The General US Politics Thread

I once was blind, but now I see.

I think I’ve finally found the truth that really will set me free.

After years of pushing him away, I’m think I’m ready to invite Make America Great Again Jesus into my heart.

It’s not inspiration or inner conviction or divine revelation that has led me to this holy conversion moment—it’s mainly just fatigue.

I’m tired.

It’s hard caring about people; waking up every morning and having to have empathy for someone who isn’t me, let alone someone who doesn’t even look like me, think like me, vote like me, talk like me, worship like me. It’s fairly exhausting trying to actually live all that Gospel Jesus stuff: loving the least, being a servant, turning the other cheek, living humbly, tending to the sick and the poor, praying for my enemies.

I didn’t realize that being a peacemaker and a Good Samaritan would be such thankless, taxing, costly business—and honestly it’s worn me the heck out.

I was beginning to think maybe I needed to jump ship altogether; that maybe Christianity wasn’t for me—until I found MAGA Jesus and he saved me from a life of sacrifice, humility, and selflessness. He isn’t half as demanding as Gospel Jesus is. In fact, all things considered, he requires very little from me: Say a quick magic prayer, in exchange for a permanent Get Out of Hell Free card, a life of unrepentant privilege, and the right to judge the humanity around me however I please. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

With MAGA Jesus running things, I’ll be able to focus on saving souls for the next life—which means I won’t have to be concerned with what befalls people in this one all that much anymore. Their poverty, their adversity, their suffering is really none of my concern. (They’re supposed to “rejoice in their trials” anyway, so I’ll actually be doing them a favor.) Oh sure, I’ll still be able to take enough interest in people’s personal existence to condemn them for who they love or the bathroom they want to use or their desire to get married—but beyond that I don’t have any pressing interest one way or the other. Someone else’s life (outside of the bedroom and bathroom) is none of my business.

MAGA Jesus also frees me up from worrying about the planet heating up or the coral reefs dying or the honeybees disappearing. I can chalk that all up to a “groaning creation” that is well above my pay grade, and simply live with relative abandon, consuming and wasting to my heart’s delight.

I don’t have to welcome refugees or immigrants, or those fleeing war, oppression, and sickness the way Gospel Jesus insisted—I can just tell them all to go pound sand. I can spend and acquire and hoard as much as I want and not give it a second thought, because MAGA Jesus is a make it rain deity who wouldn’t dare tell me that I can’t serve both God and money—the way Gospel Jesus would. And all the annoying death, suffering, violence, and disease outside my door? I can blame it all on the sins of a “fallen world”, while I offer “thoughts and prayers” and pass the buck to God.

The really great thing about worshiping MAGA Jesus , is that I’ll still get to call myself a Christian—which will be helpful in simplifying the post-conversion transition. I won’t even have to edit my social media profiles. And as long as things stay as they are here, I can guarantee that I’ll always be well-represented in Washington and from the megachurch pulpits and on Fox News—which is really all any American religious person needs.

Sure, I’ll have to adopt a decidedly white, affluent, American, gun-loving, gay-hating Savior, which will take some getting used to, but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t take long. In no time, I’ll be worshiping Capitalism, waving the flag, retweeting Breitbart, and telling the poor and the hurting to pull themselves up by their bootstraps— without having to worry about whether they have boots or not.

I figure I’ve given this Gospel Jesus thing a good go of it. I’ve been working that whole “love your neighbor as yourself”, compassionate, generous program for nearly half a century, and what has it gotten me—except a diverse community, an experience of lives I’d never otherwise known, and the hope of leaving the planet a little kinder than when I found it. Not exactly a golden parachute and surely not profitable.

It isn’t like I’ll totally be exempt from empathy either. I’ll of course still get to care for my spouse and my kids and my parents and my friends, my kind—but beyond that, giving a greater damn will be at my discretion. Anyone else’s well-being or healthcare or kids or job, especially beyond our borders, won’t have to be a priority anymore.

I’m sure I’ll miss my old religion from time to time; the joy and kindness and the mercy, but I sure won’t miss the work. I’m looking forward to finally having a God work for me—instead of the other way around.

I think I’ll get everything I as a straight, white, Christian male deserve, for a change.

I believe MAGA Jesus will make my Christianity great (and easier) again.

I’m ready.

Specifically, contrary to Manafort’s assertions about his jail conditions, Manafort is in a private unit in which he can review materials and prepare for trial.3 Moreover, he is not confined to a cell. Between the hours of 8:30am to 10:00pm, Manafort has access to a separate workroom at the jail to meet with his attorneys and legal team. Visitor logs from the prison indicate that each week Manafort has had multiple visits with his legal team.

Manafort also has a personal telephone in his unit, which he can use over twelve hours a day to speak with his attorneys.4 According to prison telephone logs, in the last three weeks Manafort has had over 100 phone calls with his attorneys, and another 200 calls with other persons. Those telephone logs indicate Manafort has spoken to his attorneys every day, and often multiple times a day. Manafort also possesses a personal laptop that he is permitted to use in his unit to review materials and prepare for trial. The jail has made extra accommodations for Manafort’s use of the laptop, including providing him an extension cord to ensure the laptop can be used in his unit and not just in the separate workroom.5

Among the unique privileges Manafort enjoys at the jail are a private, self-contained living unit, which is larger than other inmates’ units, his own bathroom and shower facility, his own personal telephone, and his own workspace to prepare for trial. Manafort is also not required to wear a prison uniform. On the monitored prison phone calls, Manafort has mentioned that he is being treated like a “VIP.”

Although the jail does not allow prisoners to send or receive emails, Manafort appears to have developed a workaround. Manafort has revealed on the monitored phone calls that in order to exchange emails, he reads and composes emails on a second laptop that is shuttled in and out of the facility by his team. When the team takes the laptop from the jail, it reconnects to the internet and Manafort’s emails are transmitted.

Twitter is getting rid of fake accounts at a record pace. Will that include the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, who constantly quote anonymous sources that, in my opinion, don’t exist - They will both be out of business in 7 years!

Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the “Special” Counsel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!

The Rigged Witch Hunt, originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S (for one year) & now, 13 Angry Democrats, should look into the missing DNC Server, Crooked Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails, the Pakistani Fraudster, Uranium One, Podesta & so much more. It’s a Democrat Con Job!

I have confidence that Kim Jong Un will honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearization of North Korea. China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade-Hope Not!

The failing NY Times Fake News story today about breast feeding must be called out. The U.S. strongly supports breast feeding but we don’t believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty.

Pfizer & others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason. They are merely taking advantage of the poor & others unable to defend themselves, while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe & elsewhere. We will respond!

Getting ready to leave for Europe. First meeting - NATO. The U.S. is spending many times more than any other country in order to protect them. Not fair to the U.S. taxpayer. On top of that we lose $151 Billion on Trade with the European Union. Charge us big Tariffs (& Barriers)!

Thank you to all of my great supporters, really big progress being made. Other countries wanting to fix crazy trade deals. Economy is ROARING. Supreme Court pick getting GREAT REVIEWS. New Poll says Trump, at over 90%, is the most popular Republican in history of the Party. Wow!

Ex-FBI LAYER Lisa Page today defied a House of Representatives issued Subpoena to testify before Congress! Wow, but is anybody really surprised! Together with her lover, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, she worked on the Rigged Witch Hunt, perhaps the most tainted and corrupt case EVER!

How can the Rigged Witch Hunt proceed when it was started, influenced and worked on, for an extended period of time, by former FBI Agent/Lover Peter Strzok? Read his hate filled and totally biased Emails and the answer is clear!

Billions of additional dollars are being spent by NATO countries since my visit last year, at my request, but it isn’t nearly enough. U.S. spends too much. Europe’s borders are BAD! Pipeline dollars to Russia are not acceptable!

As I head out to a very important NATO meeting, I see that FBI Lover/Agent Lisa Page is dodging a Subpoena & is refusing to show up and testify. What can she possibly say about her statements and lies. So much corruption on the other side. Where is the Attorney General? @Fox News

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break with NATO and conduct American security unilaterally — if allies do not immediately meet higher military spending targets, NATO officials and diplomats said.

Trump warned of “grave consequences” if allies do not immediately meet higher spending targets, derailing a morning meeting of NATO leaders with the leaders of Georgia and Ukraine on the second day of a NATO leaders’ summit on Thursday. One NATO official said Trump wants a plan from alliance members by January on how to reach the spending target.

Some officials urged caution in interpreting Trump’s remarks, but say allies clearly heard a threat. Word of Trump’s threat set off a wild game of telephone at NATO headquarters as officials and reporters tried to sort out what exactly Trump told fellow leaders. Two common versions, according to officials briefed, were if allies don’t pay up, the U.S. “will do our own thing” or “go it alone.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg immediately shifted the meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s top political body, into an allies-only emergency session. Partners including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker therefore left the discussion.

Later at a press conference, Trump did not respond to a question about whether he had threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Instead, he answered another part of the question, which asked if he could pull out without congressional approval. He said: “I think I can.”

NATO officials said Trump was furious over media coverage suggesting that the first day of the summit had proceeded calmly, and that he had demanded to hold a press conference immediately after the morning meeting.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. NATO delegation referred questions to the White House.

Even before taking office in January 2017, Trump has excoriated allies for not spending more on defense, though he often seems not to understand NATO financing and has repeatedly complained that allies “owed” a huge debt.

Diplomats said Trump’s statements potentially pose a direct threat to the U.K.’s national security. With the U.K. leaving the EU, NATO is the central pillar of Britain’s security set up — the alliance which it helped form after World War II to counter threats from Moscow. It remains the one international club in which the U.K. feels “genuinely at home,” one U.K. diplomat said.

WASHINGTON — Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, has asked federal prosecutors to help review the government documents of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Mr. Rosenstein’s request was an unusual insertion of politics into federal law enforcement. While the Justice Department has helped work on previous Supreme Court nominations, department lawyers in Washington typically carry out that task, not prosecutors who pursue criminal investigations nationwide.

But in an email sent this week to the nation’s 93 United States attorneys, Mr. Rosenstein asked each office to provide up to three federal prosecutors “who can make this important project a priority for the next several weeks.” Names were to be submitted to Mr. Rosenstein’s office by the end of Wednesday.

Mr. Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh on Monday to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is retiring. In years of public service — including work for the independent counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton, on the 2000 Florida recount and as a White House aide to George W. Bush — Judge Kavanaugh generated a lengthy paper trail. That had Senator Mitch Mc Connell of Kentucky, the majority leader, privately expressing concern that it might be used against him in his Senate confirmation hearings.

Mr. Rosenstein’s email, which had the subject line “Personal Message to U.S. Attorneys From the Deputy A.G.,” included the sentence, “We need your help in connection with President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Former law enforcement officials described Mr. Rosenstein’s directive as a troubling precedent.

“It’s flat-out wrong to have career federal prosecutors engaged in a political process like the vetting of a Supreme Court nominee,” said Christopher Hunter, a former F.B.I. agent and federal prosecutor who is running for Congress. “It takes them away from the mission they’re supposed to be fulfilling, which is effective criminal justice enforcement.”

Mr. Hunter, who served as an F.B.I. agent and federal prosecutor for nearly 11 years, said he could not recall receiving a similar solicitation to work on a Supreme Court nomination.

While federal prosecutors have not been tapped to help with recent nominations, including Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, “the scope of the production of executive branch documents we’ve been asked for is many, many times as large,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

Ms. Flores added that federal prosecutors had been used to vet Supreme Court nominees in the past.

But this is the first time that the deputy attorney general has sent out such a broad request to United States attorneys offices.

Mr. Rosenstein wrote that he expected to need the equivalent of 100 full-time lawyers to work on Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and that the work would be supervised by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy in Washington.

The office typically helps with judicial nominations; most of its staff is made up of career Justice Department lawyers.

During the confirmation process for Judge Merrick B. Garland, the Obama nominee whom Senate Republicans refused to consider, the office helped pull together the more than 2,000 documents needed for Mr. Garland’s Senate questionnaire.

“When we gathered documents required to be turned over to the Judiciary Committee, we did not ask anyone from outside of the Office of Legal Policy to help out,” said Michael Zubrensky, a former Justice Department lawyer who oversaw the judicial nominations at the time and the current legal director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“But the number of documents for Judge Kavanaugh will be different by an order of magnitude,” Mr. Zubrensky said.

The production of documents could slow down a confirmation hearing that has already shaped up as a sharp partisan battle. Democratic lawmakers say they want to inspect all of Judge Kavanaugh’s documents, including his staff work and over 300 opinions he has issued on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“It takes them away from the mission they’re supposed to be fulfilling, which is effective criminal justice enforcement.”