I had commentary on this, but their being together speaks far more than I could.
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There’s a slight chance the DoJ might prosecute if they think they can put Pruitt away. Session or Trump could always kill the investigation, but it may not be on their Radar.
Here is a really interesting article about how Donald Trumps Binet for Russia and Putin has roots that go back to the mid 80’s, and how everything becomes a lot more easy to understand if you look at all the evidence through that lens.
I’ve assumed a lot of this was the case already, but I didn’t realize just how much evidence for the obvious worst-case story there was, rather than all the special pleading fitting to the more innocent paradigm.
Worth the read!
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The Russians are known for playing the long game and being very patient in their espionage and psyops, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if this were true even in part.
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Well that’s the thing. It obviously is true in the majority of it. It’s not a conspiracy theory, where facts have to be twisted or ignored to fit into the theory. It’s the opposite of that. Facts have to be twisted to NOT fit into the theory.
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What saddens me the most is that the entire Republican party has decided that rather than lose power as their base disappears at the hands of father time or adapt to a modern world, they will literally accept the intervention of a foreign power.
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To the surprise of no one, there might have been some quid pro quo funny business going on between Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the White House:
"We need to proceed carefully, because we’re getting more reports by the hour, most of them based on anonymous administration sources describing what went on behind the scenes. Early this morning, NBC reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell posted on Twitter that “Kennedy and Trump/WH had been in negotiations for months over Kennedy’s replacement.” Then she walked the story back a bit…
To be clear, I’m not saying anything this questionable happened in Kennedy’s case. It may turn out that communications between Kennedy and the White House only happened after he decided to retire (which would be questionable, but not as bad as it might have been). Perhaps when Kavanaugh was added to Trump’s list of potential justices last November, it was a signal to Kennedy that he could move on, but that there was no direct understanding between them.
Still, if any communication did happen, previous norms of judicial independence are being undermined. But that’s what happens when Donald Trump is president. Everyone and everything, in one way or another, gets corrupted eventually."
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As 538 basically said. If the court starts to disagree with enough Americans, it’s likely that the court itself will start to mean less. People at large will place less weight on what they have to say. The court is more respected now than it has been in the past and maybe that’s about to change.
One wonders how Justice Roberts feels about this, I mean it’d be happening on his watch.
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I agree generally.
About Roberts specifically though, as much as he (and everyone else) claims that the legitimacy of the Court is important to him, he didn’t really speak out when the Republicans refused to hold hearings on Merrick Garland OR when Trump nominated Neil Goresuch. If the legitimacy of the Court really means something to him, I would have expected him to do something… anything.
Fair. Maybe the only reason I think it’d change now is because this is the first time I’ve thought of it and not because anything of substance would cause it.
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I’m all about replacing ICE by bringing back the old INS and having it execute more humane policies. The ICE “brand” has been tarnished too much to simply reform it.
Don’t discount the power of a moral victory. Even if “abolishing ICE” doesn’t achieve that much structurally, the value to the left of such a rapid policy response to their anger would be an energizing force for Democrats in the mid-terms.
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Or proof that everything will be fine and what we’re doing is working so no need to actually get up and vote ala 2016
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Unfortunately, it’s also been an energizing force for the Republicans in the mid-terms.
Yeah… this is the thing that I’m constantly reminded of IRL. Things like the “Liberal Tears” factor.
So Trump has taken to explicitly using a white supremacist talking point of “immigration is changing european culture”. That is of course predicated on the idea that cultural exchange is a bad thing, and that it wouldn’t be inevitable anyway based on gigantic shifts in technology which allow for fast travel and even faster communication (i.e. not that long ago communication was entirely dependent on travel time, with the fastest “communication device” being a dude on a horse).
However, what pisses me off the most about this is the fact that this idiot is entirely blind to the fact that america and the tidal wave of media exports it has released in the past 150 years or so has done far more to “diminish” foreign cultures than any other form. I mean where I live children used to be told that their christmas presents would be brought by the Christkind (literally: Christ child), and it’s shifting ever more to the Weihnachtsmann (Santa Clause) complete with Coca-Cola commercial colors, and every October super markets are filled with Halloween candy, a holiday that isn’t fucking celebrated here! Hell, every damn restaurant here now has a damn Hamburger on the menu.
Of course, to Trump it doesn’t matter, because all of this is simply a shitty racist theory and he equates american culture with white culture.
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What is it with conservatives and their insistence on “liberal tears,” or “pissing off the libs” or what have you? (This is mostly a rhetorical question.) It seems like their #1 priority is just making liberals upset for some reason, whereas most liberals don’t give a rat’s ass about how conservatives feel unless it’s directly stepping on the bounds of an issue they feel strongly about. They certainly don’t harp about wanting to upset conservatives at least.
I know you specifically didn’t ask, but it’s because when you show them that they are wrong about something they interpret that as a personal attack. It’s just an emotional fight to them, so you showing anger, sadness, etc. is the same as them winning. It’s like being stuck at some earlier stage of development, they’re ruled by fear and how things effect themselves.
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