been forced for three years to work around his poor judgment and unpredictability in order to do their jobs. He no doubt knows this and no doubt doesn’t care. Because he’s the boss, they’ll do it his way.

But we saw how damaging this is, how ultimately destructive, not only to coherence and respectability but to the president himself.

After Thursday’s hearings I felt some free-floating sympathy for high Trump appointees who joined early. You can say they knew what they signed up for, but it’s human to have hope, and they surely had it when they came aboard. They were no doubt ambitious—they wanted a big job—but they probably wanted to do good, too. They were optimistic—“How bad can it be?” And there would have been vanity—“I can handle him.” But they couldn’t. He not only doesn’t know where the line is; he has never wanted to know, so he can cross it with impunity, without consciousness of a bad act or one that might put him in danger. They were no match for his unpredictability and resentments, which at any moment could undo anything.

As to impeachment itself, the case has been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing. How will they hold a lengthy trial with a case this clear? Who exactly will be the president’s witnesses, those who’d testify he didn’t do what he appears to have done, and would never do it?

we already know exactly how the trial is gonna go

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

xpost How I read it is that the House can issue those subpoenas, and Roberts can rule on their legality - the fast version of what would happen if they were issue now and slowly made their way to the SC - but a Senate majority could in theory vote *against*/override any ruling by Roberts. Is that right?

I don't even know if Roberts has any power except to "preside" and pick a nice gown based on Gilbert and Sullivan like his old boss Rehnquist did.

You can say they knew what they signed up for, but it’s human to have hope

Hope for Trump to actually be a decent president? LOOOOOOOL, they're craven opportunists, every one of them.

xxp that was my reading of it too

After Thursday’s hearings I felt some free-floating sympathy for high Trump appointees who joined early. You can say they knew what they signed up for, but it’s human to have hope, and they surely had it when they came aboard. They were no doubt ambitious—they wanted a big job—but they probably wanted to do good, too.

oh yeah, in early 2017, Scott Pruitt looked at himself in the mirror, adjusted his tie one more time, slipped on his suit coat, and "i want to do good. i am leading the charge for the protection of the environment and human health." then he stepped outside and ran into betsy devos, who made was similarly proud about how she was going to improve education for low-income students. then they saw ben carson, earnestly asking a stranger on the street if he knew what HUD was and where this HUD might be, because he knew he worked there now and he wanted to do good there. then they all stepped into the hired car together and laughed demonically for half an hour while chugging blood

i wish i had noonan's sense of wonder. this impeachment case is clear! what's left for the senate to do? laaaaaah deee daaaaah! OH, what could this be? is this a pigeon? is it the golden hour again? i can't stop dreaming of ronald reagan's chiseled body!

Hope for Trump to actually be a decent president?

Hope that because he's a fool with a short attention span they could do their jobs without interference. I don't think they were crazy to hope this. For plenty of people in the federal government, it's true.

Noonan wrote Reagan's honeyed words, so there's nothing, not even Popov vodka, that can't persuade her to see the promise of a male Republican

xp while for people like Pruitt and DeVos, it was more "because he's a fool with a short attention span I can easily use him to accomplish my goal of crushing Americans I don't approve of," which in DeVos's case has basically been true and in Pruitt's case would be true if he weren't, even by these guys' standards, a colossal idiot and fuckup.

pruitt got what he wanted, and his successor is carrying out his vision without the public controversy

I'd say as a general thing that there's a charitable read on Noonan's perspective wherein people are rarely the villains of their own stories and they often unaccountably believe they're doing the right thing even when their actions demonstrably harm others. But my own less charitable perspective is that the Trump administration is and has been disproportionately filled with bad actors who would gleefully self-identify as such if asked. Demons draped in flesh, if you will.

don just can't quit vlad :(

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/trump-russian-conspiracy-theory-fox-friends-fiona-hill-crowdstrike-ukraine.html

When he says “the server” does he mean the “DNC” server? I don’t understand this theory. Why would it physically be in Ukraine?

high Trump appointees

personally I always smoke a righteous doob before accepting a position of public trust

They physically took hold of the server after they hacked it? Why not just take it in the first place?

The same reason why Clinton literally had to dip her emails in acid. Clearly the Ukrainians neglected to acid wash their server.

I don’t understand how this is convincing MAGA country when it’s super half baked

MAGA country doesn't/can't read. Like the GOPers who didn't read the transcripts etc. Ignorance is bliss. It's like the fight scene in "They Live."

MAGA country already believes this, they don't need convincing

Why even make a theory then?

I might be missing something. The whole thing seems odd. Like ukraine coordinated with the democrats after the hacked the server in order to take hold of the server to cover up the hacking?

for party of Law and Order they sure do tolerate (or even encourage) a great deal of corruption & other "rule bending" from their ppl, while the freewheeling godless Dems don't to anywhere near the same degree

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Thursday, November 21, 2019 11:58 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time."

― jesus is zing (symsymsym),

Ha I thought of this quoted when I posted that, but couldn't remember it well enough to even google it effectively

Ukraine helped Dems hack themselves to guarantee Trump's loss, which is why he won overwhelmingly, with no help from anyone else.

It's just some muddled bullshit rattling around Trump's skull that he likes to repeat even though it makes no sense. The rest of the Republican establishment has to at least make a passing effort to act like it makes sense so that they don't accidentally upset Trump's reality bubble.

xxp

And that's why corrupt Ukraine must be compelled to investigate corrupt Ukraine's interference in the 2016 election.

The conspiracy theory claimed that the company — which had investigated a hack of a Democratic National Committee (DNC) server — had planted evidence on the server to implicate Russia, and that the FBI had failed to take possession of the server to verify that claim.[11] Although the FBI did not take possession of the server, CrowdStrike had provided the FBI with an image and traffic logs of the server to conduct its own analysis, which led the Mueller Report to concur with the intelligence community that the server had been hacked by Russian intelligence.[1][12

This clarified it a little. Still a little weird. Are the hacks themselves supposed to have been staged as a setup? Or was the framing done during the investigation, just opportunistically. And if so, why did democrats suddenly lose interest in the real perpetrators? Especially considering—say for a moment you’re a pizzagater or a q anon—then you’d believe the hacks revealed evidence of serious crimes.

More importantly, the poll shows more independents now oppose impeachment than support it, a significant change from Emerson's polling in October. The new poll found 49 percent oppose impeachment compared to 34 percent who support it. In October, 48 percent of independents polled supported impeachment, against 39 percent who opposed.

Since October, Emerson has found Trump’s job approval rating jump by 5 points, from 43 percent to 48 percent.

This country is fucked, blow it up and start over

Trump wants to prove “no one” helped him get elected. But the hacks did have some effect—debatable how much—and were done by *someone*. So even if russia was framed, why would effect his concern that the fact of the hacks undermine the legitimacy of his election?

I might be missing something. The whole thing seems odd. Like ukraine coordinated with the democrats after the hacked the server in order to take hold of the server to cover up the hacking?

Trump has consistently sounded confused by his own theory - like he is getting bits of other theories mixed up, or being fed lines he only partially understands. That said, the clip doesn’t seem to support the idea he is claiming Ukraine hacked the DNC.

The most coherent conspiracy theory is that the DNC looked for a scapegoat after someone internal hacked the emails and saw an opportunity to gin up a collusion narrative by hiring a firm that would blame it on Russia, which they could domino into blaming it on Trump. Crowdstrike isn’t a Ukrainian company but has done a lot of work with the Atlantic Council around Ukrainian stuff. There is no evidence this is true and it doesn’t sound like Trump can really get it straight in his own head.

MAGA country already believes this, they don't need convincing

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, November 22, 2019 11:17 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Why even make a theory then?

― treeship., Friday, November 22, 2019 11:17 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I might be missing something. The whole thing seems odd. Like ukraine coordinated with the democrats after the hacked the server in order to take hold of the server to cover up the hacking?

― treeship

we really have to stop trying to look for logic or hidden truth in their actions. it is an open ploy to confuse people into doubting the truth. it doesn't matter how dumb it is, if people believe it. and a dumb theory that makes no sense can still grow and take on a life of its own:

One day after the House wrapped up public hearings in its impeachment inquiry, two Republican senators opened their own investigation into Ukraine.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to the National Archives seeking records from Obama Administration-era contacts with Ukrainian officials.

The request appears to set up a bid in the Senate to support a counternarrative related to the investigations sought by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

one level above the total mouthbreathers who just accept trump's ukraine narrative, you have conservatives like my dad who like to think of themselves as "investigative" - the johnson/grassley actions are red meat to them. of COURSE there's something to this ukraine narrative! real life senators are demanding action, they wouldn't do that if it wasn't real!

Its all super bizarre. If the whole thing was a ploy to smear trump, why would crowdstrike have planted evidence that russia hacked the server? Why not plant evidence that someone from trump’s campaign did?

Usually conspiracies have some kind of internal coherence, even though they’re based on false assumptions

embed from nymag reggie link^

Remember, "Crowdstrike" is the conspiracy theory that Ukraine and the DNC framed Russia. Here's President Trump again pushing this claim, supported by Republicans: that Russia is innocent, didn't interfere in the 2016 election. Who did it? Ukraine and the DNC. pic.twitter.com/mmSjgKTQJq

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 22, 2019

How is this possibly happening. It's just unbelievable.

These dummies even know the story, know he's full of shit, everybody knows the story but one person

They don't believe anything. It doesn't matter what their story is. They're playing the game. The deflection is really far fetched proportionate to their desperation to deflect. The narrative is in place in whole or part originating from Russia, and they're rolling with it in an effort to distract. In the meantime the actual series of events that are the premise of the investigation are being treated as confusing aimless nonsense that is also so very boring "Yawn sorry what are you even saying you dems are just talking in circles are you guys feeling OK? You sound delirious..."

Trump's hearing is perfect, therefore it is not possible to overhear a shouted phonemail.

Trump's health is the best it can be, therefore it is not possible he had a health scare.

Trump's is super successful, therefore he cannot fail.

Trump is confused, therefore it is confusing.

treesh, stop trying to make sense of this, there isn't an logic to it, just desperate straw grasping.

many xps to treesh

extremely related: think of how trump/giuliani were pushing Zelensky to announce he was investigating biden. they didn't care about the substance of the information. they cared about the PERCEPTION that he was being investigated

(Heh, phonemail.)

Does anyone believe America recovers from the Trump years? If you do think that we can right the ship and save our country, please explain your theory.

it's natural to look for logic or coherence in theories, especially when they come from the president of the united states.

but when you give the benefit of the doubt to trump on this, that he actually has some sort of point that he's not expressing clearly, you are playing his game and losing.

Usually conspiracies have some kind of internal coherence, even though they’re based on false assumptions

Aha, but if they planted evidence it was someone from the Trump camp they’d have to turn it over to the FBI, which they didn’t want to do ipso facto, cogito ergo sum, it all makes sense.

But yes, there is no real point in trying to make sense of it.