U.S. Politics, November 2022: “I don’t know, you hear the same things I do”

also, as greg sargent wrote today,

Among Democrats, the conventional reading of the incoming GOP House majority goes like this: Republicans will commence investigations with the care and judiciousness of a toddler throwing spaghetti against the wall. Most won’t stick. But if Republicans turn up something to damage Joe Biden’s presidency, they will have accomplished their mission.

That is no doubt one GOP goal. But there’s a less obvious way that Republicans can wield House probes to political advantage. If they can confuse voters — and seduce the news media — into treating any and all congressional oversight as inevitably politically motivated, they will succeed in a whole different fashion.

This goal — which entails obfuscating the basic distinction between oversight conducted in good faith and in bad — will be within reach for Republicans, due to a peculiar situation. The House select committee examining Donald Trump’s coup attempt will release its report before the end of this year, and might make criminal referrals. Those findings will be debated well into next year, while Trump is running for president.

Which means that for House Republicans, the goal of next year’s investigations will not just be to let a thousand Hunter Biden probes bloom. It will also be to discredit revelations produced by Democrats about Trump.

awesome timing to wait until the day after it was confirmed that the GOP will indeed take the house!!

If they're smart enough to know what they're doing, sure.

Prosecuting a former President has no precedent, and is fraught with risk. There was also a lot not initially known by the public about what happened on that date that slowly got disseminated during the hearings, not to mention there was a concurrent investigation of Mar-a-Lago.

Given the sensitive nature of things I'm ok with the timing of it results in something. Big if.

In re discrediting investigations overall, we've already been through bogus investigations with the Benghazi hearings and the House "Russiagate" probe. That didn't stop the Jan. 6 committee from having some impact.

FWIW, it has been pointed out that the guy they appointed, Jack Smith, once indicted a CIA Officer (and secured a conviction) for mishandling national defense information. And my man Renato tweeted that he thinks this might delay the investigation by weeks, not months, if at all.

The Bush Administration carried out an illegal rendition and torture program and faced no consequences--in fact, one of those involved later was made head of the CIA. So, I am very skeptical that Trump will face any real consequences for his many crimes.

wow, the special counsel is kind of intimidating

https://i.imgur.com/nad076J.png

donald j trump you are hereby sentenced to getting punched in the face by that guy

They could put that on pay per view.

https://d32qys9a6wm9no.cloudfront.net/images/tvs/backdrop/47/dba535d7c7576238b6cca58e8e08b01d_706x397.jpg?t=1636102095

I slept with him1

!

kinda has a Hunt for Red October vibe

dude looks a lot like Silas Weir Mitchell tbrr

kinda wild to learn Alfred slept with Rob McElhenney via this thread!

It's Always Lusty In Philadelphia

he look like 80% of Miami Chileans.

Also: Merrick Garlan's voice = Peter Coyote + peach fuzz.

* Garland

why can the justice dept appoint a third party to be independent? does the trump posse have to approve this too?

Nope. Keep in mind the reverse applied under Trump, which is why there were the two failed Durham prosecutions and why they're still trying to decide on, as it happens, one H. Biden.

I'm sure Americans, suffering from food inflation and heating bills, are desperate to see our political leaders take HUNTER to task!

Republicans are on a losing streak

http://www.unleashthefanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/terence-stamp-zod.jpeg

are desperate to see our political leaders take HUNTER to task!

It's 'payback time', pure & simple - they're all Trump lackeys clamoring for these... McCarthy's gonna have his hands full with these loonies

can I fuck General Zod

Don’t underestimate the power of groupthink in the right wing information bubble. For a lot of them and a lot of their constituents, the great injustice of the burying of the Hunter Biden laptop story has been nonstop news for the past two years. I know people who are actually still mad about it. They think it’s real. Yes it’s a political ploy and all that, but I guarantee you some of those doofuses really think they are on to some historic corruption here.

Just like with "her emails" and just like with "his birth certificate."

i'm sorry, but there is a strict rule to not fuck general zod

it's a long story

"Kneel before Zod" seems to have been the original protocol. But I see nothing in the source documentation dictating the next steps.if

i feel bad for the people caught up in hillary's emails and hunter biden's laptop, because obviously they're spending a lot of time on the internet. they're sitting there, reading the theories, and then they get a new email and they're reminded, once again, of hillary's emails and what was on them. as soon as they can put themselves back together again to type in newsweek.com, they find themselves looking at the laptop they're touching, and remember again, hunter biden's laptop, now what the heck is on that? probably a bunch of emails to hillary clinton

xp under no circumstances should one kneel before zod

Tell me all your thoughts on Zod

What if Zod was one of us

Etc.

i feel bad for the people caught up in hillary's emails and hunter biden's laptop, because obviously they're spending a lot of time on the internet.

pot, kettle

you successfully dialed back your incessant stream-of-consciousness doomposting a couple of weeks back, plz try again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFyHTU8tg_0

guys Bolsonaro can't put on pants right now

^checks out! thx for the heads up

xpost that was a bummer to read but i suppose so am i. table said something similar a recently and i took a week off. that was the time you were referencing when you said i dialed it back. i just wasn't here. it's hard to hear from people i like, but it also means i take it seriously, so thank you for letting me know. sorry to be doomy. i know it's not fun to be around. it's a good time for me to take another break anyway, so thank you for the push in that direction

I love you, Karl.

I found KM’s post to be a genially constructed joke, not unfocused doomposting, and smiled at the punchline

But if a commuter’s smile happens under a mask, did they commit a smile at all?

but our shenanigans are cheeky and fun. their shenanigans are evil and nasty. you know, as one of the Super Troopers might say

by the way don't think I didn't notice the price of gas going down by 70 cents one week after the election you fucking crooks

KM you are a good poster in my book and actually i almost singled out one of your one-liners earlier today for being great and funny. as far as longer-form political analysis goes, i think you have a pretty damn good handle on the American right-wing nut psyche and the bigger structural problems that tip us into a beyond-satire daily bald-faced cynical theater of the absurd.

could it be that spending too much time spelling that out and articulating its contours could do more harm than good, or make the situation seem more closed and hopeless than it is, or just not be the way you want to spend your day versus reviving great old 80s video game threads? idk! not really my fuckin job to say! that shit's your call. but meantime, please know you're a good poster and that your great many good posts have brought me a lot of chuckles and more over the years.

Can’t remember if I’ve said so, but: KM, your takes are always welcome.

Rare thing to get me on this thread: KM is as word-perfect funny as Rob Sheffield at his best.

Just to be clear on what this means, Alliance Defending Freedom is asking a hand-picked, Trump-appointed district judge in Amarillo to effectively block legal access to Mifepristone on a nationwide basis.

Stunningly important — and stunningly cynical. https://t.co/cEvCkmbOxv

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) November 18, 2022

Not even worth pointing out that they're explicitly using activist judges to achieve what they can't via popular opinion, I guess.

alfred, sic, doctor casino, raymond cummings, and clemenza all otm x 10

Glanced at some piece asking if Biden, who turns 80 today I think, is too old to run for president again. The most obvious answer is, yeah, duh. He would be 86 or so when he leaves office. But yet another bad precedent set by Trump is seeking the office for personal protection. I can totally imagine Biden not running, not being president again, and then all the lunatics in the GOP persecuting him and his family till they are in jail or dead

Maybe, I don't know. The Biden/Brandon hatred is totally situational, I don't think it runs anywhere near as deep as the antipathy to the Clintons and Obama. If Biden were no longer the one keeping them from dominance I think their interest would fade fast.

But it does sadly look like one result of the midterms is that Biden's going to run again. I can't stress enough how bad an idea I think that is, and if the Dems had anyone credible champing at the bit a la DeSantis I would 100% support whoever that was getting in. But they don't, so. Jesus. I can't believe we are headed for another fucking showdown of white men born in the 1940s.

Kind of wondering if the repubs end up carnivalizing their own party by splitting into the corporate conservative side and the ranting teabaggers and then they are so divided they never win again - or a third party candidate runs who ruins everything for them by stealing votes

I feel like they carnivalized their party a long time ago.