a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1666 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Whistle-Blower Is a C.I.A. Officer Who Was Detailed to the White House

I'm beginning to wonder if what we're watching is the non-partisan intelligence community transitioning from "we've gotta suck it up on this one, we're not a political office, our duty is to the country, the Agency is forever and Trump is four years" to "...well shit this is kind of the sort of thing we're supposed to protect democracy from."

The Don Jr. shit was the New York Times. That means there's nobody at any government agency tasked with making stuff happen unless they're directly ordered to. The Ukrainian conversation is a whistleblower, all lawyered up and procedural, calling flag on the play. Journalistic allegations? You can chase that if you want, or not, depending on political will and instruction from higher office. Properly sanctioned allegations of treason? Now we have a procedure and once we have a procedure, momentum lies with the action, not the status quo.





am_Unition  ·  1666 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, this is canon.

You also gotta wonder if someday they'll look at statistics of outed foreign agents embedded in our IC and discover a wealth of hiring dates during this administration. But again, I think Hanlon's razor applies primarily.

kleinbl00  ·  1666 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If failed shenanigans incur no cost, shenanigans will be attempted each and every time.

Blowback to the FSB for this whole election thing? Maria Butina is serving 18 months. That's about three and a half Martha Stewarts. Guys who poisoned the Skripals? Showed up on television to say they were tourists.

    “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”
am_Unition  ·  1663 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”

He didn't do so hot tonight.

kleinbl00  ·  1663 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Let's not lose sight of the fact that there's two people Kevin McCarthy thinks Putin pays and he has been A-OK with that for two years now.

am_Unition  ·  1662 days ago  ·  link  ·  
kleinbl00  ·  1662 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    House Minority Leader’s spending at Trump’s properties increased 32,000 percent after Nov. 8, 2016

Maybe it's the gin and tonic but ZOMFG I this has to shellack the mutherfucker. Surely someone in Bakersfield has had enough of this asshole.

am_Unition  ·  1662 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's not a huge amount of money compared to a campaign budget, though. This bothers me more on principle. We should have a statute for the emoluments clause applied to domestic interactions, because once again, the president's failure to de-couple himself from his businesses clearly provides the opportunity for abuse and corruption.

kleinbl00  ·  1661 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It is, though. It's 25% of his campaign funding.

am_Unition  ·  1661 days ago  ·  link  ·  

A roughly $2 million campaign seems a little light on funding to me, he must have been secure in his re-election. I'mma go check.

Yep, he won in 2018 with 64% of the vote. The RNC and PACs wisely spent their money on actual battlegrounds.

kleinbl00  ·  1661 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Methinks the battle is spreading.

am_Unition  ·  1660 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If people still care about truth, there isn't gonna be enough money in 2020 to assure they keep the Senate. Big if, tho

am_Unition  ·  1663 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Next on our menu, we have the second course: Stephen Miller fillets in a hostile Fox New sauce

The first 30 seconds (~7:20 to ~7:50) are long-winded (srry), but omg when Miller begins his reply, NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL COMEDY [VOL. II]

"ChRiS.." (-_-)

Actually, Wallace has been fantastic for a few years now. I know he's the token oppo (w/ Shep Smith) but he's actually really good. Do you think he has friends around the office? Like, maybe they think he's doing a shtick too, and he's a disarmingly nice guy?

kleinbl00  ·  1663 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thing is? Chris Wallace is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative partisan. He's about as right as Jon Stewart is left. But he's not willing to say anything, do anything, be anything in order to advance the agenda of whatever Republican is calling the shots.

We've just fallen so far that Democrats are cheering on the Lawful Evil the same way they rallied around the Dixie Chicks. Because holy mother of god. The alternative is Stephen Fucking Miller.

That said, it is noteworthy that Stephen Fucking Miller went on a softball Sunday morning Fox News show thinking he'd get a softball interview and the best softball Fox News can serve up right now is "respectfully, cut the bullshit." Dollars to donuts, if Stephen Fucking Miller could have come up with some vaguely plausible talking points they would have let him run.

am_Unition  ·  1662 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You can tell me not to get excited that there are still some people on the right living in the same reality as us and willing to call out Trump's brazen propagandists, but I'm still going to get excited.

Edit: You never said that at all, I just got excited.

kleinbl00  ·  1662 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am not at all upset that we might have found the bottom of the bottomless pit of Republican opportunism.