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

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Hmm. Thoughts on the idea of the Democrats just keeping the investigations open, and then not sending letters of impeachment forward for several months?

I don't think this will happen unless they are planning to open some very significant new lines of inquiry in the very near future. Haven't seen anything that indicates this is happening.

the timing of the guilty verdict in the roger stone trial (which potentially implicates trump in perjury -- removing the favorite "conservative" rebuttal to the very reasonable question: why is lying about a blowjob grounds for impeachment, but lying about conspiring with our historic adversary to affect a president election is okay?) coming at the end of Impeachment Week 1 gives me a tiny bit of hope that there's some strategy behind all of this

Stone timing was coincidence, no?

There is a strategy, and Schiff has been terrific. If y'all are disappointed, blame the eighty-plus percent of Republicans who support Dear Leader.

Trump absolutely believes this theory while also being completely unable to explain it if pressed.

Name a single thing Trump believes, of which this is not true.

Whoever mentioned 'kayfabe' upthread is OTM; it's the perfect way to describe the right-wing conspiracy ecosystem. Nobody really believes any of it, but they (meaning everyone, every member of the base, not just the talent and Mr. McMahon) have learned that if they all behave exactly as if they do believe it--and never, ever break character--real leverageable political power can be conjured from thin air

you know, like religion

If y'all are disappointed, blame the eighty-plus percent of Republicans who support Dear Leader.

Well, yeah. The question we are faced with is if 80%+ of the GOP support a lunatic, is there nothing that can be done? I guess we're going to find out.

Perhaps some time could be spent putting the ball in the White House's court, and trying to make a public case that it's Trump's fault that things aren't clearer:

"Mr. President, you and your surrogates complained that hearings were not public. We duly gave you public hearings. You complained that we had not taken a vote. We duly took a vote.

"You complained that the witnesses had no firsthand evidence. We deposed witnesses with firsthand evidence. Indeed, if you had not forbidden your staff from cooperating, we could have deposed witnesses with even better information.

"To date, we have subpoenaed X witnesses who have refused to appear, and issued XX subpoenas for documents that you have refused to provide. The American people want and deserve to know the truth. It is the Congress's right - nay, duty to seek it.

"If you have nothing to hide, Mr. President, then you should not be afraid to permit your staffers to testify. If you have nothing to hide, then you should not be afraid to provide the documents we have legally compelled you to provide.

"If you want this process to be completed swiftly 'for the good of the nation,' then you need to begin participating. If you do not, then you - you, sir - are the reason it is dragging on."

No, of course it won't budge MAGA chuds. But it could be a useful piece of theater.

(Find + Replace “Mr. President” with “you evil piece of shit”

if democrats had it in them not to be the washington generals to the republicans' harlem globetrotters then we'd have universal healthcare and free state university tuition imho

if Democrats had ponies that would trample the faces of Senate seats now held by Republicans, we'd have them too imo

Well let’s get these fuckers some ponies than.

Profiles in courage

WASHINGTON — President Trump refused to commit Friday to signing legislation overwhelmingly passed by Congress to support pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, saying that he supported the protesters but that President Xi Jinping of China was “a friend of mine.”

The bill comes as Mr. Trump is trying to strike a trade deal with China, one of the central goals of his presidency. It puts him the delicate position of trying to balance a tricky trade negotiation with China and congressional demands for action to support the pro-democracy protests.

“I stand with Hong Kong,” he said during a nearly hourlong interview on the morning program “Fox & Friends.” “I stand with freedom. I stand with all of the things we want to do. But we’re also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history.”

will china freak at him even saying that much? they certainly did when NBA people said that.

everyone who ever had the thought "govt should be run like a biz" is a fucking moron

I don’t know. But I do know that trade wars are good and easy to win.

xp

Can't let a little thing like "people being beaten and killed" interfere with a trade deal with his BFF, gotcha, thanks for the confirmation

C'mon, it's not like other people are real or anything.

I still have my marker poised over the 'good/bad people on both sides' square on this particular bingo card. Maybe sometime over the weekend?

when his dementia progresses to a point where he is not even semi-lucid, are his supporters going to claim the deep state somehow did something to him?

love how trump's negotiating style is based on projection ie the surest way to success is aggressively kissing the ass of the person across the table and never saying or doing anything that they would get mad about.

when his dementia progresses to a point where he is not even semi-lucid, are his supporters going to claim the deep state somehow did something to him?

he passed that point 2 years ago

Even when he's nothing but an immobile sack of moldering flesh and his capacity for speech has been thoroughly diminished there will be seers and sages on hand to relate to his flock the true meaning of those nonverbal croaks and burbles emitting from his facial sphincter.

who at the same time will call for the heads of any Democrat who tries to decode his obvious mobspeak

https://www.vox.com/2019/11/22/20977752/trump-fox-and-friends-interview-crowdstrike-ukraine-impeachment

this clarified things for me. so apparently the conspiracy is:

1. seth rich leaked the dnc emails
2. they revealed all sorts of malfeasance--including, by some accounts, the business with comet pizza
3. the democratic party murdered him in retaliation
4. they hired crowdstrike to do a sham investigation. crowdstrike fabricated evidence of a russian hack.
5. the idea was, they wanted an espionage story to overshadow the content of the emails. plus, they could tie russia to trump!
6. crowdstrike didn't fully cooperate with the fbi and didn't turn over all the evidence, such as the physical server. it is actually being housed in ukraine, where crowdstrike is based. (it's really based in california but whatever.)
7. the mueller investigation was an attempt to blow up this russia story to take down trump. for some reason the deep state was willing to bring more attention to the damning emails that were leaked.

basically, these people don't think there was a hack.

basically when trump brings up this crowdstrike stuff, he is implying this entire elaborate backstory of conspiracy that goes back to the seth rich stuff.

has he golfed yet?

basically when trump brings up this crowdstrike stuff, he is implying this entire elaborate backstory of conspiracy that goes back to the seth rich stuff.

Not really. The Seth Rich stuff is a very extreme subset of the more general theory that the DNC had bad internal security and the leaks came from disgruntled staffers. Which is not to say there is anything to support that idea.

oh, ok

Did crowdstrike also investigate the podesta leaks? I kee forgetting there were two separate hacking incidents.

doesn't matter i guess

has he golfed yet? where are the tax returns? and does he plan to golf this weekend?

I'm starting to think he should golf some more. Like, everyday. Treat yourself, Mr President.

this clarified things for me. so apparently the conspiracy is:

1. seth rich leaked the dnc emails
2. the press exposed him

3. anon did a phishing attack

4. people were scared/frustrated by the public release of emails and assumed rich was hacked

5. start talking shit that there's a new leaker and it would be amazing

(the latter is my theory, we'll find out soon enough)

_______
I love you treeship, but save your wide-eyed investigation into dumbass Republican conspiracies somewhere else.

oh surprise, the horowitz report all the republicans (and Trump, who talked about it this morning on Fox and Friends) finds no evidence of wrongdoing by the FBI and rebuffs conspiracy claims

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/russia-investigation-inspector-general-report.html

So obviously we will never hear about it again

Lol. They got excited about the criminal referral thinking it was gonna be this blockbuster bust and it's one low level FBI guy and Horowitz is all like "otherwise it was fine"

Watch them realllly focus on that low level FBI guy now

REVEAL THE NAME

PBKR otm why are you guys trying to parse our this garbage

Think of your fellow man
Then go pull down his pants

Would it be illegal for Dems to run ads, for example during NFL games, laying out the case for impeachment? Seems like that’s probably not legal or else we’d see it more. I feel like the Dems are failing to capitalize on the incredibly damning testimony they got.

Doing so would turn impeachment into a wholly partisan political process and would quickly delegitimize it in the eyes of the public. Bad idea. The republicans are the ones who badly want to convince everyone it's nothing but a democratic political ploy, because that neutralizes it.

oh no not wholly partisan

What I really wish they'd do is set aside full day for testimony by congressional historians, constitutional scholars.

A day-long civics class embarrassing these fuckfaces with their "process" objections, "secret dungeon depositions!" etc.

not even drunk history can make most people sit through history

Chris Hayes' monologue before a live studio audience just now was good.