The Swamp

Sanders: The murdered tourist, identified as nine year old Tiffany McCullough from Kenosha, WI, was a suspected ISIS sympathizer and our president took national security into his own hands.

brian wrote:This is a pretty good piece on the dilemma of how to think and live in Trumpworld.

This is pretty much in line with my thinking as to why the 25th Amendment card might be played as soon as Mueller subpoenas Donald Trump to testify. The GOP are duplicitous as fuck playing two sides of the same coin here. Can't imagine there's any loyalty to Trump that would stop them from shoving him out the door.

President Regurgitates Discredited Conspiracy Theory

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 6701842434

With Mugabe gone, Trump moves up another spot on the "unstable leaders" list.

WHY THE FUCK IS THIS TOLERATED FROM A PRESIDENT AMERICA HAS LOST ITS FUCKIN MIND

Gunpowder wrote:WHY THE FUCK IS THIS TOLERATED FROM A PRESIDENT AMERICA HAS LOST ITS FUCKIN MIND

Trump Shares Inflammatory Anti-Muslim Videos

Trump never fails to lower the bar...

Britain First calls itself a “patriotic” political party but has been criticized by human rights groups as being a far-right extremist group that engages in activities calculated to bait Muslims.

Brendan Cox, whose wife, British MP Jo Cox, was murdered by a right-wing extremist who shouted "Britain First" before committing the act, has condemned the action.

Even total morons in the UK are appalled...

TV presenter and journalist Piers Morgan, who has called himself a "friend" of the president, tweeted: "What the hell are you doing?"
"Please STOP this madness & undo your retweets," he said.

Trump is a special level of awful, but we've had an Islamophobia Industrialization-Complex in this country for over 15 years now. Obama should have just declared the War on Terror over after bin Laden's death. But instead, it's still a bipartisan consensus that we need to destroy, I mean remake, the Middle East and North Africa (see: Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc.). And when the inevitable terrorist attacks occur, it just adds more fuel to the rampant hatred of Muslims in this county.

Truthfully we've been remaking the ME since WW1, but just put it into hyperdrive in recent times.

I'm surprised Trump didn't offer blankets to the Natives.

Joe K wrote:Trump is a special level of awful, but we've had an Islamophobia Industrialization-Complex in this country for over 15 years now. Obama should have just declared the War on Terror over after bin Laden's death. But instead, it's still a bipartisan consensus that we need to destroy, I mean remake, the Middle East and North Africa (see: Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc.). And when the inevitable terrorist attacks occur, it just adds more fuel to the rampant hatred of Muslims in this county.

I think that plays into why stadiums across the NFL are 3/4-full now. Cuz some people are tired of being made to see the American flag in all its glory.

We're tired of all this glory. It's too fucking gory.

Saw Axelrod posit on Twitter that Trump is lashing out today because of Flynn working out a deal with Mueller, which makes about as much sense as anything I suppose.

Also means the looming constitutional crisis when he inevitably tries to fire Mueller could be coming to a head. Interestingly, I think if the tax bill passes that could be just about it for Trump. The Republicans might be more apt to cut him loose at that point though they'd engineer it under the 25th amendment and not by impeachment.

Or ... if they pass this horrific tax bill under Trump it'll prove to them that Trump is a valuable distraction and they'll keep him around to help them serve their masters. (And if it doesn't pass, they'll keep him around to continue providing a valuable distraction as they continue to try to ...)

I laugh at this talk of the GOP ever getting rid of Trump. It's not like he wasn't an embarrassment or hasn't given them plenty of legitimate reason before now...

And there's this:

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/935607587730534402

The Republican establishment isn't dumb. I wish they were, but they're not. They know Trump is an anchor around their necks and they're shitting their pants about the election in November. That's another reason they're ramping up the voter suppression to new levels. But even that won't be enough to stop what's coming.

They might look at getting the tax bill passed as a win and call it a Congress since the outcry over dumping Trump means almost no legislation gets passed until the next Congress. If they cut him loose around the end of the year the media circus starts to die down around the end of January with still enough time to maybe pull some of their asses out of the fire. (If they were REALLY smart they could impeach him over the Russia scandal and they would have the benefit of looking like they really care about democracy to low-information voters, but I know they don't have the spine for that. Also it would take too long given the timeline above. With the 25th Amendment solution, he could literally be out of office by end of the day.)

I really, really, truly get that Trump remains popular with a decent-sized group of the base, but those people are going to vote Republican no matter what. They're the same ones that are still voting for Moore in Alabama. But cutting Trump lose helps potentially bring moderates back before it's too late.

It's the smart move. I just don't know if the GOP has the stones to pull off what some could consider a coup d'etat.

And I still think the strong counter to that is whatever gains they make from the center that's fed up with Trump is lost and then some by people who have become more enamored with Trump than the party. Trump picked up 2MM votes on Romney and 3MM on McCain and its not just a linear thing.

mister d wrote:And I still think the strong counter to that is whatever gains they make from the center that's fed up with Trump is lost and then some by people who have become more enamored with Trump than the party. Trump picked up 2MM votes on Romney and 3MM on McCain and its not just a linear thing.

Yup. A substantial percentage of GOP voters support Trump because he's a boorish, racist asshole, and not in spite of that. It was obvious from day 1 of his campaign what he was about and Trump still crushed what had been touted as the "strongest GOP Presidential field in decades." And at least in this red state, support from Trump and Bannon is definitely viewed as a positive by aspiring GOP up and comers. I don't doubt that the GOP will lose a bunch seats in 2018 (just like they did in 2006 and the Dems did in 2010), but they're not going to bail on Trump.

Joe K wrote:

mister d wrote:And I still think the strong counter to that is whatever gains they make from the center that's fed up with Trump is lost and then some by people who have become more enamored with Trump than the party. Trump picked up 2MM votes on Romney and 3MM on McCain and its not just a linear thing.

Yup. A substantial percentage of GOP voters support Trump because he's a boorish, racist asshole, and not in spite of that. It was obvious from day 1 of his campaign what he was about and Trump still crushed what had been touted as the "strongest GOP Presidential field in decades." And at least in this red state, support from Trump and Bannon is definitely viewed as a positive by aspiring GOP up and comers. I don't doubt that the GOP will lose a bunch seats in 2018 (just like they did in 2006 and the Dems did in 2010), but they're not going to bail on Trump.

And the racism is combined with his giving credence to the conspiracy minded - the paranoid style in US politics.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 8898636800

The Maverick...

Pretty sure people simply don’t realize how much this bill is gonna re-make the America we have gotten used to.

My doom and gloom fear is that the rich know its collapsing and this is an attempt to hoard. Which means the bright side is its standard "fuck everyone else" operations.

This bill already guts Medicare. But it is also gonna explode the deficit. At which point the right will then say cut "entitlements" even more. What is left of this country will be burning by 2030.

And a side note to today is Pompeo to replace Tillerson as Secretary of State, and Tom Cotton to head the CIA.

https://twitter.com/chrisdonovan/status ... 9270403073

In any kind of functioning democracy the hypocrisy (and not just on this issue) of the right would result in them being torn apart by not only the media, but by a broad portion of the electorate.

brian wrote:https://twitter.com/chrisdonovan/status/936273169270403073

In any kind of functioning democracy the hypocrisy (and not just on this issue) of the right would result in them being torn apart by not only the media, but by a broad portion of the electorate.

This level of hypocrisy was normalized back in the 90s when those frothing at the bit to nail Clinton over sexual transgressions were busy with their pants around their ankles.

This tax bill is gonna gut higher education, by the way. The far right attack on universities has begun.

If the college educated are voting Dem ...

tennbengal wrote:This tax bill is gonna gut higher education, by the way. The far right attack on universities has begun.

Begun?

The book Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson would be more amusing if it weren't so scary.

That's where I found the first quote here -

“I believe that The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion are a forgery. I believe in the intrinsic but not the factual truth of the Protocols” Joseph Goebbels 1924

He cited it in a chapter discussing how the former "gatekeepers" of what was taught at universities, or discussed in the media allowed (for a number of reasons) crackpot and inflammatory opinions and theories to be presented as facts.

I read that quote and got a chill as I remembered what that thing who speaks for the President said about those anti-Islamic videos that her boss retweeted...

“Look, I’m not talking about the nature of the video. I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Sanders said. “The threat is real, and that’s what the president is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending, and those are very real things, there’s nothing fake about them.”

EnochRoot wrote:

tennbengal wrote:This tax bill is gonna gut higher education, by the way. The far right attack on universities has begun.

Begun?

Yes, begun. Before it was just words. This is...something else entirely.

This could get good (unless it gets bad) ...

https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/stat ... 3017507840

mister d wrote:When reached for comment, Feinberg told Fox News: “I made a regrettably ghoulish remark about John McCain voting for a tax bill that would increase taxes on people making between $40,000 and $50,000 by $5.3 billion, decrease taxes on people making over $1 million by $5.8 billion, and lead to 15,600 more deaths per year because 13 million people will lose their health insurance, and you think the story here is the tone of my tweet.”

Damn, that's good. Absent some combo of campaign finance and ethics reform, the already ridiculous shift of this country's wealth to the very rich will just keep accelerating. Not only can rich donors buy Congressmen's votes but virtually all Congressmen either (a) already are rich; or (b) can easily get rich after leaving Congress by working as a lobbyist or giving speeches to Wall Street. That revolving door between the public and private sectors makes it that much harder to get economic policies that are actually fair. The one thing that gives me hope is that Bernie Sanders' high popularity, despite being an unpolished septuagenarian socialist, shows that a lot of voters recognize that our system is broken.

She basically pre-mocks a US Senators death and some dummy at Fox News posts that quote verbatim and jumps the line for most likely fired over this.

I'm rooting for very bad things to happen to certain people, but I don't want to say what and to who exactly because in the most minute, offhand chance a Google search turns up my comment and real me is linked to Swamp me, I have plausible deniability.

"I'm taking about stubbed toes and papercuts here, honest!"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ssia-probe

Flynn cooperating with Mueller.

Nonlinear FC wrote:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/michael-flynn-is-charged-as-mueller-intensifies-russia-probe

Flynn cooperating with Mueller.

Pleading guilty to lying to FBI. And that's all he's pleading guilty to, so...yeah, he's most certainly cooperated fully. He has to given over some valuable pieces of evidence to get it down to just lying.

tennbengal wrote:

EnochRoot wrote:

tennbengal wrote:This tax bill is gonna gut higher education, by the way. The far right attack on universities has begun.

Begun?

Yes, begun. Before it was just words. This is...something else entirely.

I'm surprised I haven't heard much of an outcry over the changes for grad students and taxable income. See: http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/29/pf/college/house-tax-plan-graduate-students/index.html A 10-20% drop in income for people already making less than 30K a year seems devastating. I'd expect it will significantly cut down on the number of students in grad school at R1 schools that are on grant programs. Only well-off families will be able to afford another 2-6 years of college. The research fields that rely on grad students will get the double hit by the overall decrease in funding and a scarcity of capable workers.

https://twitter.com/MikeDelMoro/status/ ... 0420002816
Gonna go change pants, be right back.

hey guys, maybe this is what sinks him

Some screenshots of how the news broke on the major news networks.