By David Futrelle
Well, today was a another disgrace.
Thanks, Trump, for making it even more blindingly obvious where your loyalties lie. You too, GOP. You too, Fox News.
Here’s a song that seems more than usually relevant today.
And some tweets:
The real pee tape is Trump pissing in our faces.
(The other pee tape is real too.)
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) July 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/_ElizabethMay/status/1018979656085712896
If Republicans don’t push back today, they never will.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 16, 2018
Hey look, it’s some treason with a side order of white supremacy (or maybe the other way around):
https://twitter.com/jonlovett/status/1018974979805753345
Things Republicans could do instead of send sad tweets
1. Pass legislation to protect the Mueller investigation
2. Subpoena Trump's tax and business records to see what leverage Russia may have on him
3. Pass a tougher sanctions law that doesn't let Trump wriggle out of them— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) July 16, 2018
Or, you know, start immediate impeachment hearings.
A C-SPAN caller just thanked Russia for "interfering in our elections" pic.twitter.com/wyIBSGc3S0
— jordan (@JordanUhl) July 16, 2018
This will be the standard MAGA/Fox News line within a day.
And oh, there’s this too:
Mariia Butina, a Russian national, has been charged with acting as a surreptitious Russian agent and establishing a secret back channel with the GOP through the NRA.
More likely to come on this; no wonder GOP members of HPSCI refused our request to bring her and others in. https://t.co/UWhoxHz3lr
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 16, 2018
To be fair, the National Rifle Association never specified WHICH nation they were working on behalf of.
This pretty much sums up the day:
i turn 29 in like two months and ive never conspired with a single foreign country. damn these impossible standards
— . (@swordsjew) July 16, 2018
The country isn’t united behind Trump? But he himself said that everyone wanted him to be president so he is trying to become president a second time. (that sentence of his was so stupid…)
Even my mother said, that she believes that Trump wanted to have the power of Putin, he wants to be a dictator.
I have some doubt if the republicans let him. I thing they are happy after 8 years to get some less stresful usful idiot.
To get some better news, on Tor.com I did just read, that there is a collection of short fiction from N.K.Jemisin coming that fall, from previous work, higly recomended. Another articel is Five Books That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity. (Yes, needed)
I didn’t know about Hawaii. Not that one more item on our overwhelming list of imperial sins adds or detracts.
What is bothering me is the rise in individual evil that is either developing or being revealed. Not just our leaders either. The depth of the racism and hate of anyone even a little different that I hear from everyday people frightens me.
I hope we can push it back in November but I too have my doubts and fears. More than ever before I feel like I understand the people living through the thirties and not just the Germans. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop or for terrible anger to be vindicated in a bloody shower of gleeful apocalyptic violence. Worst of all, not knowing what to do to interrupt the cycle of history.
Aside, I think Presidents Trump and Putin absolutely recognize the megalomaniacal tyrant in each other but I think Putin is smarter and as @ Alan Robertshaw pointed out more than capable of successfully manipulating Donald Trump on any number of levels.
@AuntieMameRedux:
Trump appears to be one of those sorts of people who is so thoroughly self-convinced that he cannot be manipulated that it makes him relatively easy to manipulate because he will always find some way to talk himself into believing it was his own idea all along. That or forget about it in a couple of days anyway.
@Pie
Trump being president for life was hyperbole on my part, or at least, I hope it was. I dunno, even without a constitutional amendment, Trump may be president for life anyway just because of his age unhealthy habits.
But it looks to me like the Republicans are pretty united behind Trump. A few people like Flake or McCain say some critical things on Twitter, but they haven’t really done much of substance.
And the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and most of the state governments.
And I’ve seen some Trump fans say that they look forward to Ivanka becoming the first female president after dad is done, so they really are already thinking about a dynasty. And maybe Russia, coupled with voter suppression and gerrymandering, will help to ensure that happens.
I hope I’m wrong. This is kind of a worst case scenario I’m thinking of here.
Trump could find a reason to declare martial law and under that cancel the elections indefinitely. A lot of progressives feared George W Bush would do that. I thought it was silly. I knew he wouldn’t. Trump on the other hand, I don’t think there’s any horrible behavior that can be ruled out. It does seem unlikely, but given how Trump likes to go against norms, undermine institutions and push boundaries and given how he doesn’t get push back from his party for this behavior, I think it’s not out of the question entirely.
Any Mammotheers in the district of Massie from Kentcucky*? Because he was just on MSNBC flat out saying that it’s not a big deal that Russia hacked into our election systems because it didn’t change any of the votes. He really needs to hear from some of his constituents for this.
Damn it. I just realized I forget to add the note after the asterisk. Kentcucky was a typo but I left it in because I thought it was funny that I accidentally wrote like a right winger.
I bring this up not to be pedantic, but because OTHER people will surely be pedantic.
Trump isn’t guilty of treason. Trump can’t be guilty of treason. As defined by the US constitution, treason is a crime of supporting a country we are at war with. If we are not at a state of war, then there is no possibility of someone committing treason. This is why the Rosenbergs were only convicted of espionage for selling nuclear technology to the Russians. We weren’t at war, so it wasn’t treason.
I do not mean this as a defense of Trump in any way. I’m just saying that if you run around accusing Trump of treason, you’ll be mired in pedantic twits using the technicality of his crimes not being STRICTLY treason to distract from the main point, which is that he’s providing aid and comfort to totalitarian, murderous assholes and undermining democracy.
Who?:
And my first thought on reading that typo was, “Is an articel someone who is celibate, but only for artistic reasons?” : – )
@Pie
The armed people aren’t the unhappy ones. I always point out things like this to too-far-left “revolutionaries” who think “when the revolution comes” something good will happen. When the revolution comes, the people (almost all conservatives) with all the guns finally get their excuse to shoot liberals, and enforce a completely un-moderate too-far-right conservative rule. It would be Afghanistan when the Mujahideen rode into towns in their pickup trucks and rifles and started beating women in the streets (for being outside their homes in normal clothing).
Whoever has the guns makes the rules after a revolution. Who has them now? That’s who will win.
I think that analysis leaves out a big chunk of who owns the guns. Ultimately, the outcome would likely come down to how the US military split between the two sides. If a large part of it remained loyal to the constitutional order that part might prevail over the neo-Nazi militias and the turncoat portion of the military. The whole of the military takes an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We’d find out just how many fully understood and would adhere to that oath …
It’s not only the other way around – it’s the way that the Russians are leading the GOP traitors who went to Moscow on July 4th around by the nose.
They were all from states full of white nationalist constituents who call Putin the “savior of white nationalism”, just like the white nationalists do in BREXIT and Europe. And even the UK saw that way before we did.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/12/the-guardian-view-on-white-nationalism-a-rising-danger
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/17/americas-far-right-white-supremacists-nationalism
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/how-did-quebecs-nationalist-movement-become-so-white
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/key-white-supremacist-found-living-in-montreal-exposes-reach-of-hate-groups
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/12/white-europe-60000-nationalists-march-on-polands-independence-day
It’s “all in Plato”, as the professor said in the first Narnian book, but we’re not going to be able to deal with it over here as long as even progressives stay in denial about it.
The analysis isn’t hard – what’s hard is getting white people who are addicted to appearing “good” while turning their faces away from the white nationalism and pretending its more covert manifestations “aren’t really a problem” to see that not only IS it a problem, it’s a REALLY BIG problem and it may well be a big enough problem to break our country apart from the inside, which even George Washington warned us about.
https://www.theroot.com/i-finally-see-it-democrats-don-t-hate-trump-as-much-as-1826986900
https://thesaladbowl.kinja.com/policy-wonk-tuesday-pwmc-division-because-this-one-is-1823941121
Here’s the real problem. Trump already said in 2016 that he would refuse to accept the election results if he lost. What if he loses in 2020 and refuses to step down? Will the Republicans keep sending sad tweets, or will they actually stand up and act like adults who can think for themselves?
Also…off-topic, but the incels have a new hero, one Drew Planten, who killed and raped one woman and was planning on repeating himself when he was arrested. He ended up killing himself. Anyway, there’s a thread praising him on incels.me. They have called him a hero, and said that he was the ‘real victim.’
Also, all the links in your articles lead not to the promised article, but to a page offering ropes for sale. I think you’ve been hacked. ?
@littlem
Perceptive insights. I wrote something similar the other day, but more tldr.
You should join us in the non comments at Wonkette.
?
@littlem:
There’s now a video summary of this recent white nationalist shit in Poland and elsewhere: