USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

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Gen. Ripper: Jan 12, 2013

Sulphagnist posted:

I am going to need to save up a whole bottle of beta blockers for when George W. Bush dies, because the hagiography will be even worse with him. At least everyone's shut up about John McCain and he's finally been dumped on the ash heap of history.

Bush doesn't have a 20+ year cult of personality built around him by the Beltway media and pundits. I think it's safe to say that, for instance, we won't see Dana Bash or whoever tweeting "The angels were crying" if it rains during GWB's funeral.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 09:49

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 20:37

theblackw0lf: Apr 15, 2003; "...creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature"

Does anyone remember what the coverage was like when Nixon died?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 09:56

Katt: Nov 14, 2017

Gen. Ripper posted:

"The angels were crying" if it rains during GWB's funeral.

Oh the angels are doing something on Dubya's grave but it's not crying...

# ? Dec 2, 2018 09:57

MSDOS KAPITAL: Jun 25, 2018

theblackw0lf posted:

Does anyone remember what the coverage was like when Nixon died?

It was also pretty gross.

I do wonder what the coverage of Trump's death will be like. Certainly our present media would give him favorable coverage, however it doesn't seem like the current status quo in the media is tenable for very much longer.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 10:27

Mr. Fall Down Terror: Jan 24, 2018; by Fluffdaddy

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

I do wonder what the coverage of Trump's death will be like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLegSgWi0cI&t=5s

# ? Dec 2, 2018 10:31

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

Peaceful Anarchy posted:

The very last sentence, "NATO�s expansion was years in the future, when these disputes would erupt again, and more assurances would come to Russian leader Boris Yeltsin." hints that you may be correct, but everything in that link is before the fall of the USSR and promising not to expand on the assumption that the USSR remains. It reads as assurances made to make sure German reunification was not seen as a threat, and that letting the Eastern Bloc fall out of the Soviet sphere of influence would not lead to external pressure on the USSR's stability. Quite possibly those promises would have eventually been broken anyway because those countries would have asked to join NATO eventually and NATO would have found an excuse to say yes, but those promises were made to the USSR, on the assumption it would remain the USSR, not Russia.

True, but from Russia's perspective, the material conditions remained the same either way. At a time when they were legitimately trying to play nice with the West (to the point where they full-on adopted the market "reforms" that ended up just capsizing their economy drastically), an anti-Russian strategic alliance was marching steadily ever-eastward, in spite of promises to the contrary that were made to their country's predecessor-state. I can understand letting countries like the Baltic States and Poland into NATO, since those accessions happened in the 90's-early 00's. But Dubya was promising accession to Georgia and Ukraine, two pretty major hot spots for likely border conflict with Russia, in 2008 - and he did so while the UK, France, and Germany loudly opposed making such promises.

My point, obviously, isn't that Russia has behaved in good faith in these areas, because good lord they obviously haven't. It's just that holy poo poo, Clinton and Bush II made some incredibly stupid unforced errors that made a dangerous standoff with Russia very likely.

I'll take the rest of this to one of the Russia threads though, in case anyone wants to continue this discussion.

Majorian fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Dec 2, 2018

# ? Dec 2, 2018 10:33

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Gen. Ripper posted:

Bush doesn't have a 20+ year cult of personality built around him by the Beltway media and pundits. I think it's safe to say that, for instance, we won't see Dana Bash or whoever tweeting "The angels were crying" if it rains during GWB's funeral.

quote:

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
---Revelation 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable -- some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers -- but they knew there was nothing they could do about it -- not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments -- most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise -- a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director -- who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says -- and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

poo poo. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man making GBS threads in his own nest. But he also poo poo in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

I'm a little glad HST didn't live to see Trump take office. It would have hurt him deeply.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 10:37

CubanMissile: Apr 22, 2003; Of Hulks and Spider-Men

Didn't they finally meet face to face, and all they did was talk about football?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 12:12

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

Stereotype posted:

His doctor admitted that Trump dictated the whole letter summarizing his health, so yeah his weight was definitely a lie.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43970908

it was weird when people mocked the girthers because i'm donald's height and was 239 lbs years and years ago right after college and trump has easily 30 pounds on old me. it was especially weird when one of those personal trainers to the stars defended the number as if it was at all plausible.

Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Dec 2, 2018

# ? Dec 2, 2018 12:27

Dick Trauma: Nov 30, 2007; God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Like most of America's shitbags Nixon spent years rehabilitating his image, but this was before it was possible to be splashed across every set of eyeballs on Earth 24 hours a day. He was not by nature a showboat but he enjoyed being tapped to talk about diplomacy, especially China, and no one challenged him about his repulsive past.

People played the usual game of "well sure he was a criminal but compared to REAGAN he actually understood diplomacy" and suddenly that made carpet-bombing people okay.

They're doing the same with Bush right now because he could speak in complete sentences and didn't necessarily make people think he wanted to push the Big Red Button. He's in that distant past that triggers nostalgia in stupid people, so many talk about how "things were different then" and everything was so much better unless you were dying of AIDS or poor or got caught buying an ounce of weed.

So gently caress Nixon, Reagan, Bush and the whole system that created them, maintained them, and in death celebrated them. It stinks of absurd privilege and fundamental dishonesty.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 14:38

skylined!: Apr 6, 2012; THE DEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

:trumppop:

# ? Dec 2, 2018 14:48

GoutPatrol: Oct 17, 2009; *Stupid Babby*

skylined! posted:

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

Maybe this news will last us for eight days!

# ? Dec 2, 2018 14:49

Human Tornada: Mar 4, 2005; I been wantin to see a honkey dance.

FizFashizzle posted:

wtf is going on in the original?

It's a comedy sketch.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 14:56

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

skylined! posted:

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

happy hanukkah you dumb gently caress

# ? Dec 2, 2018 14:57

eke out: Feb 24, 2013

skylined! posted:

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

WITCH HUNT!

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:08

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

skylined! posted:

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

Hah, he�ll just weasel his way out of it.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:12

Arc Hammer: Mar 4, 2013; Got any deathsticks?

Speaking of corruption charges did anything ever happen from that scandal in Japan involving Abe's wife being on a board that was buying up development land for peanuts?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:15

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Pollyanna posted:

Hah, he�ll just weasel his way out of it.

Yeah, Netanyahu is about as big of a graft monster as Trump, but he's been a lot more successful at it. He really shouldn't have been reelected, since he got dismissed the first time for corruption charges. It seems like there's always some bribery or corruption charge for Netanyahu, but nothing ever sticks now.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:21

SocketWrench: Jul 8, 2012; by Fritz the Horse

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

It was also pretty gross.

I do wonder what the coverage of Trump's death will be like. Certainly our present media would give him favorable coverage, however it doesn't seem like the current status quo in the media is tenable for very much longer.

An endless line of people being held back by the cops so they can't physically poo poo on his headstone

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:27

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

Majorian posted:

True, but from Russia's perspective, the material conditions remained the same either way. At a time when they were legitimately trying to play nice with the West (to the point where they full-on adopted the market "reforms" that ended up just capsizing their economy drastically), an anti-Russian strategic alliance was marching steadily ever-eastward, in spite of promises to the contrary that were made to their country's predecessor-state. I can understand letting countries like the Baltic States and Poland into NATO, since those accessions happened in the 90's-early 00's. But Dubya was promising accession to Georgia and Ukraine, two pretty major hot spots for likely border conflict with Russia, in 2008 - and he did so while the UK, France, and Germany loudly opposed making such promises.

My point, obviously, isn't that Russia has behaved in good faith in these areas, because good lord they obviously haven't. It's just that holy poo poo, Clinton and Bush II made some incredibly stupid unforced errors that made a dangerous standoff with Russia very likely.

I'll take the rest of this to one of the Russia threads though, in case anyone wants to continue this discussion.

I mostly skim the thread to keep up with internal domestic US politics, my background is in international relations (mostly middle east focused) but this is an incredibly.....generous situational/environmental analysis and completely ignores the internal economic and social forces that pushed Russia toward their current nationalistic world view. While the US looking to incorporate Baltic States and the Ukraine into NATO can be viewed as antagonist from a Russian perspective, those states also wanted to ensure their sovereignty. Perhaps NATO wasn't the proper vehicle to do it through considering the history between the organization and Russia, but you're being incredibly generous with this analysis. Legitimately trying to play nice with the west? sheeeeeeeiiiiiit.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:30

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Arcsquad12 posted:

Speaking of corruption charges did anything ever happen from that scandal in Japan involving Abe's wife being on a board that was buying up development land for peanuts?

I'm gonna assume since it was a Japanese corruption scandal someone said sorry and made some token gesture and everyone involved kept all the massive graft and profits.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 15:31

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

It warms my heart that there will never be a Trump Presidential Library because there will be no real records for the NARA to keep that aren't on Twitter and whatever private foundation to maintain one would likely be so overwhelm by graft that not a single brick will be laid down.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:08

eke out: Feb 24, 2013

Young Freud posted:

It warms my heart that there will never be a Trump Presidential Library because there will be no real records for the NARA to keep that aren't on Twitter and whatever private foundation to maintain one would likely be so overwhelm by graft that not a single brick will be laid down.

it will exist in the hearts and minds of the staffers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to "work" for the "library"

also i gotta admit, despite everything else coming out of this being very stupid, if China actually agreed to this it's a legitimately good thing

https://twitter.com/tamarakeithNPR/status/1069186477517606912

just have to withhold our judgment on whether it is really a thing or merely some lie the trump admin is touting

eke out fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Dec 2, 2018

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:13

Grapplejack: Nov 27, 2007

The revolution can only happen if China kills all the poors in Western countries; shipping fentanyl to first world countries is ethically and morally the right move.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:24

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

Grapplejack posted:

The revolution can only happen if China kills all the poors in Western countries; shipping fentanyl to first world countries is ethically and morally the right move.

What?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:25

Grapplejack: Nov 27, 2007

They did agree to it though, so it might actually happen!

Star Man posted:

What?

I'm kidding :v:

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:26

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

skylined! posted:

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1069151916976939008?s=21

So how long until a new large scale IDF incursion into Gaza to distract from this?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:28

Fun Times!: Dec 26, 2010

Grapplejack posted:

They did agree to it though, so it might actually happen!

I'm kidding

I like many others don't pay much attention to username or poster personalities and that's a quick way to get replies of all sorts

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:35

i am harry: Oct 14, 2003

"I have a very good relationship with the third generation of despotic murderous leaders of North Korea," uttered Donald, as if to impress somebody.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:38

On Terra Firma: Feb 12, 2008

Thought crossed my mind over morning coffee. Doesn't the Cohen plea the other day substantiate more of the claims in the Steele report? Wasn't one of the first claims that caught everyone's attention was that Cohen had traveled to Russia to discuss poo poo with the Russians? If so I'm kind of surprised that hasn't been getting more play.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:40

FizFashizzle: Mar 30, 2005

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

So how long until a new large scale IDF incursion into Gaza to distract from this?

How many troops could they even fit into gaza at this point? Israel won :smith:

On Terra Firma posted:

Thought crossed my mind over morning coffee. Doesn't the Cohen plea the other day substantiate more of the claims in the Steele report? Wasn't one of the first claims that caught everyone's attention was that Cohen had traveled to Russia to discuss poo poo with the Russians? If so I'm kind of surprised that hasn't been getting more play.

Oh absolutely.

The steele dossier claimed he had met with the russians in prague. Cohen's excuse was that was actually on the other side of the world in Italy during the dates in question, as proven by his passport stamp, and could never have simply taken an overnight train and gotten prague.

It was farcical at the time but that was in early 2017 when things were moving just insanely fast news wise and got lost in the clutter.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:40

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

FizFashizzle posted:

How many troops could they even fit into gaza at this point? Israel won

Well, they probably can�t just indiscriminately drop white phosphorous everywhere as much anymore because they might hit a settler.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:41

Feldegast42: Oct 29, 2011; COMMENCE THE RITE OF SHITPOSTING

Gen. Ripper posted:

Bush doesn't have a 20+ year cult of personality built around him by the Beltway media and pundits. I think it's safe to say that, for instance, we won't see Dana Bash or whoever tweeting "The angels were crying" if it rains during GWB's funeral.

Nah it will be worse because the entire centrist wing of the democratic party has been rehabilitating him "because hes not Trump"

Wait for the endless line of takes where invading Iraq was ok because his heart was in the right place

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:42

eke out: Feb 24, 2013

FizFashizzle posted:

The steele dossier claimed he had met with the russians in prague. Cohen's excuse was that was actually on the other side of the world in Italy during the dates in question, as proven by his passport stamp, and could never have simply taken an overnight train and gotten prague.

It was farcical at the time but that was in early 2017 when things were moving just insanely fast news wise and got lost in the clutter.

Not really, the only news was identical to the Bloomberg story from May - that he texted Felix Sater about coming to Russia for meetings alone before Trump would later travel there to finish up the real estate deal, which fell through as they backed away from the whole thing post RNC

The Steele dossier Prague claim is that Cohen travelled there to talk with hackers specifically after the election, to try to cover things up, which is extremely different.

Maybe someday we'll find out it's true but various people I think are generally good seem to strongly suspect that it's misinformation. Not that Steele was purposefully publishing wrong poo poo, but that he was relying on Russian sources, who themselves may have been deceived by various disinformation attempts from the Kremlin that were floating around in that period (for instance, the entire "Guccifer 2.0" cover story)

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:49

VH4Ever: Oct 1, 2005; by sebmojo

Feldegast42 posted:

Nah it will be worse because the entire centrist wing of the democratic party has been rehabilitating him "because hes not Trump"

Wait for the endless line of takes where invading Iraq was ok because his heart was in the right place

Yeah I'm a cynic. Give it enough time, people forget and thus forgive.

So serious question, and it's going back to the Argentina thing: Trump has been a disaster but isn't he like notably way, way worse in the weeks since the midterms? To the degree that he even tried to be worth half a poo poo it sure seems he just stopped trying. Petulance? Increasing dementia? Mixture?

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:50

King of Solomon: Oct 23, 2008; S S

https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1069256897251950592

AOC added to her tweet about her congressional health care plans with some more really obvious commentary that no one ever really seems to bring up: no one likes actually choosing their healthcare plan.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:53

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

VH4Ever posted:

Yeah I'm a cynic. Give it enough time, people forget and thus forgive.

So serious question, and it's going back to the Argentina thing: Trump has been a disaster but isn't he like notably way, way worse in the weeks since the midterms? To the degree that he even tried to be worth half a poo poo it sure seems he just stopped trying. Petulance? Increasing dementia? Mixture?

If nothing else he's been in a really lovely mood the past month and I wouldn't be surprised if that's taking a toll on his already dubious health. The sycophantic toadies surrounding him seemed to have actually convinced him that the election was going to go his way and he hasn't been taking the loss well.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:57

Spiffster: Oct 7, 2009; I'm good... I Haven't slept for a solid 83 hours, but yeah... I'm good...; Lipstick Apathy

King of Solomon posted:

https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018/status/1069256897251950592

AOC added to her tweet about her congressional health care plans with some more really obvious commentary that no one ever really seems to bring up: no one likes actually choosing their healthcare plan.

But freedom to Choooooosssseeeeee

# ? Dec 2, 2018 16:57

Ague Proof: Jun 5, 2014; they told me
I was everything

Ian Miles Cheong was one of Milo's ghostwriters.

enraged_camel posted:

wasps are OK to talk about

How about ants?

jet sanchEz posted:

This is probably true of most countries lately, Trump is a joke the world over.

In Parliament, Theresa May bragged that unlike Corbyn she was working hard trying to make a deal with Trump and the room broke out in laughter.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1068751556244398080

One giant reach for mankind.

# ? Dec 2, 2018 17:02

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 3, 2024 20:37

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

VH4Ever posted:

Yeah I'm a cynic. Give it enough time, people forget and thus forgive.

So serious question, and it's going back to the Argentina thing: Trump has been a disaster but isn't he like notably way, way worse in the weeks since the midterms? To the degree that he even tried to be worth half a poo poo it sure seems he just stopped trying. Petulance? Increasing dementia? Mixture?

He seems distinctly more addled (if that were even possible), and even more hosed up and unhealthy looking (if that were even possible). It's not just you

# ? Dec 2, 2018 17:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

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