I hadn't seen that latest link about the ass-grabbing. God damn it. I'd still vote for him over a Republican, hypothetically, but jeez.
1. Part of me hopes this is just Roger Stone rat-fucking but deep down I know there's more than just the two.
Oh hey, latest exposé is on Glenn Thrush.
I've heard it said that republicans would vote for Charles Manson if the GOP nominated him, but I guess now we'll never know.
Disagree on the nuclear codes bit, it matters a lot what constitutes an illegal order. As someone pointed out on the twitters, "Nuke NYC, clearly illegal; nuke Beijing or Pyongyang inviting the nuking of NYC in retaliation? Not so clearly illegal"
3 You've been pwned in the other thread.
OP: On the face of it, the nuclear hearings turned out to be a lot of nothing. Which underlines the shittiness of standard Republicans.
Following on 5, honestly Trump's ability to cause global chaos has already been well demonstrated. From the crisis in the GCC, to ramping up the NK situation to dangerous levels, etc. And his way of doing 'business' is leaving us with few friends and precious little good will. Pence is a dangerous extremist but he would return foreign policy to the reality-based level-headed Republican foreign policy and NS/IC wonks. You know, the ones who fabricated evidence and supported the disastrous war in Iraq.
We're so fucked.
I am really, really icy to arguments about the good someone does by being in the high position they're in outweighing concrete harms they've done. It seems perilously close to Republicans' excuses for Moore. There are a lot of people who can occupy these positions ( credentialism aside) and there is rightfully supposed to be a high bar for getting them. Even if the accusations against Franken were pulled out of history by Republicans, if they're true and meaningful (one seems to be literally nothing alleged) I think resignation could well be appropriate.
9 Yeah, I was willing to wait and see, go with this hearing thing or whatever but with two there's more. He's got to go.
(Part of my initial reluctance is liking him, having grown up with Franken and Davis on SNL, liking his effectiveness as a Senator, etc, but no way. He needs to step down.)
It seems perilously close to Republicans' excuses for Moore. |
It's exactly the same thing as Republicans' excuses for Moore.
I'm just saying that the Republican party rounded the bend (twenty years ago?) far and hard enough that stopping them is the end all, be all.
10 OTOH would I feel the same way if there were a Republican governor who would appoint a Republican senator in his place? Not at all sure.
Part of me wants to say that with Pence you wouldn't have the same level of disaster in Puerto Rico that you do with Trump, but another part of me remembers that Pence was a *terrible* governor who can't even build 50 miles of highway in Indiana.
Oh god, Puerto Rico. That had slipped my mind - I was thinking about how he sabotages legislation.
New poll I just saw:
The country would be better off if we had more women in political office:
All Americans: 58% agree, 40% disagree
Democrats: 77% agree, 22% disagree
GOP: 37% agree, 62% disagree
I'd take Pence in a heartbeat, especially in circumstances that implied a repudiation of Trumpismo.
The other big things Trump-specific things so far are DACA repeal, the travel ban, and firing Comey. Maybe the chaos in Saudi Arabia? Also it's only been a year, there will be more crises.
15: It would be interesting to see how that breaks down by gender.
Also with Pence I don't think I'd have the same constant state of dread about interacting with people. Like it's hard for me to go to the dentist and just think about whether the people there voted for Trump.
I guess I'm at risk of propounding the same logic as "if you suppress Nazi speech you've become a Nazi". The cause being objectively just and urgent should make some difference in the moral accounting. But it still seems pretty perilous in this case.
Additionally I'm very unconvinced of the objective cost/benefit of keeping Franken (assuming his guilt), even in the short-to-medium term. What message does it send to, say, women thinking of running for the House in 2018 that they are asked to buck up and accept horribleness at the highest levels of their party, all for the sake of the Cause?
By tax adjustment we have planned
To institute the Equal Land,
And just to show we are sincere,
We'll chant An' Dworkin once a year.
I'm less convinced on Franken if this is a pattern.
The second story flipped me on Franken. I could see my way past the first story, but after the second I'm done with him.
Technically, it's not a pattern if he uses a coin flip to determine whether or not grope a woman. That's the lesson of No Country for Old Men.
19 is true for me also. I'm not sure why, but it is.
Also, I agree with 17.
Can you all split the difference? Come out and say, "Look, Democratic officeholders are vital, and if they stand to be replaced by Republicans we are obliged to support them, even if we don't want to; but since Franken will be replaced by another Democrat, we are obliged to be our better selves and throw him under the bus."
16: I'd take Pence in a heartbeat, especially in circumstances that implied a repudiation of Trumpismo.I'd take Pence in a heartbeat, especially in circumstances that implied a repudiation of Trumpismo.
I've been torn, but this is a good take on it.
Just for repudiating the horrible thing itself. (Standard Republican horror would persist of course).
I agree with 26.
A blogger who lives in Minnesota explains why, if Franken sticks around, it could damage the prospects of Klobuchar, who is up for re-election in 2018. The basic idea seems to be the Minnesota can be roughly divided into the very liberal twinn cities and everywhere else (termed "outstate", apparently). Each of the 2 Democratic senators appeals to a different crowd:
"When one of our two senators runs, the other helps in their own zone. Senator Klobuchar campains with Franken outstate, and Senator Franken campaigns with Klobuchar in the cities. Franken explains to the extremely liberal people of South Minneapolis that he needs Amy, and they should overlook the fact that she says it is OK to hunt wolves. Klobuchar explains to the people outstate that she needs Al, never mind the fact that is a flaming libard. And so on. That's how a state like Minnesota gets to have two such great Senators."
So in 2018, Klobucher could be faced with either running without the traditional back-up in the twin cities or else running with someone who is under a cloud of scandal.
27 last: Is there any prospect of that whatever? Trump after all is president because he understood Republican voters better than Republicans did.
10 OTOH would I feel the same way if there were a Republican governor who would appoint a Republican senator in his place? Not at all sure.
Honestly, if there was a Republican Governor I'd probably hope that Franken didn't resign immediately and just announced that he wouldn't seek re-election.
I don't feel good about that calculus, and don't feel firmly committed to the position, but that would be my first intuition.
Yeah, I'd be with you under those circumstances. I'd like it even better if he explicitly framed it as "I would resign, but that would be punishing my constituents who voted for a liberal Democratic senator."
Congress is considering reviewing the unilateral nuclear code access
By the logic of the 2nd Amendment, we need universal, unilateral nuclear code access. Then, total peace.
30, 31: I guess that would justify voting for Moore, but only if he promised to resign on election (or if the Republicans in the Senate promised not to seat him). I don't think Moore actually likes his party at all, so he won't think that way.
(On Moore, you could also make a claim that there is a key difference between groping adults and trying to date/groping pre-adult teens. Which, if Moore does lose, will probably be why.)
33: I think there's a hair of difference left in terms of whether Moore and the Republicans could make a binding promise that he wouldn't serve as senator. If the voters had to take it on faith? I'd have a hard time voting for him even if I agreed with him.
But if Franken were in a state with a Republican governor, he couldn't make a binding promise that he would quit if a Democrat were elected. He can't make a binding promise not to run again regardless.
Chait has been interesting on both themes of the OP: Here he is about the ramifications of Trump subordinates being afraid to tell the truth.
And here he is on Bill Clinton sex-abuse revisionism, which I think is relevant to Franken.
In the end, I think we need to be very careful about imposing wildly different standards on Democrats and Republicans. Franken, for good reasons and bad, was smart to insist on the Ethics investigation. (Good reason: People will actually look at at the accuser said about that picture, and what's actually in the picture. Bad reason: By the time any investigation gets underway, the backlash will probably also be underway.)
And regarding Pence, I think his elevation to the presidency would net out to be a bad thing. It would create the illusion that a problem has been solved, or at least ameliorated significantly. I don't think that would be true.
Oh, and Chait also contemplates the role of political expediency in regards to child molestation.
37 The political expediency or the child molestation? It's Chait so one never knows.
The political expediency or the child molestation?
Why choose just one?
38: Chait is taking the contrarian pro-molestation view.
I also think that having a democratic majority is more important than the moral character of specific politicians. running pedophiles for office isn't a particularly good strategy though.
The Washington Post would like to remind you that, technically speaking, a tomato is a fruit somebody trying to have sex with post-pubescent but pre-adult teens isn't a pedophile.
"Well, it's not like he's running for high school principal. And the interns will probably be too old for him."
I never really understand the Trump/Pence question or its point. Is the question whether we would be better or worse off if Trump were impeached and replaced with Pence? That seems so easy to answer as to be ridiculous -- of course America would be better having gotten to the point where Trump could be impeached and replaced with a weakened vice President.
Is the point to just say Trump is no worse in any meaningful way than an establishment Republican? That seems wrong for a host of reasons, I don't think anyone who follows say immigration or the environment or foreign policy or any of the areas where Trump has more control would have been worse in, say, a Jeb Bush administration. That one also doesn't seem close, and yes you can say that while also admitting establishment Republicans are very bad. (Also, note for these purposes that Pence is barely an establishment Republican -- he was the guy whose stock was so low, positions were so extreme, and who had failed so badly that he was willing to accept the VP nomination from Trump, the disreputable guy who no one thought would win).
Is the point to say that a less blundering Republican would be more popular and therefore more dangerous? I can see the argument, but (a) the substantive policy would probably still be slightly better and (b) more importantly, in this environment, for reasons that have little to do with Trump even a genuine non-blundering political genius like Mitch McConnell doesn't seem to be able to get much done. So the hypothetical boils down to "a hypothetical someone equally terrible but more popular and effective would be worse" which seems true but not particularly interesting or revealing of anything.
My big worry about a Trump impeachment is that I don't see it happening unless he fires Mueller. I fear what that firing does to American institutions, particularly if Trump isn't successfully impeached.
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Off-topic: Is there some magazine with regular important news updates from countries around the world, with some level of comprehensiveness, but distilling more than newspaper articles do? Like the Economist's world section, but with a less offensive ideology?
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Worrying about a Trump impeachment reminds me of worrying about Trump refusing to accept his election defeat.
I mean, I get that it can't technically do more distilling than a newspaper article because anything that appears in it is a newspaper article. But still, it's what I use. I've even forgiven them for leaving Manchester.
of course America would be better having gotten to the point where Trump could be impeached and replaced with a weakened vice President.
If this had happened back in March, why would Pence necessarily have been weakened?
He has to watch the pee tape every day that he works for Trump.
Is the point to say that a less blundering Republican would be more popular and therefore more dangerous?
The point is that a less blundering Republican would be more efficient in carrying out their policies. As in, what's worse - hundreds of unstaffed high-level positions? Or staffing those positions with die hard Republicans bent on dismantling their institution as quickly as possible? Of course these aren't mutually exclusive, but y'know.
I don't know why you are picking March, but I don't understand how any situation in which it is hypothetically possible to impeach and remove Trump isn't one in which the country is also better governed and the Republican party is weakened. Are you imagining some kind of hypothetical careful cleansing move in which the Republicans surgically remoclve Trump while doing no collateral damage whatsoever to Pence? If so (a) how is that possible (b) at least we would have gotten rid of Trump for doing something awful (c) what connection does this have to anything in the real world, or any interesting question about reality?
55 to 52. To 54, sure, someone equally bad but much more effective would be worse. Conceded. Why is this an interesting question to be asking?
Are you imagining some kind of hypothetical careful cleansing move in which the Republicans surgically remoclve Trump while doing no collateral damage whatsoever to Pence? If so (a) how is that possible (b) at least we would have gotten rid of Trump for doing something awful (c) what connection does this have to anything in the real world, or any interesting question about reality?
Wasn't this a thing that Republicans occasionally wondered? If Trump was going to govern like a liberal, they'd figure out a way to boot him and get Pence? I feel like I read those articles early on.
If the Republicans wanted to impeach Trump, they could have easily done so at any point. In March. Or whenever. If they'd decided that he was explicitly helping Democrats - advocating for explicitly liberal policies or something - and ruining their chance at running both branches, they would have booted him.
Why is it interesting? Well, maybe it's not. It's something I think about.
All this is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Republicans who currently control Congress would only impeach Trump if they were sure Pence would be very safe. If the Republicans who currently control roughly 90 percent of state governments are concerned about their popularity, they have plenty of ways to suppress voters. And 20 states are absolutely guaranteed to have two Republican Senators from now until the rising sea levels swallow Alaska; Democrats will never again have the majorities needed to pass even something as milquetoast as Obamacare. The current 5-4 partisan split on the Supreme Court will be 7-2 by 2024, and all Trump's appointees will be under 50. We're doomed. It doesn't matter.
In 2018 the Democrats will have control of the House, and 2020 the entire government. This gives them two years before the voters forget everything that just happened and give Congressional control back to the Republicans in 2022.
By 2023 all politicians will have removed their skin masks and the age of lizards will be upon us.
Or there will be kittens underneath!
60: The Age of Overt Lizards.
The Rule of the Lizards has no beginning or end.
Lizard people run in a circular motion.
Rule is like a little boat upon the sea.
Everybody's subjugate to everything, anyway.
You can be reptilian if you let yourself be.
Conyers seems to be the first Congressman implicated by leaked docs from the f'ed up congressional harassment process. Seems well-documented, but original docs provided by Mike Cernovich (of Pizzagate and related infamy). I'm sure he is getting the good stuff from the inside.
This is about to become one hell of a congressional shit show. (and beyond). And an absolutely one-sided one for the most part.
Initial survivors will be Trump. Moore and tax cuts for the rich.
Clara Jeffrey has it right:
"Good that it's out, but what DIDN'T come out.
Hannity late last week:
Tick tock..... From now into next year on many fronts!!!! Monday starts what will become an avalanche. Love to all deplorables. Tick tock!!
Somewhat like Wikileaks but with actual wrongdoing. My personal estimate of male Senators/Congressmen over 50 doing something like Franken or worse? 50%
Fasten your seat belts.
Should go to bed. Quite depressed. But here is what we have:
One hundred and thirty-nine years since Reconstruction, and half a century since the civil-rights movement, a majority of white voters backed a candidate who explicitly promised to use the power of the state against people of color and religious minorities, and stood by him as those promises have been among the few to survive the first year of his presidency. Their support was enough to win the White House, and has solidified a return to a politics of white identity that has been one of the most destructive forces in American history. This all occurred under the eyes of a disbelieving press and political class, who plunged into fierce denial about how and why this had happened. That is the story of the 2016 election.
(From Adam Serwer's excellent article in The Atlantic, "The Nationalist's Delusion
Trump's supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination." At least read the opening description of David Duke's 1990 campaign and reactions to it.
My personal estimate of male Senators/Congressmen over 50 doing something like Franken or worse? 50%
My estimate is considerably higher. If this particular dam does break it's going to be a deluge well beyond what we're seeing in other industries.
In happier news, Sean Spicer can't find a job. (It's not clear why he wants one, since he's reportedly independently wealthy, but then that was the case when he joined the Trump administration in the first place.)
OK. The rule is if you specify a prediction it won;t happen, right?
Ds and Rs both destroyed in current form over next two years. Rs centralize around a 35-40% base as White Nationalist party, Ds splinter into loosely-aligned groups that sort of come together for elections. Supported by neoconfederate Supreme Court, gerrymandering and voter suppression Rs govern* with 40% for next 20+ years until the demographic boom dies off. Somewhere in there we nuke a few places.
*Maybe lose a branch or Presidency a couple of times, but effectively govern the whole time.
And an absolutely one-sided one for the most part.
A lot depends on how well Republicans can control information about their own harassers. I would guess that since there's now a lot of evidence that among Republicans harassment is seen as more excusable behavior, fewer people will come forward and they'll get less support.
74: Yes. we'll see. They do control all branches of Government as well.
76: I think I stopped reading the article in the very nick of time.
The thing with Charlie Rose is mind boggling to me. It wasn't surprising to me the way that Franken was, but I find it unnerving that he would have an assistant at his house and walk naked from the shower when he was 3 times her age and her boss and then claim that he thought there were shared feelings.
I mean, I think he might have really believed it which is what boggles my mind.
And therefore never send to know from whom the belle rolls; She rolls from thee.