I fuckin love that show. And what a beautiful segue into this:

https://www.wikitribune.com/

At the core, the biggest problem with the news is the economic model which underlies it.

On the impossibility of governing when there's no there there.

How Trump's Religion of 'Winning' Is Sabotaging His Presidency

I wanted to flag to your attention this new piece by our crack Capitol Hill team of Alice Ollstein and Tierney Sneed. I’ve been telling you in recent days how President Trump had made a flat demand for border wall money or he’d toss people off Obamacare and shut down the government to boot. Later he waffled and finally pulled one of Trump’s classic whipsaw pre-fails, deciding he’d just try to get the money in the fall.

But Sneed and Ollstein get into a different aspect of the story, one unfolding simultaneously and also giving us a glimpse of where the Trump presidency may be going. Yes, Trump made his threat. Then he caved. But while threatening and caving he was here and there un-threatening and un-caving. It wasn’t just bluster followed by fail in some normal linear fashion. It was impossible to now what Trump and the White House were doing or about to do. It was and is impossible to know what was trying to do. So congressional Republicans seem simply to have stopped trying.

As of last night, they were simply negotiating a deal to keep the government open and largely ignoring the President. In a sense, Trump has brought back the actual give and take of legislating by dint of his inability to act like a grown up or even a President.

As with every new White House and administration, we see a constant effort to see who at the White House is calling the shots, who is really speaking for the President or which one of the President’s advisors is screwing things up. Who really speaks for the President out of conflicting advisors who sometimes make contradictory statements or signal lesser or greater levels of confrontation?

What seems clear with Trump is that the exercise is likely mistaken in itself. There’s no Trump viewpoint or thinking or goal to represent. There’s no actor at the center of the machine, at least not one who remains constant enough in any aim or view to matter. So there’s no point figuring our which advisor speaks for the President or represents his thinking. Because, fundamentally, there’s no thinking to represent.

We can see this in the impetuous threats. But it comes out more clearly on the field of policy. The President is now in something of a fit because he is ending his first hundred days in office with close to no legislative accomplishments. He did put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, a huge boon for conservatives. But that’s not really an accomplishment, let alone a piece of legislation. Mitch McConnell stole that seat last year. All Trump had to do was choose a name from a hat. But it’s clear – and Trump, to be fair, has told us this a lot – that Trump doesn’t really care about the substance of the legislation. He wants ‘wins’. He wants big bills passed that he can sign.

Certainly, every President wants wins. Ego can’t be disentangled from the presidential enterprsise. Every President also cuts deals and compromises – maybe a lot. But virtually every President we’ve encountered has some basic orientation. They want to cut taxes or they want to raise taxes. They want to expand Medicare or replace it with vouchers. To the degree they don’t get even into this level of policy detail they have a group of advisors they operate through with some consistency. President Trump seems fundamentally different. He just want wins – virtually anything that is doable and his constellation of advisors and supporters at the moment can count as a win.

This may seem like it dramatically opens the opportunities to pass legislation: since Trump will sign basically anything that counts as a ‘win.’ In practice, just the opposite is the case. Since the President is only concerned with wins, there is no policy agenda or policy specificity, regardless of how malleable, for legislators to grab on to or work with. If they did, it’s just as likely it might change for any number of reasons. As we’ve noted, the presidency is the centripetal force of American politics. Without that force to wrap legislative strategies around it’s very difficult to operate.

The attempt to repeal Obamacare is a case in point. President Trump ran on Obamacare being terrible because that’s what his target audience – Republicans – believed. But to the extent he had an expressed alternative in mind it was something that would provide better coverage for less money and with lower deductibles. What he ended up pushing was the almost polar opposite. But it’s clear Trump had virtually no idea and no concern with what was in the bill. He wanted a win. He’d take a win on the right of his party or the left. It’s probably not too much to say that in some alternative universe where Paul Ryan recommended single payer, he’d get behind that too. He wanted a win.

This desire for wins is the same drive that gets Trump to demand one week action on numerous major policy initiatives without coming up with even the basics of what kind of legislation to pass.

In Mike Allen’s not-Playbook this morning on Axios, he says that the point of President Trump releasing a plan this morning is to signal to the Hill that he’s going to take a much more muscular approach defining the legislative agenda to Congress. Allen quotes a “West Wing confidant” as saying:”The White House is saying to Congress: You can expect us to do this on other major policy initiatives — health care; immigration; infrastructure; and the budget, particularly defense spending. We let you drive policy on health care, and you drove off a cliff.”

Sure, maybe. But this just sounds more like blame shifting. Trump’s winning-centric approach to the Presidency has been slapdash, erratic and impossible to predict. Hill leaders seem more likely to govern around him, if not necessarily in spite of him. Because there’s simply no there there to negotiate with or to follow.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how … presidency

In an interview with Fox News to mark the 100-day mark, [Trump] declared himself “disappointed” with congressional Republicans, despite his many “great relationships” with them.

He blamed the constitutional checks and balances built in to US governance. “It’s a very rough system,” he said. “It’s an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.”

choad wrote:

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/cruel.png

~ click ~

100 cell phones in that hearing and nobody managed to catch her actually laughing? Link if you can find one. Otherwise I am going to assume that her purpose at the hearing was to get arrested.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Emmeran wrote:

GooberMcNutly wrote:

choad wrote:

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/cruel.png

~ click ~

100 cell phones in that hearing and nobody managed to catch her actually laughing? Link if you can find one. Otherwise I am going to assume that her purpose at the hearing was to get arrested.

Yup and I agree with them for throwing the book at her.

Ditto. She's just a loud twat.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

BWAHAHAHA!

Selling out cheap was the plan all along.

Asked why reporters were asked to leave, a PR person who declined to identify herself said simply, “This is not the story we want.”

I bet they did, sunshine is a bitch.



Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

There is no "real" Trump. There is only this Trump — the Trump saying or doing whatever he's saying or doing at any given moment, which has no rational connection to what he said or did in the recent past or what he might be saying or doing even a single moment from now.

By Wednesday, the odds for a Trump impeachment during his first term had risen from 2/1 to 4/6, representing a 60 percent chance, according to Lewis Davey, a spokesman for the Irish betting site Paddy Power.

"We can attribute this to the news of Comey's sacking," said Davey, adding that the current four-to-six odds were "the shortest we've been for Trump to be impeached in his first term..."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/betting-odds … 30599.html

Mugwump wrote:

As the fallout from the unexpected firing of James Comey on Tuesday continues to rock Washington, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) suggested a new job for the ousted FBI director: leading the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

"I think the intelligence committee ought to hire James Comey to direct our investigation," King said during a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN's New Day. "I'm going to float that today and see what kind of reaction I get."

I like that. It has a certain symmetry about it.

Those Limey bastards tricked him; they gave him an open mike!

Also, they're clearly trying to deny credit where it's due. Obviously Trump invented the concept of 'priming the pump'. We'll probably have to go to war against the Brits again, too, after we've finished solving the Middle East mess and made North Korea go away.

Smudge wrote:

Mugwump wrote:

As the fallout from the unexpected firing of James Comey on Tuesday continues to rock Washington, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) suggested a new job for the ousted FBI director: leading the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

"I think the intelligence committee ought to hire James Comey to direct our investigation," King said during a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN's New Day. "I'm going to float that today and see what kind of reaction I get."

I like that. It has a certain symmetry about it.

It'd be great if this were a movie; but I'd much rather have someone more competent and less compromised than Comey.

This guy has no clue, he thinks he operates in a vacuum.

It's funny how many internet articles you can find on "Can a sitting President be charged with Treason, prosecuted, indicted, etc.", many of which were written in the Obama era by conservative websites. 

I'm starting to see a lot for Trump now.

For those of you scoring at home, the process is Indictment, Conviction, Impeachment.  None are guaranteed.

At the federal level, Article II of the United States Constitution states in Section 4 that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Baywolfe wrote:

It's funny how many internet articles you can find on "Can a sitting President be charged with Treason, prosecuted, indicted, etc.", many of which were written in the Obama era by conservative websites. 

I'm starting to see a lot for Trump now.

For those of you scoring at home, the process is Indictment, Conviction, Impeachment.  None are guaranteed.

At the federal level, Article II of the United States Constitution states in Section 4 that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

I'd like to believe the Repubs will toss this guy but I suspect he's in office to get the electorate to shut up about how a business man would run the country better.  We might be stuck with him for a while...

I think this is shifting into entirely new territory, and I suspect that we're watching the Trump presidency begin to unravel. I base this on two assumptions; that there was collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russians, and the FBI has specific knowledge of it. When Trump fired Comey, he basically set up a war between the White House and the FBI. If my assumptions are correct, then it's a war which Trump will lose.

With all of the indications, suggestions, hints, clues and accusations, I simply can't believe that Trump is completely innocent of colluding with the Russians, or of attempting to impede the investigations into the matter after the fact. The only thing which has protected Trump up until this point was the blanket refusal of all of the Republicans in positions of power to endorse a serious investigation. That changed this evening:

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/33373 … comey-memo

President Pence is a real possibility, but like Gerald Ford after Nixon, Pence will not be viewed as a legitimate holder of the office, and his ability to wreck havoc will be limited.

I think Trump stands a very real chance of going down.

Just trust in the fact that his gaffe's only increase in seriousness as time progresses, he's never had to play by rules before and he's tripping over each and every one of them.

Remember - this is a guy who was born with a silver spoon stuck up his ass...

I think Trump's base of support is so slim that his presidency could unravel with startling speed. In fact, I think it's already started.

Remember, Nixon had the 'silent majority' behind him. Trump has never seen majority support at any point in his campaign or presidency. Now he's down to about one in three (and falling).

I've spent the morning trying to see if I could come up with any examples of the rats returning after abandoning a sinking ship, and I couldn't come up with any. We've gone from impeachment being highly unlikely to probable (or, if not impeachment, resigning to avoid same) in the space of 24 hours.

I can't answer that one...

Out by Christmas:


I don't think it's a sure thing, but it's more likely than not. I'd take the bet too.



http://thehill.com/homenews/media/33436 … -christmas

Remaining Countries on Trump’s Itinerary Say They’d Rather Wait a Month and Meet with Next President
By Andy Borowitz

According to one NATO minister, “We don’t see why we should be speaking to Donald Trump when even Melania isn’t doing that.”

Mugwump wrote:

Remaining Countries on Trump’s Itinerary Say They’d Rather Wait a Month and Meet with Next President
By Andy Borowitz

According to one NATO minister, “We don’t see why we should be speaking to Donald Trump when even Melania isn’t doing that.”

I didn't just lawl; I involuntarily cawed like a raven over here.

George Orr wrote:

Serious people are starting to seriously speculate whether Drumpf is suffering some sort of dementia or other mental deterioration:

"He was not always so linguistically challenged."

An interesting point you raise, George.

I remember reading at some point during the campaign that there was some concern amongst doctors that the specific drug which Trump has been taking to regrow his hair has been know to cause cognitive problems.

I also think it's a fairly reasonable conjecture that he's under more stress than he's experienced before. That, too, could cause personality aberrations to appear.

Mexico markets Trump themed tp, proceeds help migrants


Orange Julius-themed toilet paper will hit the shelves this year, and 30% of the profits go towards helping migrants.

http://boingboing.net/2017/05/25/mexico … ed-tp.html

Jesus Christ, if that isn't a smoking gun, I don't know what is. I see criminal charges coming down the pike.