Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“But what about the lurkers?”

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

So many bastards, so little time.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

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

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The lights are all blinking red.

Fight them, without becoming them!

He really is that stupid.

You are here: Home / Politics / Impeachment Inquiry / Rooting for Injuries Open Thread: #MoscowMitch vs. #PutinsPuppetPrez

Rooting for Injuries Open Thread: #MoscowMitch vs. #PutinsPuppetPrez

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65Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    The Hoarse Whisperer: “On some level, I think Mitch McConnell secretly relishes the day he can shank Trump.”

    Don’t we all?

  2. 2.

    GregB

    Mecca’s Mercenaries!

    NEW: On deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, Pres. Trump says, “Are you ready: Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing. That’s a first!” ABC News.

  3. 3.

    jl

    McConnell said anything substantial recently, or has he gone into hiding, ducked back into his shell?

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Secretly? The only person happier than Moscow Mitch the day after trump strokes out on a gilt crapper is Melania

  8. 8.

    Ruff the Dog

    When one transactional person who thinks he’s powerful finds out what happens when he encounters a transactional person who really does have power.

  9. 9.

    H.E.Wolf

    PostcardsToVoters.org is writing to Democrats in Kentucky right now, to remind them that they can vote straight-ticket Democratic on November 5 (many statewide elections, including Governor).

    Participants can ask for as few as 5 postcard addresses, to be written over the course of 3 days.

    High Democratic turnout in his home state in a few weeks is another good way to put pressure on Senator McConnell.

    When I was in line at our local post office yesterday, someone ahead of me requested postcard stamps. The clerk said, “We’re all out – I don’t know why!” At which point, I arrived at the counter with my small handful of stamped postcards….

    It reminds me of the shortage of pink yarn in early 2017 – a harbinger of big actions to come!

  11. 11.

    trnc

    I donated to McGrath last month and will happily do so again.@debbie: Yes and then russoa and the us blocked a vote las night to condemn Turkey.

  12. 12.

    cain

    Pool report: Trump was asked about losing in court today. "I've had a great track record. … within a couple of months, we'll have 182 federal judges."Is he saying that the more federal judges he confirms… the more the courts will just rule for him? ?— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) October 11, 2019

    Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s saying. He’s going to confirm loyal judges to him and subvert everything till he is in fact king. They will even fuck over the 2nd amendment. Don’t worry.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Definitely worth a mention.

    A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump violated federal law when he used his declaration of a national emergency to get millions for building a wall on the southern border.
    [snip]
    Federal District Court Judge David Briones said the president’s order violated a provision of the budget law approved by Congress which said “none of the funds made available in this or any other appropriation may be used to increase” the funding for the wall project.

    “The president’s proclamation is unlawful,” Briones wrote. Source

  14. 14.

    cain

    As I said on twitter – we now a country that you can pay for us to fuck people over. The only rule is that it doesn’t despoil any plans by Putin.

  16. 16.

    Sab

    @NotMax: The giant ancient cactus is still dead and gone. He can do whatever, and afterwards we can righteously wring our hands.

  17. 17.

    StringOnAStick

    @GregB: Let’s see if anyone remembers what was one of Osama Bin Ladin’s biggest rallying cries against the west in general and the US in particular. You know, that whole “infidels in the country where the sacred city of Mecca is located” thing. tRump just walked right into that because the Sawdi’s waved some cash around. Great.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    More consequences of “great and unmatched wisdom”

    JUST IN from @MarthaRaddatz: ISIS has breached several prisons in northern Syria. Official says Turkey is deliberately targeting American bases so we will depart. @ABC— Devin Dwyer (@devindwyer) October 11, 2019

  22. 22.

    jl

    @Cacti: ” So the U.S. Armed Forces are now officially a praetorian guard for the Saudi royal family. ”

    IIRC, we had same kind of arrangement before 9/11, but moved them out in order to reduce supposed provocation to reactionary Muslims.
    Can anyone give a little bit of that history? I don’t know all that much about it.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    Oh! SB-24 got signed in CA.

    SB-24 mandates that all public universities in the state provide abortion services in their student health centers by 2023. Brown had vetoed it because it would have created some real challenges at some of the smaller campuses, but I guess that got ironed out. Maybe just a longer runway to comply.

  31. 31.

    bluehill

    Trump throwing Rudy under the bus. I think there have to be a lot of underlings in the executive branch that have been part of something illegal wondering if it’s better to volunteer info than to wait for a subpoena. Seems like that’s what’s happening in the State Dept.

  32. 32.

    SFAW

    If the House impeaches Trump, McConnell could quickly move to have the Senate dismiss the charges without a trial.

    Could he actually do that? Or is that just pointless speculation from Pershing?

  33. 33.

    Martin

    @bluehill: These people are so incredibly stupid.

    If you don’t call out bad behavior when it happens, then you’ve handed power to the person causing the bad behavior to implicate you in it. And now you’re on defense because your credibility is shot. And that’s what Trump does with EVERYTHING. He doesn’t care how loyal you were to him, he just uses that loyalty to get you to put yourself in a position where he can blame all of his bad shit on you, and he will do it without hesitation.

    The best way to avoid falling into the trap is to call out the bad behavior as soon as it happens.

  35. 35.

    The Moar You Know

    If the House impeaches Trump, McConnell could quickly move to have the Senate dismiss the charges without a trial. But there have been enough GOP waverers that it’s not clear he would have the votes to dismiss.

    Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The GOP always falls in line; no exceptions.

    If Dems fall for this we should replace the donkey with Lucy holding the football.

  36. 36.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @The Moar You Know:

    Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The GOP always falls in line; no exceptions.

    If Dems fall for this we should replace the donkey with Lucy holding the football.

    What do you think they should do? Extend the impeachment inquiry for as long as possible and do the maximum amount of damage?

  37. 37.

    The Moar You Know

    Speaking of rooting for injuries, “Trump Won’t Say If Giuliani Is Still His Attorney: ‘Well, I Don’t Know’”.

    @dmsilev: someone needs to ask Rudy how the brakes look on the bus he just got thrown under.

  41. 41.

    Mai naem mobile

    I am wondering if Mitch and Trumpov are in a forced suicide pact because of Elaine Chao. Trumpov is not the shapest knife in the drawer but I imagine he can still make life at least a little difficult with whatever grifting/corruption Chao has going on at transportation.
    Also there’s something very delicious hearing about Mitch not liking the calls from Trumpov being how he made fun of Obama’s calls to him and Obama’s professorial style.

  42. 42.

    bluehill

    @Martin: Agree. Also can see if you’re some mid-level bureaucrat, little things became bigger things, just following orders, slippery slope and all that. So far it seems like it has been non-partisan bureaucrats coming forward, we’ll see if some loyalists start to feel pressure.

  44. 44.

    Mai naem mobile

    @The Moar You Know: they’re politicians. They’re going to follow the polling. The House teabaggers are a bunch of morons but the Senators know their history. What should not be allowed to happen is to let people forget their support of Trumpov.for so long.

  46. 46.

    Chetan Murthy

    @jl: StringOnAStick got the essence of it. Here’s a link with more: https://www.npr.org/2011/02/24/133991181/twenty-years-later-first-iraq-war-still-resonates

    “Bin Laden has repeatedly referred to the U.S. going into Saudi Arabia as a key reason for Sept. 11,” says Yetiv, who has just published a history of U.S. policy toward Iraq.

    He offered the Saudi king at the time the services of his Muj, and …. the king kindly told him to get out of the way for the professionals. He didn’t take kindly to that, nor to infidels on the sacred ground of Arabia.

    Yeah boyeez, this’ll end well.

  47. 47.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: More:

    Fresh from his symbolically important role in helping to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, bin Laden had been eager to play the leading role in protecting his Saudi homeland from Iraqi incursion.

    In September 1990, he told Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, that he could muster 100,000 fighters within three months and there would be no need for American or other “non-Muslim troops.”

    “There are no caves in Kuwait,” Prince Sultan said in response. The Saudis much preferred the promise of hundreds of thousands of Western troops made to them by Dick Cheney, then the U.S. defense secretary, to the prospect of thousands of armed jihadists operating within their borders.

    This ultimately led to bin Laden’s final break with the Saudi elite and turned his organization’s attention toward Western enemies, says Adam Mausner, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    After U.S. forces had remained in Saudi Arabia for some years, bin Laden wrote the Saudi king that “it is unconscionable to let the country become an American colony with American soldiers — their filthy feet everywhere.”

    “The presence of American troops on Saudi soil galvanized the faction of al-Qaida that wanted to focus on the ‘far enemy’ first,” Mausner says. “Al-Qaida really got on the road to 9/11 because of American troops’ presence in Saudi Arabia.”

  48. 48.

    Marcopolo

    @Chetan Murthy: Yep, was just talking at dinner about how one of the motivations for Al Qaida was the US military presence in Saudi Arabia. There’s a reason we pulled virtually all of our forces (remaining in SA post Desert Storm) out in 2003.

    Putting aside that it appears the troops we are sending over there now seem to be mercenary forces (and btw if the Sauds are paying all of the costs does that mean they have a say over their disposition), their mere presence on Saudi soil makes the possibility of ever more unrest against the Saudi royals & backlash against the US a much more likely reality. And if there is some kind of rebellion against the Saudi royals, what do US forces, paid for by the Sauds, do?

    Oh yeah, I am totally leaving out what effect these troops being in SA will play in Saudi-Iran relations. Or if they somehow get pulled into the Saudi military campaign in Yemen. What a clusterfuck.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    That reminds me…I will need to make a separate stop, with a separate 12-pack of Bud Light guzzled en route, to visit ol #MoscowMitch’s final resting place someday. Hopefully someday soon.

    The travel bucket list just keeps getting longer, and longer…

  50. 50.

    cain

    @Marcopolo:
    We are going to be fucked.. foreign fighters on SA land. Yeah, that’s not going to go well and there will be no subtlety with this president. He will blunder into it with guns blazing. The entire Muslim world will want his head and the neocons will be eager to go toe to toe with them as well because they think we’ll win a land war with them.

    On the other hand, I’m hoping all our crazy ass militias and crazy right wingers will go out there with them and die off.

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    The best part of the WaPo report (quoting Trump):

    Kevin now, after many years in Government, wants to spend more time with his family and go to the private sector.”

    Isn’t it usually just one or the other?

    LOL.

  53. 53.

    Aleta

    @Elizabelle: Your link is better, but here’s what the Post is saying tonight:

    A person close to McAleenan said he resigned Friday after weeks of growing disenchantment with his standing in the administration. He was never formally nominated for the job.

    “What I don’t have control over is the tone, the message, the public face and approach of the department in an increasingly polarized time,” McAleenan said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That’s uncomfortable, as the accountable, senior figure.”

    McAleenan had been frustrated with a cadre of Trump’s appointments to senior immigration roles and recently told The Washington Post that he was struggling to control his department. More hard-line figures have attacked him as insufficiently committed to the president’s immigration agenda, while critics of those policies argue he has used conciliatory rhetoric to lend cover to harsh measures.

    Trump in turn had questioned whether McAleenan was loyal to him.

    McAleenan has been more isolated in recent weeks after the departure of several top aides and close allies in recent months. In addition, his relationships have been strained with other senior figures, especially Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

    McAleenan’s exit leaves the bare-bones leadership structure at DHS even thinner. Every major immigration agency is run by leaders in acting roles.

  54. 54.

    sdhays

    Meanwhile, Trump decided that an agriculture recession might be an impediment to his reelection campaign, so he folded in his stupid trade war with China. The Chinese have promised to buy $50 billion in agricultural products.

    I wonder what Xi wants. A US led by Dump pretty much leaves China in the driver’s seat in its region and gives them a free hand on the global stage, but the trade war certainly irks them and an idiot running the US can be dangerous as well. They have the ability to go through the motions in implementing whatever “deal” gets made very slowly to make Liddle’ Hands squeal. Or they can deliver rapid relief and give him a win with his core supporters.

  55. 55.

    sdhays

    @cain: The flip side is just how vulnerable the Saudi’s must be that they’ve had to request this. If they need all this foreign support, we’re pretty much looking at a Shah 2 situation, no?

  56. 56.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @sdhays:

    so he folded in his stupid trade war with China. The Chinese have promised to buy $50 billion in agricultural products.

    Ah, no. I just looked that up. That’s what Trump SAYS is the deal that has not actually been fully negotiated or signed. Prepare to watch him played for a chump again.

  57. 57.

    Aleta

    It’s still weird to think that Iran Contra was barely prosecuted, and that Reagan and Bush1 themselves escaped w/o even being investigated. (I think–I wasn’t in the US then). That the legal part of Clinton’s impeachment trial was tied to his lying about one overall thing, which in itself couldn’t be prosecuted as a crime (iirc); while Bush2 and Cheney were never seriously threatened with an impeachment inquiry for their war crimes and lies that hideously damaged generations of people in so many countries. (Not to mention the lies that they and Ashcroft used to threaten the press and scare people/Congress into compliance with what they wanted.)

    And now there’s this one, which we already know involves so.many.serious.crimes by many participants, and multiple cover-ups. The lying part for this one is merely the water they’ve been swimming in.

    (I know this all relates to who controlled Congress and to aggressive R preemptive defense.) Anyway, the scope of this impeachment (inquiry) looks to be potentially staggering.

  58. 58.

    jl

    @Frankensteinbeck: With international economic deals, either both parties publish independently verifiable mileposts, timelines and and commitments, or they don’t. If they don’t, it’s all horseshit, and there is no actual deal. Chances that anything actually happens is very low.

  59. 59.

    Tenar Arha

    @Marcopolo: I believe the parallel is that this time the US Military is playing the part of the Hessian auxiliaries in this epic. Not quite mercenaries under foreign military commanders, but loaned out under our own commanders to “assist” the host country’s military.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Aleta

    If one participated in a drinking game keyed to Reagan intoning “I don’t recall” when questioned about Iran-Contra, he or she would only today be beginning to sober up.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: yeah I typed out a long response that got et by word press, but among other things, this famous SNL skit hit a nerve in 1986 cause it was such a contrast with Reagan’s befuddled, “I think I don’t remember” response to Lawrence Walsh and/or the Tower Commission (it was a long time ago)

  64. 64.

    206inKY

    The primary hasn’t even happened yet. Don’t write off Matt Jones. He is beloved here. If McGrath couldn’t win Lexington in 2018, how the hell is she going to win Kentucky?

    I suggest donating to the fund for whoever wins the primary since McGrath certainly won’t share if she loses; she has already done McConnell’s dirty work by getting Jones fired from his show for writing an anti-Mitch book. If she does win, she can spend it against Mitch instead of shivving Jones.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/08/19/sports-radio-host-matt-jones-fired-tv-show-after-announcing-mitch-mcconnell-book/

    “According to one person familiar with the deliberations, the campaign of Amy McGrath, another Democrat challenging McConnell in the Senate, had raised questions to WLEX about Jones hosting the show while contemplating a Senate run.”

  65. 65.

    206inKY

    Do you realize that McGrath went on Morning Joe and said that McConnell is standing in the way of Trump fulfilling his promises?

    Try not to barf at this headline from the Louisville Courier Journal:

    “Kentucky makeover: Amy McGrath challenges Mitch McConnell as a pro-Trump Democrat”

    https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/09/amy-mcgrath-seeks-makeover-pro-trump-democrat/1680960001/

    This is serious! Outsiders looking to donate to Kentucky need to do their homework! Nobody will beat McConnell by running as a better ally to Trump; McConnell is Trump’s biggest enabler.

    Matt Jones is such a better option, and he won’t take a wrecking ball to local Democrats by killing enthusiasm with Trump-hugging.

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