US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

I prefer the guillotine over hemlock

if it remotely resembled the trial of socrates it would be fucking amazing

I keep thinking of the movie Embrace of the Serpent, where the main characters go on an expedition in 1909 and come across a Catholic Mission. And it's brutal, run by a sadistic, asshole priest, but at the core, it at least resembles Catholicism. and then they come back to the same place a little over 30 years later, and now the people of the mission seem to claim they're Christians, but the mission is run by a crazy Brazilian guy who thinks he's the Messiah. the population of the mission has morphed drastically into a crazy, distorted approximation of the previous Catholic mission, but they insist they're Christians.

that is what I think about every time I run into a conservative Christian who claims they are an "insignificant being, made perfect by the love of Christ" out of one side of their mouth. and then call women "cunts" and talk about executing Muslims.

they could all use some ayahuasca

but is it a fact that he's rapidly declining and his handlers are becoming aware etc? ... i guess he does seem less energetic but what does he do right now that requires fast movements? when i catch clips of him at rallies he seems pretty much the same. is he really succumbing to physical collapse before our eyes?

He's not golfing anymore. They've had him come out of the bottom of planes so he only has half a staircase to climb down, and Melania holding his hand on the other side while he clings to railings. He has spaced out in public and stood still, swaying, until someone nudges him to move again. At the rallies, he's getting sweatier faster, and clinging to the podium nearly the whole time, no swaggering or gesturing in the manner of even two years ago. Plus there's the back brace / possible diaper situation I've noted before.

(And since the incident where he asked the girl who just told him her parents had been murdered "and where are they now?," any White House photo op I've seen has had him sitting down while the supplicants have to stand beside him -- but that might not be new, I just noticed it for the first time then due to the extremely weird staging of that extremely horrifying conversation. Feel like it's been a while since he's been filmed magnaminously sweeping into a room to greet waiting dignitaries, or to present a pile of hamberders to female athletes or w/e too, but it's just an impression and wouldn't be a definite indicator of anything.)

Dear god, how had I forgotten 'hamberders'

While I'm sure they'll cover as much as possible to make him seem competent to stand again, rather than lose the idiot base, replacing Pence as running mate would be a massive tell that his handlers and Mitch & Lindsay know most of the air is out of the balloon.

Great post / username / login name triple combo btw, OL.

Great post / username / login name triple combo btw, OL.

from CNN:

If the Labour Party’s election night goes as disastrously as initial results are indicating, the Democratic Party may see a cautionary tale for the 2020 presidential race.

Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn took his party way to the left, leaving the more moderate ground where many voters feel most comfortable, including some in his own party and outside. He promised revolutionary change, a fundamental overhaul of society, heavy new taxes on the rich and a far bigger role for the state in the economy. Sound familiar?

oh jesus christ stfu

xps - Because replacing Pence would be a massive tell, it probably won't happen.

Of course, if Trump were to die any time before the election, the GOP would be well and truly fucked. If he runs, wins, and dies right after the electoral college vote is finalized, the GOP would just carry on, secure in their holding the White House, even if it's the idiot cipher Pence who sits in the Big Chair.

The main rule seems to be to grab at power the best way you can, grab as much as you can, grab it as soon as you can, hold it as long as you can, and figure out the details as you go.

why I rarely post anymore

xxp is that Cillizza

it's not, actually! but it sounds so much like him.

Some folks Matt Bevin pardoned the week he left office:
—a guy who pretended to be a cop so he could carry out a home invasion and murdered a man in front of his wife and kids (brother gave Bevin money)
—a child molester
—a guy who hired a contract killer https://t.co/9q0mZUheRs

— Big Structural George Bailey (@samthielman) December 12, 2019

obviously I know what the cops in this country do and do not do but seriously Bevin deserves to be locked up for this, setting a precedent that you can basically get away with murder or child rape if you donate big to a Republican seems pretty bad

the wonders never cease

good morning!

criminal justice reform one donor at a time

There's been a lot of angst around McConnell saying he'd follow the White House's lead regarding a Senate trial. While I think it makes sense for Democrats to roast him over this, I kind of also think the more influence Trump has over the trial, the better. If it were entirely the Mitch show, I'd expect all the ruthlessness he can muster to shut it down quickly and minimize it as much as possible. If Trump injects himself into the process, I can see it quickly getting out of control and turning into an incompetent shitshow, which is probably a good thing. The fact that Trump has been saying he wants a full trial just helps push it in a direction that's ultimately favorable to Democrats. Idk though, maybe I'm reading this wrong...

Trump has been saying he wants a full trial

I don't doubt he thinks he can devolve it into such a circus that the disengaged public simply dismisses it as a botched show trial instead of resolving a serious constitutional crisis.

i don't think trump saying he wants a full trial actually means that he wants a full trial

It's hard to know, but I think Trump really believes his bullshit, that the call was perfect, that he did nothing wrong, and that he wants a chance to mount a full defense and clear his name. Anything that encourages him to pursue this view seems good to me.

yeah, i agree. trump wants it to be a spectacle. he wants hunter and joe biden on the stand, he wants schiff and pelosi (?!) on the stand, etc.

i don't think it'll make a difference in the outcome - trump is obviously totally innocent and this whole thing is a conspiracy that we're all in on, even if we don't know it yet, because of the deep state etc - but with greater spectacle comes a greater chance of chaos and mistakes. GOP has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many times before (ie roy moore), you never know. plus, with greater spectacle comes more entertaining political action that will be fun to recount as we're burning alive during the latter half of this century, if we're unfortunate enough to live that long, good mourning

xps

Acquittal in the Senate is a foregone conclusion. At this point the optimal outcome is a solid day of Trump-as-witness foaming at the mouth, which can then be turned into a thousand campaign ads for the Democratic nominee, whose campaign slogan will be "It's me...or four more years of that."

thank god . . . the supreme court

BREAKING: Supreme Court agrees to consider Trump's bid to keep his financial records away from Congress and a New York grand jury. Court will hear three Trump appeals.

— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) December 13, 2019

wowza

Is this sooner than expected?

This will only postpone matters compared to dropping the stay and allowing the appeals court ruling to stand.

that was never going to happen

It will be funny in eight months when Trump has been "exonerated" and every last paranoid witch-hunt accusation is borne out in a document dump revealing his oligarchic laundromat

what's another three years of nose-holding

there's going to be shit coming up about him for the rest of our lives

it will be a fifteen-flusher for sure

many toilets died to bring us this information

Lol.

there's going to be shit coming up about him for the rest of our lives

And up through the ground come a bubblin' crude.

from the NYT:

Mr. Trump said today that he did not have a preference for how the Senate impeachment trial should work, but my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports that he has privately pushed for a longer process that would give him the chance to stage a theatrical defense. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, wants a shorter, more dignified event.

Sucks to be you, Turtle

On Thursday, Mr. McConnell met with Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, to hash out terms of the trial: how long it would last; how many hours each side would get to present its case; whether there would be witnesses and if so, how many.

Democrats criticized Mr. McConnell’s coordination with the White House. “If articles of impeachment are sent to the Senate, every single senator will take an oath to render ‘impartial justice,’” Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said today.

oaths, oh my sides

Everybody will swear on a Big Mac

oaths may seem comically useless, but the truth is that there ain't no way to better ensure good conduct, because every more coercive strategy has even worse problems. at least swearing an oath, administered in public during a somewhat solemn ceremony has a small chance of activating whatever amount of civic responsibility and honesty the oath-taker might possess. it's not much, but it's all we got.

that is tragically small chance in this instance

Rationalization is the Catch of the Day every day in Congress.

what if they add a provision that every time they are found to lie while under oath, david and charles koch are punched in the face

What if the Senate chamber just catches fire

And we just sit back...

Way back...

er, the Senators will not be testifying under oath during the trial. this oath is different.

"impartial" and "justice", the Lewis Carroll definitions

Supreme Court decision expected in late June, so they're obviously feeling a sense of urgency....

the fact that they want to take it up instead of just denying cert to the challenges of the lower court rulings does not bode well

If they rule for Trump, giving him a unique immunity from the reach of legal investigations which every other citizen must submit to, it will just be another nail in the coffin of presidential accountability to anyone for anything they do or choose not to do, no matter how those actions may violate the law, defraud others, or evade their plain duty. The appeals court ruling makes this unambiguously clear.