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04-01-2019, 03:26 AM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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Thanks, from:
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Ari (04-03-2019), BrotherMan (04-01-2019), Crumb (04-01-2019), JoeP (04-01-2019), lisarea (04-01-2019), Sock Puppet (04-01-2019), SR71 (04-01-2019), Stephen Maturin (04-01-2019), The Man (04-01-2019), viscousmemories (04-06-2019), Zehava (04-01-2019)
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04-01-2019, 08:35 AM
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Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
One of my biggest surprises of the Trump era has been seeing Monica Lewinsky emerge as a trenchant voice on Twitter. I mean... why not? It's not any weirder than any of the plot lines the writers have thrown us so far. But I've got to give them points for bringing back old characters in an engaging fashion.
Not that it has much of anything to do with Trump, but quite relevant to the above: If you missed John Oliver's segment a few weeks ago, make sure to catch up. #TuckerCarlsonFucksHisRoomba #AuntFromNotHell #JustANormalAunt
I guess I should point out that Barr's summary of the report is bullshit, but apparently no one actually needs me to tell them that except the people who won't listen anyway:
...oh, and if you didn't watch Adam Schiff's now-famous speech, watch it.
Even if you've read transcripts, you gain quite a lot from watching how the people around him, both Republicans and Democrats, react to what he says. It's quite telling.
I don't know. I'm pretty severely depersonalised, as suggested by my not-entirely-a-joke about the writers and Monica. These two years and a few months have been brutal.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Last edited by The Man; 04-02-2019 at 12:41 AM.
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04-01-2019, 09:48 AM
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Solipsist
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Kolmannessa kerroksessa
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man
I don't know. I'm pretty severely depersonalised, as suggested by my not-entirely-a-joke about the writers and Monica. These two years and a few months have been brutal.
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Look after yourself
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04-01-2019, 07:59 PM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man
One of my biggest surprises of the Trump era has been seeing Monica Lewinsky emerge as a trenchant voice on Twitter.
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Bulldozing past your dry wit (kudos for it), just like Chelsea Clinton the private citizen, Lewinsky has had douchbags hounding after her for decades now and she can't even sneeze without some motherfucker writing an op ed in some shit scandal rag. It's not that necessarily set out to be a public figure, it's that the public went after her. So yeah, she's had to grow a skin thicker than a t-rex.
Further, Lewinsky was a White House intern, people don't (ordinarily) do that without a deep interest in politics. She might be famous for that Presidential Cigar thing, but it's no surprise she might know a hell of a lot about the functions of government.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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04-08-2019, 05:40 AM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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04-09-2019, 03:32 AM
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Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
I have some Thoughts I need to get out on the recent firing of KKKirstjen Nielsen and the part public shaming played in its occurrence. I wish to clarify two things before proceeding further: In using "public shaming", I am employing a relatively idosyncratic definition of the term, but I can't think of a better phrase to describe what I am discussing. The term "public shaming" is usually used to refer to an act that occurs online. I am not using it in that sense. John Oliver recently aired what I consider the definitive treatment of this issue, featuring an interview with Monica Lewinsky, who has firsthand experience with it. (I posted this segment earlier on this page. See post #3052.) I am referring to an act that literally occurs in public, to a person's face. There was no small amount of controversy when protesters drove KKKirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant where she had the audacity to show up while she was defending the administration's policy of kids in cages.
The second disclaimer shouldn't be necessary, since I am referring to her as KKKirstjen Nielsen throughout this post, but it is not my intention to give her any sort of praise at any point in this post. However, in comparison to the administration* officials who remain, not to mention the president* himself, she is going to come across as a lesser evil. I can't avoid this, because the greater evil is so unaccountably evil that a woman who once defended the policy of putting children in cages now comes across looking better for, by all appearances, being fired for no longer being willing to keep putting children in cages. The bar is so far below ground that a person whose moral standards are six miles subterranean still comes out above it.
What I intend to discuss is the role public shaming seems to have played in KKKirstjen Nielsen's firing. At the time, some people attacked the act of confronting her as being ~uncivil~. Even then, I regarded these attacks as morally indefensible. When children are being locked up in cages, complaining about ~civility~ because people are telling the architects of that policy to their face that their position is morally loathsome is implicitly siding with the architects of that policy. If we are concerned with civility, it is far more uncivil to separate children from their families and lock them in cages than it is to tell the people responsible for that policy that they are moral monsters.
We're unlikely ever to know exactly why KKKirstjen Nielsen is no longer the Secretary of Homeland Security, because everyone associated with this administration* lies so habitually that it's difficult to be certain that anything we're hearing is true. However, the initial reporting suggests that Individual-1 fired Nielsen because she was no longer willing to put children in cages.
If this is accurate (again, a big if, but it is supported by circumstantial evidence), this leads us to the question of why. Given how casually she lied to Congress in order to defend the policy in the past, it doesn't seem as though she herself had a sudden attack of conscience over the matter. It seems implausible that she should have suddenly and independently developed one. So what is the explanation for her actions?
I don't know if we'll ever definitively know that this is the case, but my interpretation is that the public shaming worked. She remembered exactly what her experience was the last time the policy was in the news, and she had plausible reason to believe that her experience would be exactly the same this time around. And that is probably correct. I have no doubt that, should she have stayed with the administration*, protesters would have confronted her consistently just as they did the last time the story was in the news.
All the people who attacked this tactic are cordially invited to fuck off. You were wrong, and your stance was and is morally indefensible. The people responsible for this policy deserve not a moment of peace anytime they make public appearances, and if there is any justice left in this world, they will not receive one.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Last edited by The Man; 04-09-2019 at 10:11 AM.
Reason: correcting misspelling of KKKirstjen (from KKKristjen). I regret the error.
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04-15-2019, 06:48 PM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
__________________
Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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04-16-2019, 03:03 PM
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Flyover Hillbilly
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Juggalonia
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Re: Good King Trump
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann
Isn't this the highest civilian decoration?
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It is indeed! We had a client last year whose father received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously back in 2015 for his civil rights work, including resisting the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
Tiger Woods made a vast fortune playing an elitist game, had to endure a great deal of tut-tut-tuting from the press for living the rich fuckboy lifestyle, then got back to winning vast sums of money playing the elitist game after a prolonged period of winning less vast sums of money.
Pretty much the same exact thing.
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
"What the fuck is a German muffin?" ~ R. Swanson
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04-16-2019, 05:20 PM
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Solipsist
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Kolmannessa kerroksessa
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
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04-18-2019, 08:29 AM
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Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
I thought I had ceased to be shocked by president* Individual-1's mendacity, but I should have known better. Spoiler alert: "Thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey" might not even be the vilest lie El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago (h/t Charlie Pierce) has told about 9/11.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
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04-18-2019, 07:27 PM
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Flyover Hillbilly
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Juggalonia
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Re: Good King Trump
Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked. ~ Donald Trump, upon finding out about Mueller's appointment in May 2017.
FFS, Trump, be right just this once.
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
"What the fuck is a German muffin?" ~ R. Swanson
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04-18-2019, 10:22 PM
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Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
I know that “This is the end of my Presidency*. I’m fucked” is definitely the kind of thing I say when I’ve committed absolutely no criminal offences and have nothing to be worried about.
Jared Yates Sexton, after laying out some principal findings of the public-facing redaction of Mueller’s first report, lays out a convincing case for impeachment based upon those findings. I’m on the fence about whether I agree with his conclusions. I worry that failure to convict in the Senate, as will inevitably happen, could ultimately weaken the already flimsy foundations of our excuse for a democracy even further. It would be, to use a topical metaphor, like pouring too much water down on the foundations of a burning cathedral. Impeachment sounds good in principle, but I’m worried how it will shake out in practice.
Unfortunately, we’re left with no good options. The only good option we had was a test on November 8, 2016, and voters in too many states failed that test. To be fair, it was a rigged test, as Mueller’s first report (even in its public-facing redacted form) makes all too heavily apparent, but regardless, it would’ve been a shameful result if El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago had gotten twenty million votes. He got more than thrice that. At this point the best we can hope is to stem the patient’s bleeding as much as possible, and we may be caught in a Morton’s Fork type scenario where any such attempt will fail to save the patient.
In any case, Sexton’s summary is damning and thought-provoking and, even if I think his political analysis may ultimately wander astray, you should still read it. It’s not as if my political analysis has been rock-solid; I obviously wrote off the possibility of Clinton losing (ETA: well, ok, “losing” – she won the popular vote) far more than I should have. Some of that was based on black swan events, but the fact that I discounted that possibility means… well, what do any of us know, really?
What’s in Mueller’s first report, even in its public-facing redacted form, seems solid. Let’s go with that. It’s difficult to be certain about much else these days; the country has been victim of a sustained three-plus-year gaslighting effort, and that’s if we’re only counting the efforts of the Individual-1 campaign and administration*. They have had many accomplices in the media, many of whom began gaslighting long before Cheeto Benito arrived on the scene. Particularly when considered alongside what has gone on in my personal life recently, it’s really little wonder I’ve suffered some mental disorders.
Going back to Sexton’s Twitter essay, though, I think impeachment is definitely worthy of serious consideration right now. It might not be worth doing yet, but it’s definitely worth at least talking about, if only because doing so is likely to help shift the Overton window.
…also William Barr obviously committed obstruction of justice and perjury as well and certainly deserves to be impeached; I suggest we start there.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Last edited by The Man; 04-19-2019 at 03:02 AM.
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04-19-2019, 12:01 AM
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Take back the weird
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Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: so far out, I'm too far in
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
Impeachment probably won't work, but having the grounds for impeachment laid -- not just bare, but streaking downtown waving its tiny willie -- has to be getting us closer to embarrassing Republicans enough to go have the come-to-Jesus talk with the Commander-In-Cheetoh themselves. It's not unlikely that he'll still refuse to resign, but it might be enough to get him to convince himself he's "accomplished everything in one term" and get the fuck out in 2020, at least.
ETA: And yes, it's absolutely fucking nauseating that this is probably the best we can hope for.
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hide, witch, hide / the good folks come to burn thee / their keen enjoyment hid behind / a gothic mask of duty - P. Kantner
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04-19-2019, 09:57 AM
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Solipsist
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Kolmannessa kerroksessa
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sock Puppet
the Commander-In-Cheetoh
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+1 for this which I had not come across before
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04-19-2019, 10:28 PM
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Projecting my phallogos with long, hard diction
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Dee Cee
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
I'm not sure exactly what I think Democrats should do, but I'm leaning towards impeachment.
A couple points and counterpoints:
-Impeachment is followed by a trial in the Senate. The issue is that there is little reason to believe that Senate Republicans won't vote lockstep to protect Trump, or virtually so (sure, you might peel off Collins or Murkowski or something). But it's not enough to peel off a couple, you'd need 20 Republicans to vote to convict. We'd need even more damning evidence, or for Trump to become even more unhinged, and even then it's unclear what would flip that many of them because of what they're already willing to tolerate. Otherwise the only thing that will flip them is tanking poll numbers. Not only that, but McConnell will be in charge of how the trial in the Senate goes down.
So conviction is very unlikely. The question is how will the media and the public react to Trump's acquittal in the Senate? Which is more likely... that they say "The Senate GOP has revealed the true depth of their corruption, that they are protecting a lawless, corrupt and incompetent president" or that they go faux-neutral "Trump acquitted, the election will decide whether he stays" or that they say "Democrats fail to obtain conviction"? My money is on the latter two options. It will either be an unresolved partisan squabble, or the narrative will be about Democratic failure, instead of about the GOP's embrace of corruption and lawlessness. Taking a position on Trump's guilt is unacceptably partisan for the mainstream media (which makes the media de facto pro-Trump*), so they will rely on framing that focuses instead on implications for the next election or "savvy insider" discussion of whether Democratic/Republican strategies and tactics succeeded, rather than which side is correct.
Trump will proclaim exoneration yet again, and the media will report his words without much interrogation.
If so, it may be counterproductive to impeach if the ultimate outcome will be a narrative beneficial to the GOP.
-On the other hand, if Democrats don't impeach, Trump will proclaim exoneration, and he'll have an even stronger argument for it: even Democrats don't think his offenses are impeachable! They admit there's nothing there!
-One alternative is just to aggressively subpoena and investigate the Trump administration in high-profile oversight hearings. This can do damage to Trump without having the damaging narratives that may result from an acquittal in the Senate.
-But knowing the media, oversight hearings may not be able to command the attention they deserve. Not when there's the latest 2020 primary news, or Trump's latest gibberish he said at a rally, or his latest horrific policy or appointee, or some other complete bullshit.
Democrats can probably assume that impeachment hearings would get far more media coverage, and could even dominate coverage. Media coverage will be essential to ensuring that investigation of Trump's corruption and lawlessness will be able to shape public opinion. Hearings that aren't seen by the public can't change their opinion.
-So my position is probably this: the Democrats can continue for the next month or two or three with aggressive oversight hearings, but if they're not getting the coverage they deserve, they should probably impeach. This will be more likely to ensure that they can set the narrative. They probably should not impeach because they think they're likely to remove Trump, however, because unless his polls drop into the 20s, there's little chance of that happening.
*I'm sure davidm will be mad that I said this. But the truth about Trump is far more horrible and serious than the mainstream media portrays, which means their deviation from the truth is in the direction of benefiting Trump, even if their portrayal is still negative. Whether that deviation is accidental or knowing, they are still biased in his favor.
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04-20-2019, 12:05 AM
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Safety glasses off, motherfuckers
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Sarasota, FL
Gender: Bender
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Re: Good King Trump
One possibility is to hold hearings on the subject of whether to move forward with impeachment rather than simply jumping straight to impeachment. Thus, they can be “impeachment hearings” that aren’t yet inviting the obviously biased input of the Republican Senate. Then slow-walk them over the next several months until, say, October 2020, gradually turning the simmer up to a boil. If you really want to stick the knife in, have James Comey deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate on October 28, 2020 (as I mentioned in the Democratic primary thread).
At the moment, I think this may be the strongest play. It’s clear that Trump has committed impeachable offences, but it’s also clear that the country isn’t yet fully on board with impeachment. By keeping the subject of impeachment in the news, we move the Overton window and make it seem like less of a fringe idea. In doing so, we can also raise continual questions of why Republicans are unwilling to impeach a president* over crimes that they were clearly willing to impeach Clinton over, not to mention crimes that are much more severe than said crimes.
In related news, the six committee chairs invited to view a “less redacted” version of Mueller’s first report with restrictions have told Barr to fuck off and give them the full thing with no restrictions:
ETA: There’s also this tweet from Pelosi’s social media team
I’ll wager she’s planning something, but we won’t know until next week probably. Maybe not impeachment hearings, but I expect her to start dropping more shoes, at least. Honestly, at this point I trust her political instincts more than mine.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
Last edited by The Man; 04-20-2019 at 12:54 AM.
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04-22-2019, 08:25 PM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
__________________
Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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04-23-2019, 06:51 PM
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Shitpost Sommelier
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Re: Good King Trump
__________________
Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
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04-23-2019, 11:17 PM
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Stoic Derelict... The cup is empty
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: The Dustbin of History
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
erimir -
Quote:
-One alternative is just to aggressively subpoena and investigate the Trump administration in high-profile oversight hearings. This can do damage to Trump without having the damaging narratives that may result from an acquittal in the Senate.
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^yes^ I feel the thing to do is to keep it in the news, and not worry too much about resolving anything. Just use it for key agitprop. Otherwise they're handing the GOP a nice gift for doing sweet fuck all. I kind of like the Man's idea about hold hearings on whether to impeach. Drag it out and replay the most egregious high points over and over. It's what the GOP would do, except they would also exaggerate like mad and just plain make shit up while they're at it.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
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04-23-2019, 11:43 PM
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Solipsist
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Kolmannessa kerroksessa
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
Quote:
Originally Posted by SR71
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Now I want all political interviews, especially campaign interviews, to consist solely of "What would ya say ya ... do here?"
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04-24-2019, 02:35 AM
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Projecting my phallogos with long, hard diction
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Dee Cee
Gender: Male
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Re: Good King Trump
Basically I think they should escalate over time to keep media attention. That probably means eventually impeaching.
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04-26-2019, 08:43 PM
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Forum Killer
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Re: Good King Trump
Continuously escalating pressure is how republicans have been playing it for decades and it seems to work... and it's not like the democratic congress has a lot else to do. I just worry that once the republicans have been ousted, it'll stay this way, no compromise, forever and ever.
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