BURNPIT: U.S. Politics, August 2022

god bless the Deep State

scott perry was one of the people who requested a Jan 6 pardon (for some mysterious reason...)

the mar-a-lago raid isn't supposed to have anything to do with the Jan 6 stuff. perry is also the leader of the house freedom caucus, which is just this really awesome group of people trying to make things better

Good lord, this better all be leading somewhere

one raid and they're all antifa lol https://t.co/nriQ0qTXAy

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) August 9, 2022

Trump broke the law. Should he face consequences?

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 10, 2022

petard, meet hoist https://t.co/b7A15XHurh

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 10, 2022

fucking lmaoooo

anyway I don't wanna wildly speculate but fuck it, hear me out: what if he's feeding secret info to Russia? isn't it already widely accepted that he's already leaked military secrets to them? isn't the fact that he literally called Putin a genius when he started a war with Ukraine really fucking weird? could it be they found something on Alex Joneses phone prompting the feds to step in right away?

Maybe they found something in the first ten boxes.

after the fbi went through the first 15 boxes, they soon found that they needed 10 more "loot boxes"

before long, they were willing to pay a steep premium for each additional box

Wait, I meant the first 15 boxes, can't keep up!
You think you got problems:

The Furry Community Is Struggling to Snuff Out Far-Right Agitators
After a furry was arrested for allegedly making terroristic threats, a new conversation was sparked about extremist views within the community

This link might work better: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/furry-far-right-arrest-podcast-1394565/

But already, in 2017: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/does-the-furry-community-have-a-nazi-problem-194282/

could it be they found something on Alex Joneses phone prompting the feds to step in right away?

― frogbs, Tuesday, August 9, 2022 8:20 PM

so my timeline of the last week re: all of this goes—>

—>alex jones trial says they have the entire contents of his phone—>everyonelol for a few days—>odd headline about there now being photographic evidence that trump flushed documents, but oddly no photos—>

—>LATER THAT DAY—>

and well, that was just yesterday, so yeah. idk what the turnaround time is on stuff like that, but the conspiracy theorist part of my brain is having a field day. be pretty funny if "the alex jones smartphone gaffe" becomes known as the thing that finally trumped trump.

During yesterday's vote-a-rama I overheard @ewarren telling @SenFeinstein: “Puppies have a nap, now it’s time for you to have one” https://t.co/bK7aUUxpAc

— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) August 8, 2022

Plain and simple clickbait. They were talking about Feinstein's puppy and Warren made a joke. Probably not the kindest statement, but not nearly as bad as Matt is trying to make it sound. https://t.co/U2VcrDV8PZ pic.twitter.com/deIRuFdkUz

— Jacob Stands With Ukraine 🇺🇦 (@jkcohen626) August 10, 2022

I... don't know that the context really improves this?

Ya I mean everything I’m reading about this suggests that the FBI raid was highly unusual and clearly based on something time sensitive we don’t know yet so who knows, I think this is gonna go well beyond “he had some valuable papers”

I hope the real story is that those who work at the National Archives including its lawyers had to do their jobs, and Garland and those who work at the Justice Department had to do theirs, and he kept things as quiet as possible until he was forced to show as much of his hand as necessary to get DOJ's job done. (He might be a quiet hero.)

The biggest point of confusion for me right now (well, I mean, there are lots) is that previous June FBI visit. Did they take back the (known) boxes of classified documents or did they tell Trump to (er) lock them up? I've seen it reported both ways. Anyway, it sounds like the FBI had reason to believe there were more undisclosed boxes of at least potentially classified information lying around that place, plus stuff in the (not very) safe, and from what I've read (based on the relative expediency and risk of the raid) the classified info was likely super-duper double-classified. What warrants such a classification, dunno. Why he would have them at all, dunno. Again, could be pictures of him with Kim, and I could totally imagine him keeping souvenirs of targeted bombings or something. Regardless, recall that foreign nationals have been caught sniffing around Club Asshole before, and just having the stuff on site put whatever national security the classified stamp was meant to protect at risk.

And that's the best case scenario. Worst case (for Asshole) is he showed the stuff to people, gave the stuff to people, sold the stuff to people, or is covering up or hiding info related to other crimes (Jan. 6, NY AG case, etc.). Again, given this guy's track record pretty much the sky is the limit both in terms of stupidity and criminality. One big takeaway of this is that no matter what is going on, somebody most certainly ratted him out.

I guess there is also the possibility that Asshole *didn't* take this shit but was knowingly or unknowingly housing it there. A list was making the rounds of the people reportedly assigned to his national archiving (or whatever the position is called) and woof, talk about the usual suspects.

Not that I care about the GOP, but boy would they have solved so many of their problems if they had just removed him from office.

You know what phrase came to mind yesterday when I was pondering how some of the more mundane, but required to be returned thing like Obama's letter to his successor, would be of use in Florida?

"Donald Trump Presidential Library"

hopefully they left enough material to stock this hallowed institution, when it's built

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iuNpn17pfM

"Donald Trump Presidential Library"

hopefully they left enough material to stock this hallowed institution, when it's built

Whatever came of the stuff the FBI took from Rudy's apartment and office last April?

Look, all I know is that surely there's no way ol' Donnie Trump can wiggle his way out of this one

I mean, surely this time we've got 'im, right guys?

Guys?

*wriggle

ah! well. nevertheless,

He can wiggle AND wriggle. He can also rattle and shake, like a big fat snake.

On the charge of being in this, trump is not guilty on account of his having wriggled instead of wiggled out of it

The preliminary appeal to the primary appeal is hereby scheduled for the year 2029

wriggle it just a little bit

^^ beat me to it

so it seems obvious they're gonna go with the "planted evidence" the whole way, right?

everything about Trumpism from the very beginning has felt like an abusive relationship, or maybe those murder documentaries where a family member or spouse STILL don't believe they actually did it, because doing so would admit that a major portion of their life has been a lie, or realizing that even the people you love can pull the wool over your eyes

I know the Republican party has always been cult-like but Trump has taken it to a whole new direction, b/c now being a conservative means totally buying into this cult of personality even if it comes at the expense of your friends, your family, and your sanity. obviously we talked a lot about this on ILX over the last several years, family members who you just can't bear to see anymore and all that, but it's almost kind of WORSE from their end because they've put themselves in this position of having to play defense on everything every single day of their lives. first it's over half the country, which you can handwave away by saying they're all brainwashed by CNN or whatever. but then it's actual government officials, including the guys Trump handpicked for their loyalty, and every single staffer who immediately went on record the day they left that Trump was a sack of shit who lies about everything. now it's the FBI director, the one he picked because the last one expressed some remorse about singlehandedly throwing the election to Trump, and the FBI as a whole, laying all that "just comply and you have nothing to worry about" shit bare.

idk if the dam will ever break. not to go all Andrew Yang on this but if something actually does happen to Trump it's gonna unleash a real world of shit so we might as well prepare ourselves now. not saying they should go easy or work a deal or whatever. him and his cronies deserve life in prison for the shit they've done to this country. but holy fuck if something substantial actually comes idk how this country is gonna handle it

This made me curious to revisit the famous tweet/meme; found this mostly pointless article about the phenomenon from January:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/19/eternally-unfulfilled-dream-trumps-opponents-this-time-theyve-got-him/

However it does sum up why I have 0% energy to get whipped up and involved in discussions about any new "thing". I'll casually track these discussions and news, but it's hard for me personally to even raise my eyebrows anymore.

xp

i'm sure everyone will be like "ok, let's take a deep breath. let's get some food. let's get outside for a bit. then let's home and let bygones be bygones and start builidng. back. better!!"

The GOP is a perpetual grievance machine which will act out whether The Libs take active strides to stymie their bullshit or impotently sit in stony silence. Fuck them, fuck their big fat phony crocodile tears, fuck their tacit threats of what'll happen if you mess with the bull, fuck every last one of them until they've either fixed their hearts or died. Bring it on, you little SOBs.

^^^

Booming posts, OL and frogbs. I've been in the fuck-every-last-one-of-them mode for two years and it's felt liberating

There are real cult-like behaviors, for sure, but I also think the cult shrinks a bit the farther it goes into total detachment from reality. There is a level where yoking yourself to fundamentally unpopular ideas starts to take a toll. We are maybe seeing that on abortion to some degree. In Tennessee we're seeing it on vouchers and charter schools, which have never been demonstrably popular but our Hillsdale-besotted governor has officially embraced as core GOP priorities — without doing any particular groundwork to sway public opinion. I think it was a factor in Republicans losing a key seat last week on our local (and newly partisan) school board. You can use structural advantages to force through unpopular things up to a point, but past a point you start to lose legitimacy.

I don't know that that's necessarily a cause for optimism, because obviously what it reinforces is the drive to minimize actual public power — democracy — in whatever way you can. But I also don't take as a given that the future is nothing but a relentless drive to the right that ends in white evangelical authoritarianism, because there just aren't enough of them. Most Americans don't really want to live in the country that that would be. That's a fundamental challenge for minority rule.

*wriggle

*ooze

I worry about Hispanic authoritarianism, evangelical or otherwise.

CNN reported this morning that Trump's lawyers (one of whom was present during latest boxtaking, btw) are now saying that all documents were declassified before leaving DC---although prev reports mention them still being marked Classified, with no strike-through, which apparently (see that link I posted upthread about laws involved here) a President could use to de-classify, but this one didn't bother.
(CNN also reported this morning that Iranian plot to whack Bolton foiled by FBI; Trump and Trumpers won't be thrilled by that either)

documents were declassified, also we don't have them, also they were planted

Trump Boys Thrilled FBI Seized Documents, Leaving Dozens Of Empty Boxes To Play In https://t.co/tsKtFGjcPP pic.twitter.com/QSnnqUtsjr

— The Onion (@TheOnion) August 9, 2022

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/27/doj-georgia-new-york-trump-00048313

So many legal actions

If I had a nickle for every 'the noose is tightening!' headline over the last five years

(I saw an interview with Bill Clinton years ago, where he said he was annoyed by the Slick Willie nickname, because everything seemed to stick)

"Tricky Dick" would have suited him better.

I lobbied heavily for "Mango Mussolini" but it failed to catch

'Round these parts in spring '08 I christened him The Screaming Lobster of Hope.