President Trump cleared three members of the armed services on Friday who have been accused or convicted of war crimes, overruling military leaders who had sought to punish them. All three have been championed by conservative lawmakers and commentators, who have portrayed them as war heroes unfairly prosecuted for actions taken in the heat and confusion of battle.
brian wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:03 pm
If white military members kill brown or yellow people regardless of the circumstances of course it’s not a crime. White makes right.
And when the architects of the Bush torture regime have been allowed to remain members in good standing of the American political establishment, it’s hard to be surprised when the low-level war criminals escape consequences.
P.D.X. wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:50 pm
Completely curious if the closed-doors depositions go differently for the Republicans. Do they still do the clown act about Hunter, Obama, and due process when there're no soundbites to be gleaned?
Nope. All that shit is for an audience of one, to show their allegiance to Tremendous Leader.
And his fanbase of credulous rubes who get their news from Fox as well.
Yeah, no way there won't be breathless coverage of the heroic GOP members' efforts talking about what they said and did in those depositions. The playbook is thin, but the team's fans think the results are great.
“All I'm sayin' is, he comes near me, I'll put him in the wall.”
As Putin and other modern autocrats have realized, in the modern media environment — a chaotic Wild West where traditional gatekeepers are in decline — it is not necessary for a repressive regime to construct its own coherent account of events. There are no broadly respected, nonpartisan referees left to hold it to account for consistency or accuracy. All it needs, to get away with whatever it wants, is for the information environment to be so polluted that no one can figure out what’s true and what isn’t, or what’s really going on.
The recipe is always the same: attack independent media outlets as partisan enemies of the regime and, by proxy, enemies of the people. At the same time, use the media under state control, along with an army of bots, trolls, and [Expletive]-posters, to inject accusations, lies, and conspiracy theories into the public dialogue.
In an information fog filled with vexed uncertainty, people will either tune out, revert to their tribal affiliations, or both. They will seek a strong leader who offers simple certainties and a clear account of who is to blame for the chaos. Confusion and fear, not deception, are the ultimate goal.
That is precisely the kind of machine the US conservative movement has built: one designed to produce confusion and fear. Trump is its natural leader, the first Republican president to reflect the party’s contemporary core and character, and his impeachment is its ultimate test.
Meanwhile, Democrats are attempting to do something that arguably nothing since the 9/11 attacks has done: unite Americans in a clear understanding of a threat and a clear will to action, in a way that reaches across conventional partisan lines, at least to some extent.
It would seem to me a few more polls like this could send the GOP scurrying off the ship. There’s what, a half dozen witnesses scheduled to testify this week, many of whom have Sondland boxed in (who himself will testify). The 70% is pretty much all of the remaining forward-thinking adults in America. But the 51% has wiggle room for movement. If anything is going to force the GOP’s hand to snap out of it, it’s polling data.
So was all the weirdness over Trump’s physical etc over the weekend people suggesting that groundwork is being laid for him to step aside for health reasons at some point?
mister d wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 4:31 pm
I might be misremembering, but in Stone's case I don't believe it would necessarily be only a matter of rape or celibacy?
In any case - fuck that guy anyway.
"beautiful, with an exotic-yet-familiar facial structure and an arresting gaze."
mister d wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 4:31 pm
I might be misremembering, but in Stone's case I don't believe it would necessarily be only a matter of rape or celibacy?
In any case - fuck that guy anyway.
Dude, get in line.
You know what you need? A lyrical sucker punch to the face.
The bottom line is that urban and suburban voters in Louisiana's gubernatorial race went for the dem candidate at a significantly higher clip than they did for Hillary in 2016.
KY, VA legislature, Philly suburbs and elsewhere... Now this latest loss. One very similar to KY, in that Trump came in at the end and tried to make it about himself, and impeachment. And he lost. Probably hurt his preferred candidate.
He won this state by at least 20 points in 2016. They just lost by 2 or 3 points, when if you'd combined the two GOP candidates numbers in the "jungle primary" they were over 51 percent combined.
Not. Sustainable.
You can lead a horse to fish, but you can't fish out a horse.
L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 19, 2019 3:05 pm
I gave up on the 2nd one. I've been counsel in dozens of depositions, yet I can't figure out what the hell Gym Jordan is asking.
Neither can he...which makes sense, considering his law degree:
Jordan earned a master's degree in education from Ohio State University in Columbus and obtained a J.D. degree from Ohio's Capital University Law School in 2001. He has not taken the bar examination.
The younger Giuliani has served in the Office of Public Liaison, beginning as an associate director, since March 2017, making him one of the longest-serving members of the Trump administration. According to White House personnel records from 2018, he earns a salary of $90,700. The public-liaison office deals with outreach to outside coalitions, and several of the current and former administration officials I spoke to for this story said Giuliani helps arrange sports teams’ visits to the White House. (Sergio Gor, who is deputy chief of staff for Senator Rand Paul and close to Giuliani, called him a “liaison to the sports community.”) But sports-team visits are more special-occasion than scheduling staple in the business of government, especially in this White House, where many title-winning teams decline invitations to visit or are simply not invited at all. (Trump has, however, given a large number of awards, such as the Medal of Freedom, to sports figures.) Steve Munisteri, who was principal director of the public-liaison office and Giuliani’s supervisor from February 2017 to February 2019, told me that Giuliani fills out his time by serving as the office’s representative at White House meetings about the opioid crisis.
On Wednesday, the younger Mr. Giuliani filed a lawsuit in federal court in Durham, N.C. It accuses the university of bad faith by aggressively recruiting him to play golf for Duke and then dashing his dreams by taking steps to remove him from the team.
In the suit, Andrew Giuliani is asking for damages and for the right to use Duke’s golf center for the rest of his life, as he said he was promised when he was recruited to play for the school.
In the lawsuit, he acknowledged that he may have misbehaved in February when he tossed an apple in a teammate’s face, flipped his putter a few feet, threw and broke a club and gunned his engine in a parking lot.
This Chris Stewart guy is a superior piece of fucking shit. Fuck this guy. Seriously questioning a Lieutenant Colonel on how he should be addressed and having it couched with "I come from a military family" is world class bullshit.
mister d wrote:Couldn't have pegged me better.
EnochRoot wrote:I mean, whatever. Johnnie's all hot cuz I ride him.
Looks like Sondland decided to go away from the GOP talking points script. Could be an interesting day with Nunes falling back to screaming Benghazi over and over in the end.
EdRomero wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2019 9:34 am
Looks like Sondland decided to go away from the GOP talking points script. Could be an interesting day with Nunes falling back to screaming Benghazi over and over in the end.
It would appear that today will provide our John Dean moment.
One thing I've learned about this shit is that if I'm told to appear in front of Congress I would definitely be found in some sort of contempt because I have zero chill and zero couth for people like present day Republicans.
I'd definitely bring up Ohio State and Gym Jordan. I'd definitely remind Nunes he's losing in court to a cow Twitter account. I'd tell Stewart to stop stealing valor. I'd go off the fucking rails and turn it into a roast.
mister d wrote:Couldn't have pegged me better.
EnochRoot wrote:I mean, whatever. Johnnie's all hot cuz I ride him.
Johnnie wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2019 9:56 am
One thing I've learned about this shit is that if I'm told to appear in front of Congress I would definitely be found in some sort of contempt because I have zero chill and zero couth for people like present day Republicans.
I'd definitely bring up Ohio State and Gym Jordan. I'd definitely remind Nunes he's losing in court to a cow Twitter account. I'd tell Stewart to stop stealing valor. I'd go off the fucking rails and turn it into a roast.
I'm going to go out on a super strong limb and call bullshit.
You know what you need? A lyrical sucker punch to the face.