The Comey debacle isn’t going to be the end of Trump anymore than the Billy Bush tapes were. Republicans in Congress will stand by him until it’s their ass or his. If they lose a couple special elections, they may rethink things, but until then they won’t. Truthfully, the only way we’re likely to get a real investigation is if Democrats get control of Congress. You can give money to Rob Quist here:
You can give money to Swing Left, which sounds like an operation with a lot of potential, here.
Please also use this as an open thread to discuss protests that are going on and how we can get involved.
And, finally, I talked to my mom last night about the Comey firing. She’s no totebagger — okay, maybe a little but mostly not — and she was saying “oh, it makes sense, Comey’s done such a bad job” (granted this was before the subpoena story broke). So, while I know talking to others in the liberal echo chambers is bad blah blah blah, this is one issue where it’s worth explaining things to like-minded people.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The Nixon Library blue check is twitter trolling Trump.
Cheryl Rofer
I just called my two senators and congressman to urge an independent investigation into Trump’s Russia connections. They’re Democrats, but it helps. A congressional aide I met over the weekend says that they need positive phonecalls.
schrodingers_cat
DougJ@top
Years spent trolling the cool kids of the media, you have become like them, fashionably cynical.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What is this about some Dem coming with in 2pts of winning in a Kansas special election last night?
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
If thinking winning elections is what matters, then I plead guilty to being cynical.
kd bart
They’ll all end up on the cover of Newsweek.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: Winning elections matters. I was wrong. You know the importance of being earnest more than any other FPer. No. You are not cynical, at all.
D58826
Well according to Yurtle its all the democrats fault. The GOP, with a few mild exceptions, will fall in line behind Der Fuhrer.
James Powell
@Doug!:
Winning elections is all that matters. But for some on the left and center-left, to focus on winning elections is not just cynical, it’s distasteful, graceless.
schrodingers_cat
@James Powell: Let me be clear in case I was not earlier, my criticism was not about DougJ’s Act Blue posts, but his ha ha isn’t this all so funny tone. May be that’s his coping mechanism but even as a DougJ fan these cynicism laden posts are beginning to grate. YMMV.
rikyrah
Well, got some ice on my way to work, and have placed it on the ankle. Hoping for the best.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: DougJ has clearly been too cool for school for a long time. At the same time, he is too old for that to be a good look. It’s a game that teens and people in their twenties play.
amk
twitler’s tweets today are totally deranged.
James Powell
@schrodingers_cat: @Starfish:
I read the post a couple of times and I don’t understand what either of you are talking about.
schrodingers_cat
@James Powell: Check out last night’s posts.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
What did I miss, are you okay?
marv
Never thought I would live to see the day when a Russian official (Foreign Minister Lavrov) would openly taunt, make fun of American democracy. Asked about Comey’s firing as he went into meeting with Tillerson, he said ‘O was he fired? You’re kidding.’ Sounded like a taunt to me anyhow, like welcome to the new world order, Russian-style. I felt like one of the powerless animals at the end of Animal Farm, looking in the window
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lavrov-jokes-about-comey-firing
zhena gogolia
@marv:
Stomach-turning.
zhena gogolia
@marv:
Definitely a taunt, Russian smartass-style. They learn it from Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@marv: I wouldn’t know it if someone on twitter hadn’t pointed it out, but apparently it’s very unusual for someone of Lavrov’s (cabinet) rank to be given an Oval Office visit, but… Russia is our closest ally. Or something
hovercraft
The Trumpeters are not getting the reaction they hoped for, they sent the girls out this morning, I guess hoping that the press would be gentler with them, it didn’t work.
‘You’re not telling the truth’: Sarah Huckabee Sanders walks into Morning Joe buzzsaw over Russia claims
and spokes cobra didn’t fair any better.
Chris Cuomo stunned as Kellyanne Conway says it’s inappropriate to question Trump’s Comey firing
“The President of the United States confers with his team on any number of personnel decisions,” she said. “You want to question the timing of when he hires, when he fires — it’s inappropriate.”
There’s a reason they had decided to limit her appearances to right wing outlets, she’s says the dumbest things, whatever happened to her, she used to be their smoothest liar by a mile. SAD !
amk
Dems keep repeating that the gopee and the orangegutan betrayed the country to the russians. If the 3rd rate msm wants the fucking proof, their stock answer should be hold the fucking hearings till the matter is solved by pointing out the gazillion benghazi hearings.
They may not get the hearings but at least the betrayal meme will be out there.
Davey C
NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed Alberto Fucking Gonzalez about the Comey firing this morning. I almost lost my shit.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
Here’s the thing: what if the emoprogs are right that we’re really in danger? We like to make fun of them but maybe this isn’t the time. Maybe it’s time to be cynical.
JMG
@Davey C: He called for an independent investigation! Alberto Gonzales!!!
Baud
@Doug!: Cynical doesn’t work for us. Cynical is how we got into this mess.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Ouch! If you sprained it (or suspect you did), elevate it as best you can and use the ice 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off for as long as you can.
And don’t forget to take some Advil — it will help keep the swelling down.
Mnemosyne
@Doug!:
Being cynical in a time of danger just means you get run over, because you’re standing back and commenting on events rather than taking action.
Doug!
@Baud:
By cynical, I mean “ready for the worst”. I think we should be. I’d saying that in this case, making fun of alarmists is what’s too cool for school.
montanareddog
@hovercraft:
Somebody ought to remind Kelly Anne Goebbels that he is Donald J Trump, ex-slumlord from Queens now living off the Government’s dime, not Louis XIV
Weaselone
@Doug!:
And if we really are in danger, then obviously the best course of action is to set ourselves on fire and run around in circles while screaming that we’re all going to die and gesticulating wildly at people to pass us more petrol.
amk
@Doug!: emoprogs aren’t alarmists, they just disdain the whole democratic process.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
I have a weak ankle, and I was unable to get a seat on my regular train, so I had to stand all the way in. Usually, that spells disaster for me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, we are, and have been for some time. The problem with that crowd is that they have trouble identifying the enemy and are pretty well useless.
I would say the same for cynics, if by cynicism you mean the kind of precious self-congratulation that leads to Bill Maherish sneering that both sides are equally corrupt and/or useless (that last would be Frank Rich), so you might as well vote Dem but not get your hopes up. I have never seen DougJ go that route.
Baud
@Doug!: “Ready for the worst” is meaningless in this context. No one knows what the worst is or how to get ready for it.
What happens in the real world is that people become hopeless and that hopelessness becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.
rikyrah
@amk:
Amen.
Tell it over and over. Repeat and don’t stop.
Doug!
@amk:
I don’t agree. I’ve worked with a lot of them in real life, and while I don’t agree with them, I don’t dismiss them.
Raven Onthill
@Doug!: DFHs, right again.
Weaselone
@Raven Onthill:
I though the DFH’s said there was no difference between the two parties and voted for Jill Stein if they bothered to vote at all?
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
I have never been a cynic. But being realistic about the situation we find ourselves in is not cynicism. Bringing Trump down requires an opposition that has some power, and that doesn’t exist at the present time. That doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to fight on, it just means I don’t expect to see any results in the short run.
The Moar You Know
Just hit the US Senate website for some research information and noticed that, in the “history” section, all references to the Democratic party have been changed to “Democrat Party”.
These people are petty to a degree I find quite alarming.
Baud
@Weaselone: DFH is an ambiguous term. We really don’t have clear labels for the different factions on our side.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: @Doug!: We deal with what is, and not our worst fevered nightmare. I am not at all minimizing the danger we are in. But rending garments in anticipation of the worse yet to come, is meaningless and only gives comfort to those who wish us all. That and constant criticism of Democrats for not being perfect. Definition of perfection changes every fucking day.
Weaselone
@The Moar You Know:
Could be worse. They could have changed it to DEMONrat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Raven Onthill: You’re of those who think retired machinists in Rustberg Ohsylvnigan discuss the latest issue of Jacobin when meeting for coffee down at the MacDonalds because Dot’s Diner on Main St shut down after the plant mechanized because of NAFTA, right? So… no.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
With you on this.
But at this time, I am objectively pro-freakout about Trump after not having been so for several months. We are all Daily Kos diarists now.
A Ghost to Most
@Baud: Just remember, the worst involves gunplay. This is bad, but it could get much worse.
hovercraft
@amk:
As opposed to most other days?
He’s pissed that all his attempt to take the focus off of Yates, Flynn and Russia have brought them front and center. The cables are all showing a graphic of Comey, Yates and Preet, and saying that everyone who has shown the slightest inclination to investigate him has been fired. The near constant references to Nixon and the Saturday night massacre must also be driving him nuts.
I watched Anderson Cooper last night to get a sense of how this was playing, and I want to know what the hell happened to Dancing David Gregory, he was apoplectic, he was calling bullshit on anyone who tried to spin any of this as normal, there was no equivocation, he sounded like what we wish our media would sound like, a prosecutor taking their arguments apart with precision.
Twitler is doing something I thought was impossible, he’s forcing the scales to fall off of many villagers eyes, now let’s see if they can keep it up.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Ouch, I hope you feel better.
schrodingers_cat
@A Ghost to Most:Like the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919, which was the beginning of the end for the British in India.
hovercraft
@The Moar You Know:
They don’t know how to DO anything, except dismantle shit, so this is what they do. They are a bunch of mean boys and girls, so to them this is an accomplishment. Sadly their voters agree with them, anything to piss the liberals off is a good thing.
rikyrah
Spicer hiding in the bushes- LITERALLY?
DA PHUQ?
DA EVERLOVING PHUQ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: it’s the kind of thing that, precisely because there’s no video, most of their audience probably wouldn’t get, but I think Melissa McCarthy and the SNL writers could make a great bit about
Doug!
The thing is, a lot of emoprogs are great about hitting the streets, going door-to-door. I respect that.
Raven Onthill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, they do it Scotland (it’s the damndest thing) but not in the USA.
Tarragon
@Davey C:
And one of the pledge breaks in my area started by talking about how NPR is is place to be in a world of fake and ideological news.
Riiight.
sosuume
Capacity crowd (250+), standing room only, at Where’s Ann? town hall last night. Representative Ann Wagner (MO 2nd District) has not held a public town hall since she was first elected in 2012.
JGabriel
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve read through DougJ’s post @ top several times now, and I’m not seeing any cynicism at all – except for the necessary and experience-backed cynicism of believing that Republicans will choose power over country almost every time, and I’m not sure that’s cynicism so much as acknowledging empirical reality.
Gelfling 545
I discovered that several people I know are failing to distinguishe between Comey himself ( yes he sucks as FBI Director) and the issue of the investigation into Trump’s Russia connections and Trump’s abuse of power in trying to shut it down. And of course anybody who believes Comey was fired for “being unfair to Hilary Clinton” is delusional. Trump wouldn’t care if Comey shot her down in the street, much less being unfair. That people are saying Comey’s actions influenced the vote may goad him a bit, though.
gvg
@Doug!: you are using an odd definition of cynicism, not to mention emoprogs. Cynicism does not mean predicting doom and it’s not typically associated with extreme fear or emotion. It means expecting the worse selfish behavior from all other people and having a detached slightly humorous attitude about it. this is not what you have been doing.
Emoprogs seems in that contest to be progressives displaying doomsday hysteria. This is not helpful either. It tends to self feed and build into useless hysteria. Some people are feeling this way and encouraging it will not somehow provide for a way to make things better or solve the problem. It may cause some people to kill themselves. No reward, all risk.
The Trump insane GOP problem is serious. You should be somewhat embarrassed to admit you haven’t realized it until now. The thing is, cool thinking, joining others, taking specific actions, watching the facts and not panicking, not becoming discouraged, not taking actions that cause others to give up, are the things that do help.
Also being able to see why other would be allies are annoyed with you and correcting yourself are always good.
chopper
@Weaselone:
depends on how dirty the hippy.
chopper
@dogwood:
i try to be more a realist than a cynic, but there are times when that venn diagram is a circle.
TenguPhule
@gvg:
Thank you.
Predicting the worst is pessimism.
SgrAstar
@rikyrah: You might already know about this cool approach to icing- a friend of mine who’s a PT told me about it. Get some small Dixie/paper cups, fill em with water, and freeze them. Presto- little icing machines that you can deploy whenever. Unpeel the paper as the ice melts down. No fuss, no muss…EZPZ.