Trump

[WillyGilligan]

The Russia probe announced that they are ready to make indictments, and possible arrests starting Monday. Rachel Maddow seems to be gleefully anticipating some high level Trump people to get caught in this, but with the Fusion GPS story starting to turn towards Democrat funding of the Dossier, I'm thinking there's a chance some Dems get caught into this (either with or instead of Trump cohorts).

[bralbovsky]

Flynn and Manafort to start. Mueller likely will also hit the other folks we know who failed to declare foreign agency, a couple of them are dem operatives. The fusion story itself is a smokescreen. The part I'm watching for is whether this swings toward the financial malfeasance or focuses on the foreign involvement. They're tangled, but the two threads are what the administration mostly (with incidental others, this is why everyone hates politics, because so many of them on every side are unscrupulous bastards) was hoping , is hoping, never comes fully to light.

[Phoebe]

Trump Jr. Halloween tweet is hilarious until you realize how many members of Congress take it to be a deep and serious fiscal philosophy that should motivate tax policy.

[FlameBlade]

Nobody saw Papadopoulos coming.

Now people are pointing out that Mueller is tight-lipped and running a very tight ship, while there are 20+ sources telling reporters about Trump fuming around in residence part of the White House.

Wanna bet people are definitely talking to Mueller, now that they understood that Mueller isn't talking and is very competent?

[mimekiller]

the resistance takes a staggering blow https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/busi ... vogue.html

[Mike]

[Phoebe]

Most things that happen in my office are kept under tighter info security than the White House. Seems like a real nest of vipers.

[Phoebe]

When you finally turn your attention to news sources after a long period of not attending to any of them, and you see the Trump tweet about being called old, and not calling people short and fat and wanting to be their friend... I... I... Is it possibly some kind of performance art thing, and the rest of the world is in on this joke, and it's just us being taught a lesson of some sort? Is it possible that I died a while ago and I'm not aware of it yet, and this is some kind of purgatory or preliminary afterlife? You know how if you have a dream like this and you start really attending to the weird details and rolling them around in your mind, you will suddenly wake yourself up? I have this creepy fear that if I think too hard about what's going on and how totally weird it is I might realize that I've already died.

Can someone please tell me why relatives of mine - who were otherwise sane but wanted Republicans in because they're day traders who don't want to pay taxes, plus pro-life - are okay with this?

I am going to assume that the Alabama Judge thing, not the Roy Moore thing but the other dude, is happening because of some kind of struggle within a split Republican party there, and this nominated guy is Luther Strange's personal pic to take the position. I don't know if that's true but that seems a likely story. The Roy Moore thing though... I'm really at a loss. Many of you have already had 14 year olds, so do you feel the way I do when you think back?

[WillyGilligan]

The only reason people are defending Roy Moore, that I can see, is tribalism. Some of them justify it in part by saying that Democrats were fine with Bill Clinton's behavior, or some other deflection.

FWIW, Ben Shapiro was criticizing the moral contortions of Moore's defenders last week.

Trump vs. Kim Jong Un? I don't think we should be conducting diplomacy this way, but by the rules of Twitter clapback, the short and fat line is pretty clever.

[FlameBlade]

When state department is badly decimated, you pretty much only can do diplomacy by tweeting.

[Phoebe]

Why is he trying to decimate.the state department? I can think of reasons but the pace is truly alarming and I don't really understand that.

[poorpete]

My only guesses about the destruction of the state dept is the past five secretary of states did not vote for him in 2016, including one that was his 2016 opponent.
(John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Condeleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeline Albright)

Other three living former secretaries:
James Baker - notably critical of Trump in primaries, vote unknown
Kissinger - vote unknown, but was notably friendly with Clinton
George P Shultz - vote unknown, but as for a Trump presidency, said "god help us."

[bralbovsky]

If you want to tell all the lies you want, you have to do it yourself. Others who aren't as dishonest or pathological will only blow your cover. They won't instinctively know which stories you already made up. That's why grifters don't work long term in teams. They also have trust issues. They think everyone else is always lying.


If I was the 14 year old's father, I would be in jail, especially since he was a prosecutor at the time. His friends would definitely have made sure of that.

[Phoebe]

I have a hard time with it. Not with the guy, because we know all about him and his kind. He's like a snake or roach or something - I don't need to puzzle over him much. But the inner hurt over it is with the absolute shameless motherfuckers who are excusing the behavior as if somehow being Christian or Conservative is compatible with that on any level.

[Mike]

At least a third of Moore voters likely believe these charges are all a liberal media conspiracy. There's nothing for them to reconcile.

In their case, the problem I have is that this is such a tightly reported case of sexual misconduct that the facts should not be in dispute, and yet Moore can continue to run because distrust in the media is so high.

But yes, there are also lots of partisans willing to overlook "personal indiscretions", in the belief that they have nothing to do with how Moore will govern, and while they find his behavior abhorrent, they'd still rather have someone in office that they can count on to vote for their beliefs.

[Ronster]

The timing is suspicious, but if it is as it seems that he was so powerful and of reputation that no complaints would stick or rather that they'd be swept under the rug, then I totally understand why this is the time to unveil these things.

This is the ONLY time he is vulnerable to allegations in his entire life.

I'd rather have a lib dem than a "conservative" predator in office.

Every father should believe his daughter.

[Mike]

And sadly, I see many people using that line of "IF this is true, then yes it's horrible and he should step down." But that IF implies that they're not passing any judgment right now and we're going to go with "innocent until proven guilty." And here's the thing... there's not going to be any legal action for this. It was almost 4 decades ago. The statute of limitations is long since up. There won't be any official investigation. There won't be any legal proceedings to determine his guilt or innocence. The election is in a month. It is up to every voter there to decide for themselves whether they think he is guilty or innocent. You can't sit around and wait for "til proven guilty". The evidence is already there and mounting.

He now has five women accusing him. One was 14, one was 16. Roy Moore admits that he dated teenage girls when he was in his 30's and was the District Attorney. Some of these girls were the children of people involved in cases he was prosecuting. The investigative reporter that broke this did the homework and there are 30 witnesses that can corroborate the story from the time. Short of someone finding an old 8mm film from 1979 showing Moore actually having sex with a 14-year-old next to her birth certificate, what will be needed to convince people that they should not put their faith in this man?

The election is currently a toss-up, with odds-makers giving the slight edge to Moore. Half of his supporters refuse to believe any evidence that contradicts their worldview, and the other half will hold their nose and vote for him anyways because, "Yeah, he MIGHT be a pedophile, but even if he is, I know that pedophile will support my values in Congress better than some liberal Democrat."

[Phoebe]

"Half of his supporters refuse to believe any evidence that contradicts their worldview, and the other half will hold their nose and vote for him anyways"...

The former half are terrifying to me. The latter half are morally compromised, but in a way that frankly most of the Democratic party was already compromised. There are many reasons I'm not a Democrat but one of them is that for 8 years the party was led by a slimy creep. My husband thinks this slimy creep was great because he was a winner after 12 years of Democratic losing. But his legacy is in part that Democrats were saddled with a difficult candidate, in a year when they should have been able to trounce the opposition. Now we have to live with this, and now we're hearing all kinds of stories that aren't (besides in the Roy Moore case, the age of victims) that much different from the stories we heard about Bill back in the day. But somehow he got a pass and continues to get a pass by the same people who are outraged about all these other men.

The problem is that now people are willing to excuse a far worse creep, and they can feel all good about it because they know that Bill Clinton was a creep too, so Liberals are the hypocrites. At the end of the day if your politics are making you endorse a guy who preyed on young teenagers, it's time to do some f****** soul-searching and maybe listen to your own loudly proclaimed faith in God for a change.

[Tahlvin]

But, but, but... the only other choice is a Democrat, and he's going to provide free abortion for everyone, and vote for liberal judges on the Supreme Court! We must avoid that at any cost, so I have a moral duty to vote against that Democrat no matter what, regardless of what the Republican candidate did!

[Ronster]

Even my lib friends at work are calling it suspicious timing...now I'm the odd man out because I believe the victims.

I think it would be impossible for these women who were CHILDREN at the time of the incidents to have done anything before now. Their allegations would have been dismissed out of hand and the victims themselves would have been shamed. Sadly this is often how corrupt people work.

The persons who bear the blame if this is false is the press. If we fail to believe the story or nay-say the accusers based on conjecture then we are no better than the nastiest of persons that jeer at the innocent.

I would rather have to answer for believing the 5 victims.

However, if Judge Moore is innocent he needs to follow up on his threat to sue the WaPo for libel. To me, the actual suing for libel will do more to establish the facts in this case than anything anyone else can tell me.