Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

T R E 4 5 O N

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

This fight is for everything.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The willow is too close to the house.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Rude Speculation Open Thread: WHICH Hunt?

Rude Speculation Open Thread: WHICH Hunt?

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But they’re on “his” payroll! Doesn’t being President just mean you no longer have to pay your subordinates for that RICO stuff?!?…

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92Comments

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Half expect Dolt 45’s crack legal team flunkies to suggest he sign an NDA with himself which he then can cite as reason for not answering questions from the special counsel.

  8. 8.

    MisterForkbeard

    @NotMax: Can we call them “crack legal flunkies”? I think that might be the best description I’ve heard in a long time.

  11. 11.

    Ken

    If evidence is found that the Trump foundation was more a slush fund than a charity, could the IRS make adjustments to the returns of donors?

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: I guess we can now say that Pruitt is an honest politician, of the ‘stays bought’ sort.

    Perhaps his lobbyist aquaintance purchased him on layaway?

  14. 14.

    clay

    “Sarah, will you clarify why the President thinks that prosecuting bank fraud and campaign fraud are attacks on ‘what we all stand for’?”

  16. 16.

    danielx

    @Mnemosyne:

    From someone who has had the dubious pleasure of observing Mike Pence as governor and congressman, I can attest that is not an unusual expression for him.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Looking around twitter and seeing– hang on to your wigs and keys– no reaction from elected Republicans to trump’s declaration that this seizure of documents is ‘an attack on our coutnry’

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: anyone else get the impression that reporters are hearing rumors that Samantha Dravis– who got a no-show job and a trip to Paris and Morocco– was Pruitt’s girlfriend? Even the normally prim and proper Doc Maddow seems to be smirkingly hinting at it

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m just getting to Maddow on the DVR now. So this is the first I’ve heard of it. Wouldn’t surprise me. These are not very smart people. Damned determinedly corrupt people, not very smart people.

  31. 31.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: On the other hand, I’ll bet that a video of a cat sitting on Pence’s head as he randomly walks about a room would garner plenty of views, so in that sense he’s on a par with a Roomba.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: Doubtful. The Joint Chiefs will all stay in place as long as they are able to protect their Services. All of them were put in place by President Obama. GEN Milley is 1/2 way through his first three years as Chief of Staff. The most he would serve as Chief of Staff before retirement is two 3 year assignments. So six years total. Then he’d retire.

  46. 46.

    danielx

    @Adam L Silverman:

    These are not very smart people. Damned determinedly corrupt people, not very smart people.

    It’s true. I mean, Pruitt is almost a caricature of a corrupt pol, starting at the state level and increasingly obviously upon reaching to the DC stratosphere. His deeper relationships with the awl bidness, as Molly Ivins called it, are much the more serious of his crimes as far as I’m concerned, but it’s the venial ones that are going to be his undoing. The one which may have doomed him with Trump is the lights-and-sirens demand. If anybody in a black limo or SUV is going to be driven around in DC with lights and siren it’s going to be the shitgibbon and nobody else, thankyewverymuch.

    It’s like Pruitt suddenly forgot everything he ever heard about keeping a low profile if you are going to be a crook.

    That’s bad enough, but watching Trump going off his rocker…slipping his gears…losing his shit…over the last few days has been and is getting more and more frightening. It becomes more and more obvious that he really does not know what he’s doing or what to do, and the only advisors he is willing to listen to are Fox and Friends and John Bolton.

  48. 48.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mnemosyne:
    Not joking, I don’t expect expressions from Pence. The one thing he has shown he’s good at is playing partisan robot. He says what he’s told and doesn’t even acknowledge when he’s corrected. The guy has ‘bland liar’ down to a science.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:

    Completely vacant.

    OK so it’s not constipation, that’s his smug look, his smart look, his what’s for dinner look, his intent in thought look, his I wonder if anyone would notice if I scratch myself in that place look, IOW his entire range of facial expression.
    I guess it would be difficult to have more than one considering all the power contained behind it.

  54. 54.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    They are assuming that since they have control of both Congress and the presidency, they will never be prosecuted.

    There are a whole bunch of assumptions that are going to bump up against reality.

  55. 55.

    West of the Rockies

    Just to see how the other half lives, I popped over to the Fox News website. The lead story is about Chinese tariffs. Story two is framed as the Mueller witch hunt. Stories three through five are about Katy Perry, someone who ate a bunch of chili peppers, and two black men accused of gang raping a 13 year old.

    It is a stunning disconnect of propaganda, idiocy and racism.

  58. 58.

    jl

    @Major Major Major Major:

    ” I mean, it’s not in any actual sense Mueller’s warrant, sure, but isn’t it based on evidence mueller brought to the US Attorney’s attention? ”

    Mueller to Rosenstein: “It’s just one heck of a thing, Rod. We were getting ready to clear that nice Mr. Trump, but dangitall, look what we just found. That could be kind of bad huh? Waddayoo think Rod? Could that be kind of bad?’

  60. 60.

    danielx

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yeah, I know, I know….I went on a rant in some thread recently in which my point, although it may have been some what spittle-inflected, is that if people at that level keep getting away with…everything…they will keep on doing it. Why not? There’s no downside.

    ETA: Starting with Nixon, who was never even admonished for the most serious of his crimes.

  61. 61.

    Major Major Major Major

    @jl: “you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the president. The PRESIDENT, Rod. President trump. Well now, what happened is, it’s just, one of his lawyers, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head, and uh, he went and did a silly thing…”

  62. 62.

    Ninedragonspot

    That expression on Pence’s face suggests a man trying to stifle impure thoughts about a rugged, yet gentle security agent on his detail.

  63. 63.

    patrick II

    @danielx:

    Pruitt saw Tom Price go and took at as a challenge. He is not just passively breaking norms, regulations, and laws he is actively seeking opportunities for new levels of Trump administration corruption. But he will never beat the master.

  64. 64.

    jl

    @Ninedragonspot: A commenter above, as I understand it, said it had something to do with Pence’s ‘power constipation.’ So, I don’t need to know any more about it, whatever it is.

  65. 65.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Adam L Silverman: Wow, you can see him thinking “This is the apex of my carrier?”

    EDIT FOR LEGAL COMPLIANCE: Did you know this is infrastructure week?

  66. 66.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Mnemosyne:
    They won’t get away with it. Whether they’re punished by the justice system or destroyed electorally (why not both?).

  67. 67.

    jl

    @Major Major Major Major: I laughed a laugh. But Trump is more than a little funny in the head, and he could do a silly thing in an attempt to get out of whatever crimes he and/or all his cronies are in to up to their necks.

    One thing I don’t think we need to speculate about is that, if it directly involves Trump, then Trump’s Razor will be in effect and it will be unimaginably dumbass. Might be heinous, might be despicable, or might not. Maybe pathetic, but maybe not. But absolutely surely dumbass.

  68. 68.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @West of the Rockies: On the same note my You Tube Suggested Videos tonight was hilarious, on the Breaking News category all the networks and papers the video title on their report was “FBI agents raid Trump attorney” EXCEPT for Fox News which was “Is Cohen raid an overreach of Mueller probe?” The people who watch Fox have to know they are only being told what they want to hear. But it is Infrastructure Week.

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    Leaning back and trying to persuade himself he’s still king of rope a dope. Except he looks like a solid born loser. And those crazed saps keep pretending, because they’re that stupid and they’re thieves, that nobody will see him scrabbling behind his back for a way through the wall.

  70. 70.

    dm

    I’m so glad we can say “Merry Infrastructure!” again. I was getting so tired of “Cement’s Greetings”.

  71. 71.

    different-church-lady

    @clay:

    “Sarah, will you clarify why the President thinks that prosecuting bank fraud and campaign fraud are attacks on ‘what we all stand for’?”

    HUCKABEE-SANDERS: “Were you born after 2008 or something?”

  72. 72.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: what’s interesting in that set of pics, is that Pence is sitting on drumpfs’ right, Bolton on his left…so Pense’s expression of blank nothingness is even more ‘interesting’.

  73. 73.

    different-church-lady

    a) The body language. This is a man who feels the walls closing in.

    b) The hair. He’s losing it in front now, no longer has enough to get his forward-oriented flock-of-seagulls pompadour to sit correctly anymore.

  74. 74.

    Aleta

    Isn’t it time to cut off the power to the WH air conditioning and water pumps and regular lights and TVs, and to every freezer with ice cream or steak in it. Time to seize Kushner’s property by civil forfeiture for suspected crimes; and auction it off to pay refunds to anyone willing to publicly claim in the newspaper that they voted for Hilary Clinton.

  75. 75.

    danielx

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    EXCEPT for Fox News which was “Is Cohen raid an overreach of Mueller probe?”

    What, Fox News is treating it like it’s a question instead of immediately going directly to “blatant Federal overreach”? Could it be the times they really are a-changing?

    SATSQ: No. They will start that shit tomorrow.

    Musing earlier: it’s strange to see the ending of an era while not feeling any real change in my day-to-day life, as I suppose it is for most BJ commentators. Economic effects of the present unpleasantness won’t hit most people for a while yet. But hit they will, with the most violent effects starting in…five years or so. Trump will leave office eventually, whenever* or however he does, and a presumably more sane** person will sit in the Oval Office. Butttttt…it’s not like we – the collective we – can go back to people overseas and say hey, sorry, we fucked up and elected a lunatic. Can we go back to being friends, with our-now-nonexistent-diplomatic-corps leading the way?

    All together now and with spirit: ain’t happening.

    Things have changed and they are never, ever going to be the same. Electing Bush to preside over the biggest political/diplomatic/military fuckup in history, certainly US history, was bad enough. Electing this utter incompetent corrupt fuckup – for I know no other way to describe him – was worse, and our putative allies are never going to see the US the same way again.

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    If you run Trump’s statement through a narcissist to English translator, it arguably makes more sense.

    “The country” = I/me
    “Everyone” = I/me
    “Our values” = my values
    Etc.

    Terrifying, but more coherent.

  77. 77.

    danielx

    @danielx:

    Done forgotted:

    *Math does not appear to add up to Trump impeachment, conviction vote ain’t happening in the Senate. Note: should happen? yes. Could happen? no, for a number of shitty reasons.
    **whoever it may be, the person has to be more sane and stable than Trump. My estimate of what is required to achieve the presidency has been shattered, but I think a new baseline has been established.

    ETA: I used to joke about how the number of assholes who looked in the mirror and saw Republican presidential timber. It’s not so funny now.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    Don’t know if it will turn out to be true, but if so, this is exciting:

    Alzheimer's gene neutralised in human brain cells for the first time https://t.co/gUuz317jTd— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 10, 2018

    A team in California successfully identified the protein associated with the high-risk apoE4 gene and then manage to prevent it damaging human neuron cells.

    The study could open the door to a potential new drug capable of halting the disease, however the researchers have urged caution because so far their compound has only been tried on collections of cells in a laboratory.

  81. 81.

    danielx

    @John Revolta:

    Ummm….please describe a bigger political/diplomatic/military fuckup in US history, than invading and occupying Iraq. Seriously. If there is one, I want to know.

  84. 84.

    JR

    @danielx: Setting aside the Civil War, 3/5ths compromise, etc. as purely domestic fuckups:

    The “banana republic” era in the Caribbean
    Vietnam
    World War I

    Iraq is up there, though!

  88. 88.

    Jack the Second

    It’s like on a crime drama when they realize the blood soaked murder weapon doesn’t match the victim’s blood or wound, and are like, “shit, can someone else find the body that goes with this knife?”

  90. 90.

    Kristine

    There T*%#p is with the folded arms again. Every time he’s cornered, or sitting with people he doesn’t like, or in some other way threatened.

  92. 92.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m waiting for him to explain how he got an $850,000 mortgage on a $131,000 salary as Oklahoma AG.

    Zero points! Zero closing costs! Zero Interest! Almost-zero Principal!

    Because he “knows a guy who knows a guy who will set you right up.”

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