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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Straight up REFUSING to use it and instead having the president’s staff managing the president like a toddler and hiding documents is far, far worse. Because all of this is happening in secret, outside the democratic process, and without accountability.
Agreed. Impeachment and the 25th are clear mechanisms to remove an incompetent or unfit president. Doing all this go behind the back and manipulative stuff to prevent the president's will from being carried out is a MUCH BIGGER crisis as it calls into question the legitimacy of the office, its orders, and whether anyone can circumvent them and defy the chain of command anytime they choose.
This person and all the other people only care about getting what they want. If they really cared about what was best for the country, the first time Trump tried to do something horrifying, (like call for the assassination of a foreign leader or the nuking of North Korea) they should have shouted about it from the rooftops and gotten Trump replaced. They didn't do that because it would have made the fanatically loyal Trump base revolt, (maybe I should say rebel, since so many of them are already revolting) and caused dire consequences for the Republican party. Worse, it might have let Democrats win.
They want Trump to be their puppet so they can get tax cuts and persecute the LGBTQ population and racial and religious minorities, without the threat of losing elections or the Republican Party imploding as would happen if they ousted Trump and put Pence in his place. They need Trump, they need his appointed justices so they can continue to steer the country even if they're voted out of power for 20 years, so when the voters finally forget all the horrible shit they've done they can slide right back in and pick up where they left off, without liberals having been able to make any headway against their agenda.
They're scum. It's good for the country and the planet that these people didn't, say, allow Trump to let the nukes fly or abandon South Korea entirely to North Korea, but they're scum nonetheless. Momentarily useful, but still very much my enemy.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |There's no practical difference between an idiot and somebody pretending to be one - either way, people will think you're an idiot.
We learn from history that we do not learn from historySay, can the White House staff who have done all this sabotage of Trump's EOs and what not be charged with federal crimes after Trump is successfully impeached, on account that by this Op-Ed (and the results of whatever federal investigation is carried out to corrobate the claims in said Op-Ed) they knew they had more than enough reason to invoke the 25th and yet refused to do so in favor of actually engaging in criminal sabotage of the POTUS just so that they could maintain Republican control of the White House (because replacing Trump with Pence using the 25th would destroy their support with Trump's most devoted supporters, i.e. the essential core of the GOP's voter base)?
Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 6th 2018 at 5:00:24 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.This is a real-life thriller movie. I haven't been this riveted by an unknown person leaking info since the surveillance story of 2013.
That said, I generally agree with most here that, yeah, I guess I give them credit for preventing World War III or a total economic collapse but that's damning with faint praise. And isn't it a bad thing that this essentially validates Trump's fears of a "deep state"? Only the deep state isn't coming from an alphabet agency, it's from someone a lot closer.
BTW, an off-topic question and I wasn't sure where to ask it: Why can't I see my posts from July 18th and earlier? When I search for my username in "Find Posts By Troper" and click on this link
, for example, it shows a different user's post.
Edited by speedyboris on Sep 6th 2018 at 9:10:31 AM
If they've prevented him from stopping World War III, the only person I think can credibly claim that would be Mattis. They absolutely would not be responsible for stopping total economic collapse in that they're Republicans and thus their economic policies have no connection to reality.
But yes the fact that this will infuriate him and weaken his will is undoubtedly a good thing, even if the person doing it is a cowardly reprobate.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangSo from what I'm reading about the content of Kav's emails, does that not technically finger him for perjury? Something about stating under oath that he first found out about the warrantless surveillance stuff in 2005 when NYT broke it but we have correspondence from 2001 about it with the man who wrote the policy.
Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Sep 6th 2018 at 5:05:59 PM
"Yup. That tasted purple."So, the Kavanaugh hearings have gone
completely,
shit-hitting-the-fan
sideways.![]()
Basically- a ton of Kavanaugh records are being kept from the public for no good reason, and oh god, they’re very bad on race, campaign finance, and Roe.
Apparently, Cory Booker broke some rules to release some documents that the Trump administration was concealing from the Senate, in order to get everyone the full information on Brett Kavanaugh's views on various issues and how he would be as a judge. Damn bravery.
Life is unfair...I mean, it’s not clear what rules he’s breaking... they didn’t assert a real form of privilege, which one of the links in my previous post notes.
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Given that there’s still a lot of people who have no idea about the Kavanaugh hearings, I’m not down to celebrate the absolutely horrifying behavior by the republicans.
The Republicans are always horrifying, that won't stop me from celebrating.
And yes you're right that many people don't know but that shouldn't be surprising or seen as a bad thing, not everyone is as informed as we are and thus it will take time for the news to filter down and the more nonsense there is the more people will notice.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangAlex Jones should not throw stones in a glass house. One look at him in younger years paints the picture of a vain, hedonistic frat boy Jerk Jock.
I look forward to Woodward's visit to Colbert on Monday.
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo both strongly denied authoring the anonymous op-ed published yesterday in the New York Times. "The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds," Pence's spokesperson said on Twitter. "It is sad that you have someone who would make that choice,” said Pompeo. "I come from a place where if you’re not in a position to execute the commander’s intent, you have a singular option, that is to leave." Social media speculation that Pence wrote the op-ed comes from the use of word "lodestar" in the piece, a word that Pence has used multiple times over the course of more than a decade
Going back to an oldie but a goodie:
A government photographer edited photos of Trump inauguration to make the crowd look bigger than it was after Trump personally intervened. Newly released documents show that the photographer cropped out the empty space "where the crowd ended" after Trump requested a new set of pictures on the first morning of his presidency. The newly discovered details were not included in the inspector general office's final report on its inquiry into the situation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited
Edited by sgamer82 on Sep 6th 2018 at 11:27:08 AM
In seriousness, though, I doubt the op-ed is genuine. Tell-alls tend to be written by resigned or purged administration personnel months, years, decades after the fact and are written in the light of day under the author's real name. The fact that it just randomly dropped this week, casually confirming everything Trump believes about the White House apparatus's allegiance, and redirects his paranoia towards the establishment elements of the bureaucracy with the promise that somewhere, The Mole exists, undermining his regime from within while being entirely supportive of his policies, along with the violation of constitutional norms that comes with this sort of court intrigue, makes me question the author's ulterior motives.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I think it's Pence because we've heard many-many-many stories about how Pence is serving as the Tywin to Trump's Joffrey.
Doing the actual business of governing which Trump can't be bothered to.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 6th 2018 at 11:17:03 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.@Crimson Zephyr-
I doubt that Trump is that smart and the thought of that kind of cleverly evil False Flag Operation being in play is too scary for me to consider.
However, I do agree in terms of suspecting a bad intent, whether or not the author thinks of it that way. Specifically, the author objects to Trump in terms of him "not being a true Republican", which seems aimed to distance Republicans (including the author) from bad press associated with Trump. More importantly, the author kind of reassures Republican elected officials (and close to the mid-terms no less) that they don't need to worry about Trump/do anything to impede him, because there are "true patriots" inside the Administration who are preventing him from doing anything "too bad".
It's not Pence. Pence is competent. Competent enough to not use "lodestar."
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I think he means "deception" in the sense that it's from the White House insider, but it's just a made-up narrative to make the GOP look good to the various Republicans that go "I mean, I'm a Republican, but I don't support Trump."
Edited by Larkmarn on Sep 6th 2018 at 2:30:22 PM
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Sane person, honestly believing in terrible things is bad but it's better then callously using them for personal gain without actually believing.
Thankfully Jones resolves this moral quandary by being a true believer who also says it for personal gain! Which is...double the awfulness.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang