LawTalkers  

Go Back   LawTalkers > General Discussion > Politics

» Site Navigation
 > FAQ
» Online Users: 387
0 members and 387 guests
No Members online
Most users ever online was 4,499, 10-26-2015 at 07:55 AM.
Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 05-18-2017, 05:21 PM   #256
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Registered User
 
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Government Yard in Trenchtown
Posts: 20,182
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
I'm more interested in who will chair the House Oversight Committee.
Word is Gowdy.

Yup. Another asshat.
__________________
A wee dram a day!
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy is offline  
Old 05-18-2017, 05:26 PM   #257
SEC_Chick
I am beyond a rank!
 
SEC_Chick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: A pool of my own vomit
Posts: 732
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower View Post
It may be unclear from the transcript whether or not it was a joke, but if it was, why did Ryan attempt to emphasize the need for secrecy, which did NOT appear to be a joke? And if just a joke, why did Ryan's aides lie to the press and say the quotes were fabricated? It was not until they were caught in the lie (when they learned that an audio tape existed), that they changed the story to: "We were just joking around." None of Ryan's actions are consistent with someone who thought this was just some off-the-cuff humor. They are consistent with someone trying to hide something. You don't a fucking special prosecutor to see that.
McCarthy is a filthy liar. Of course he only changed his story when confronted with evidence.
SEC_Chick is offline  
Old 05-18-2017, 05:30 PM   #258
SEC_Chick
I am beyond a rank!
 
SEC_Chick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: A pool of my own vomit
Posts: 732
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy View Post
Cool.

Is he going to take Chaffetz' seat?
Word is he may run for it or Hatch's Senate seat.
SEC_Chick is offline  
Old 05-18-2017, 05:43 PM   #259
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Registered User
 
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Government Yard in Trenchtown
Posts: 20,182
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SEC_Chick View Post
Word is he may run for it or Hatch's Senate seat.
Don't you miss the days when we had good Christians like the Obamas in the White House?
__________________
A wee dram a day!
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 10:25 AM   #260
Adder
I am beyond a rank!
 
Adder's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 17,113
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy View Post
Of course it was a joke, even if it was a joke only a flunky could laugh at.

The thing is, what makes it potentially funny at all is the idea that its possible. If I said, hey SEC is probably in the pay of the Russians every time she posts here, I couldn't even get a laugh from my flunkies.
Right. If it was a joke, it was in the sense that he was voicing an uncomfortable suspicion rather than a statement grounded in strong factual understanding.
Adder is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 11:41 AM   #261
Tyrone Slothrop
Moderasaurus Rex
 
Tyrone Slothrop's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 32,939
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

I don't always like Andrew Sullivan, but I think I am 100% with him on this:

Quote:
How does this end?

I left D.C. Wednesday for a trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for a talk. The previous night I’d watched slack-jawed as the latest Trump saga unfolded on cable news, switching back from Fox to MSNBC and CNN. As has happened so often in the last few months, it was becoming a blur. What did we now know? The president had kept Mike Flynn on staff many days after learning he was a security risk. Trump had asked FBI Director Comey to give him his personal loyalty, then fired him because he was frustrated that the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government was continuing. Trump then lied repeatedly about this — and sent senior staffers out there to lie as well. He threatened the FBI director with alleged “tapes” of their conversations. We also discovered that Trump had carelessly betrayed a critical ISIS source while bragging to foreign minister Lavrov and Russian ambassador Kislyak in the Oval Office. We were entering, it seemed to me, the Caligula phase of the collapse of the American republic. Pretty soon Trump would be announcing that the new FBI director would be a horse.

And then, on the little shuttle bus on the tarmac to the plane at Reagan National, I found myself sitting next to a recently retired pilot, who struck up a very pleasant conversation. He told me about a recent career change, retirement, his family, and his new neighbors who had left England to escape “the Muslims.” Okay, I thought. No need to make a scene. Just listen for a while. At one point, I gingerly indicated that I didn’t exactly share the views of his neighbors. “Oh I understand,” he said. “My wife is always telling me never to talk about religion or politics with strangers, but I can’t help myself.” No problem, I told him. I do it all the time too. Then he leaned in, pushed his wire eyeglasses up his nose, and looked straight into my eyes. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “This president will be the greatest president we have ever had in our entire history.”


Once in Mississippi, I did my daily scanning of the conservative media. The alternative story was now well-established. Trump had fired Comey because he had a right to (just like he had an “absolute” right to tell Moscow top-secret intel), and because Comey was incompetent and had screwed up the Clinton-email case. The intel gaffe was just a slip-up that wouldn’t matter much at all. There was no evidence of any connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — and so the investigation was hooey anyway. Comey’s memo couldn’t be talked about without the full context — so lets just wait and see. Comey was just interested in revenge anyway. The mainstream media and the “deep state” were busy trying to undermine a president who was accomplishing more than any president this early into his term.

These are, it seems to me, the two unstoppable narratives grinding our politics to a halt. The status quo in Washington — an unhinged, unfit, mentally disturbed narcissist as POTUS fast losing any faint credibility with even his own staffers — is utterly unsustainable. In a serious crisis, more than half the country won’t believe a word the president says. The White House is barely functioning; legislation is completely stalled; next week’s trip abroad will have everyone watching from behind a couch; the FBI and CIA are reeling; there’s almost no one in the State Department; no presidential due diligence is applied to military actions; the president only reads memos when his name is mentioned in them; a not-too-smart and apparently mute 35-year-old son-in-law is supposed to solve every problem in the country and world; and the press secretary is hiding in the bushes. No one has any confidence that the president couldn’t throw us into a war or a constitutional crisis at a moment’s notice. Nothing this scary has happened in my lifetime.

And yet around 35 percent of the country still somehow views every single catastrophe Trump perpetrates on America and the world as either a roaring triumph or a huge middle finger to the elites, and therefore fine. For them, everything is sustainable. When Republicans can shrug off giving top-secret Israeli intelligence to the Russians, there is nothing they cannot shrug off. We are not talking about support for various policies here. We are talking about the kind of following a cult leader has. In poll after poll, around 80 percent of Republicans still approve of the job Trump is doing. Still. That’s why the GOP leadership, even as their agenda evaporates, are leery of taking Trump on. His hold on their own voters is tighter than theirs is. It’s tighter than Nixon’s because Trump has built a reactionary movement from the ground up and taken over an entire party. He can communicate with them in ways no other Republican can. And there is no way on earth he is ever going to go quietly, if he agrees to go at all.

That’s why I have a hard time figuring out how this ends, even though it must end. Even if the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s investigation hits some pay dirt, I can see Trump surviving if he cannot be proven to be directly implicated. He’s already setting up the case: He’s being subjected to an historically unprecedented witch hunt, remember? And there’s no institution or person he won’t blame or destroy in his bid to save himself. Just ask his former creditors. If he’s up against the wall, he will treat the Constitution the way he treated his banks. Or say the Dems manage to regain the House next year, and hold impeachment hearings. Wouldn’t that simply galvanize support for Trump as he fights back against the “deep state,” the “swamp,” the GOP, and what Hannity calls the propaganda media circus — and render 66 votes in the Senate to convict him a pipe dream? Part of me wonders if he’d quit even if he’s beaten in the next presidential election? Isn’t it always rigged when he loses?

In some ways, I think the best analogy for Trump is O.J. Simpson. Even if we all know he’s guilty as sin, even if his own supporters see the flimflam behind the claptrap, even if the evidence is staring us in the face, he’ll never lose his core support. For 35 percent of the country, he’ll never be guiltier than the system he’s challenging. The best we can hope for is a Democratic House in 2018 and a grinding, grueling attempt to minimize the already enormous harm Trump has done in the meantime. We can pursue that outcome while hoping our cold civil war doesn’t get hot — because this is beginning to feel like the 1850s.
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Tyrone Slothrop is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 12:02 PM   #262
Adder
I am beyond a rank!
 
Adder's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 17,113
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
I don't always like Andrew Sullivan, but I think I am 100% with him on this:
Quote:
Pretty soon Trump would be announcing that the new FBI director would be a horse.
Lieberman. Same thing.

Quote:
And there is no way on earth he is ever going to go quietly, if he agrees to go at all.
That's the question isn't it? I mean, I guess I think he's going to get bored with it, at which point he might be willing to go, but he'd need to be able to declare victory somehow, as that seems to be the only thing that motivates him. How can Pence talk him into pulling a triumphant Palin, for example?

Or other way I can think about it ending is in actual mental or physical incapacity. The man is already dangerously unstable. But what would that have to be for his people to think it's real?
Adder is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 12:39 PM   #263
Tyrone Slothrop
Moderasaurus Rex
 
Tyrone Slothrop's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 32,939
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

This is the most interesting thing I have read (yet) today.
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Tyrone Slothrop is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 12:40 PM   #264
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Registered User
 
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Government Yard in Trenchtown
Posts: 20,182
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
I don't always like Andrew Sullivan, but I think I am 100% with him on this:
I find it amazing that he says nothing this scary has happened in his lifetime.

Sure, this is frightening: the stakes are high and our cards are in the hands of someone who doesn't seem to even want to learn the game.

But the really frightening part doesn't come until either the war starts or the economy collapses, and we've seen both before.
__________________
A wee dram a day!
Greedy,Greedy,Greedy is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 02:49 PM   #265
Adder
I am beyond a rank!
 
Adder's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 17,113
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
Put the bag men back in charge of the GOP!
Adder is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 02:49 PM   #266
Hank Chinaski
Proud Holder-Post 200,000
 
Hank Chinaski's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Corner Office
Posts: 86,041
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
I don't always like Andrew Sullivan, but I think I am 100% with him on this:
Why the House? Isn't the senate way more likely?
__________________
I will not suffer a fool- but I do seem to read a lot of their posts
Hank Chinaski is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 02:54 PM   #267
ThurgreedMarshall
[intentionally omitted]
 
ThurgreedMarshall's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: NYC
Posts: 18,595
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop View Post
I don't always like Andrew Sullivan, but I think I am 100% with him on this:
I will tell you, I have very few Republicans (or should I say Trump supporters?) on my Facebook feed,* but from what I've seen, the delusion is real. There is nothing that could happen that would change these people's minds about him.
  • Comey set a trap for Trump
  • The upcoming investigation by Mueller is going to be worse for Democrats because of all their crime
  • Trump press coverage all negative
  • Comey is more loyal to Chuck Schumer
  • Under Obama Precedent, no Trump obstruction
  • Any story from an anonymous source is completely made up (even if Trump cops to it later)
Breitbart, Washington Times, National Review. It's not even Fox anymore. These people are batshit fucking crazy, for real.

TM

*Surprise, surprise
ThurgreedMarshall is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 03:19 PM   #268
Tyrone Slothrop
Moderasaurus Rex
 
Tyrone Slothrop's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 32,939
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski View Post
Why the House? Isn't the senate way more likely?
I think the House is more likely in 2018, but ymmv. The Senate map doesn't favor Democrats this time.
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Tyrone Slothrop is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 06:44 PM   #269
SEC_Chick
I am beyond a rank!
 
SEC_Chick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: A pool of my own vomit
Posts: 732
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall View Post
I will tell you, I have very few Republicans (or should I say Trump supporters?) on my Facebook feed,* but from what I've seen, the delusion is real. There is nothing that could happen that would change these people's minds about him.
  • Comey set a trap for Trump
  • The upcoming investigation by Mueller is going to be worse for Democrats because of all their crime
  • Trump press coverage all negative
  • Comey is more loyal to Chuck Schumer
  • Under Obama Precedent, no Trump obstruction
  • Any story from an anonymous source is completely made up (even if Trump cops to it later)
Breitbart, Washington Times, National Review. It's not even Fox anymore. These people are batshit fucking crazy, for real.

TM

*Surprise, surprise
You can't put the National Review in the same sentence as Breitbart and Fox. They did what they could to prevent Trump in the first place, every contributor I follow on Twitter did not vote for him, and if you recall, they had a Republican debate they were sponsoring pulled over their Against Trump cover issue.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ovement-menace
SEC_Chick is offline  
Old 05-19-2017, 06:57 PM   #270
Tyrone Slothrop
Moderasaurus Rex
 
Tyrone Slothrop's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 32,939
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SEC_Chick View Post
You can't put the National Review in the same sentence as Breitbart and Fox. They did what they could to prevent Trump in the first place, every contributor I follow on Twitter did not vote for him, and if you recall, they had a Republican debate they were sponsoring pulled over their Against Trump cover issue.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ovement-menace
They may not be pro-Trump, but they are definitely anti-anti-Trump, no?
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Tyrone Slothrop is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.0.1

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:13 AM.