Octopus Overlords

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:39 pm**

Somehow Nadler made Barr sympathetic. How is he in charge?!?

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:41 pm**

I'm not sure what they hoped to gain from this, but it's already blowing up in their faces. At this point, they're their own worst enemies.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:46 pm**

hepcat wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:41 pm I'm not sure what they hoped to gain from this, but it's already blowing up in their faces. At this point, they're their own worst enemies.

I turned it off but I do hear they scored some hits in the early afternoon. However, that'll all get lost in the noise now. They had a month to prepare. I don't understand how unprepared they were. Again.

Edit: Here is another moment that'll be used to undermine the hearing. I just can't fathom how Nadler is running something of this gravity. I'm sorry he had a car accident but he was unprepared and off his rocker today.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 3:57 pm**

What a shit show. Fucking hopeless.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:05 pm**

Being not the worst doesn't mean you're the best. It doesn't even you're competent.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:56 pm**

I spent the last half hour watching how CNN covered the hearings. They did a pretty good job and the takeaway was that it was a mixed bag. They thankfully ignored Nadler entirely but there were some interesting comments. Elie Honig summed it up by saying it got to a slow start and that the questioning by junior members was far more effective. Which is what I heard from commentators. Former Congressman Rogers described it as angry and unproductive. That sounds right to me. Ugh. We'll see how other outlets cover it but what a missed opportunity.

Edit: By the by, Jordan opened the hearing with a very, very misleading clip of the protests including juxtapositions of violence next to reporters saying 'peaceful protests' to imply that the reporters were characterizing the protests untruthfully. Tapper's team found the original clips and showed them in context. I'm sure it'll hit the Internet tonight but it was a very effective way of attacking that travesty and he called on Jordan to apologize. Fat chance but I was impressed that he didn't let that pass.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:03 pm**

Part of me loves that you think that anyone else is watching congressional hearings.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:05 pm**

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:56 pm Edit: By the by, Jordan opened the hearing with a very, very misleading clip of the protests including juxtapositions of violence next to reporters saying 'peaceful protests' to imply that the reporters were characterizing the protests untruthfully. Tapper's team found the original clips and showed them in context. I'm sure it'll hit the Internet tonight but it was a very effective way of attacking that travesty and he called on Jordan to apologize. Fat chance but I was impressed that he didn't let that pass.

Jordan accomplished his mission.

His bit will be running on Fox for the next few days at least. Tapper's context will be ignored.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:27 pm**

RunningMn9 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:03 pm Part of me loves that you think that anyone else is watching congressional hearings.

Actually I don't think anyone else is.

It is more that I can have them on in my Ozymandias setup and I find it interesting how it all gets distorted/covered/spun.

Edit: Though the political world was definitely watching the Barr hearings. The progressives loved when their people yelled at Barr. The right loved when Jordan yelled at Nadler. Everyone loves when people dunk on Nadler because he is a dumber, clumsier, more useless Mr. Magoo.

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:10 pm**

Four years in four minutes: Donald Trump's "new tone."

Posted: **Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:18 pm**

BAM!

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:47 am**

Good lord, this man is completely deranged.

NEW: President Trump tells @jonathanvswan on #AxiosOnHBO that he didn't raise the issue of alleged bounties on U.S. troops during his call with Vladimir Putin last week: "That was a phone call to discuss other things."

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 10:14 am**

He -cannot- afford to piss off Putin. His retirement plans (starting shortly after January 2021) have him living there for the rest of his natural life.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:05 pm**

Trump wrote:I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood... ...Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!

So long-winded. Surely there's a way to get this down to 14 words.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:10 pm**

Jesus. Dogs four counties away just started barking at that whistle.

And sadly, I can absolutely see at least 50% of my neighbors absolutely cheering this on. They will claim that Trump is keeping those "thugs" out of our neighborhood.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 2:22 pm**

What's so funny to me is that I remember ~2 years ago engaging on FB with people from the town I was living in at the time that were apoplectic with the idea that someone might be building townhouses in our community. They specifically said things like "We're not that kind of town", because apparently I was living in a part of NJ that had something against townhouses?

Anyway, they were clearly using coded racist phrasing to really mean "poor, dark people" and I thought they were fringe lunatics. However, they were clearly tapped into whatever Trump is projecting here. Absolutely disgusting.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 3:34 pm**

Let me guess, all those federal troops being sent to Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee...makes perfect sense now.
They're going to keep people in rather than out.

Also, the foundation of economic racial inequality in this country is housing inequality. You deny people the principal source of equity every else has and you disadvantage them for generations.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 4:50 pm**

I was hoping someone was doing this, but I had no idea it was McSweeney's:

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes.

Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them. This list will be updated between now and the November 2020 Presidential election.

As of this post, the list contains 796 items, each described in a brief paragraph with references.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 6:44 pm**

Is there anyone who isn't releasing a book before the election?

Peter Strzok Returns, Says Trump Is “Under the Sway” of the Kremlin

One of Donald Trump’s favorite punching bags is getting ready to hit back. Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who has been cast by the president as an agent of the deep state who sought to undermine him during the Russia investigation, will argue in a book this fall that Trump is “under the sway of America’s adversary in the Kremlin”—Vladimir Putin. “The elevation by President Trump and his collaborators of Trump’s own personal interests over the interests of the country allowed Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams,” Strzok said in a statement announcing Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, due out in September. “The national security implications of Putin’s triumph will persist through our next election and beyond.”

Strzok, whose texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page made him a frequent target of Trump’s Twitter attacks and right-wing conspiracy theories about the so-called FBI “witch hunt” against the president and his allies, played a key role in the inquiry into the Trump campaign’s role in Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. Trump and William Barr have been working to rewrite the history of that probe since last year, when the attorney general misrepresented Robert Mueller’s report and cleared the president of wrongdoing. Barr’s Justice Department this year dropped the case against Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to Mueller in 2017, and Trump this month commuted the sentence of longtime friend Roger Stone. The latter drew a rare rebuke from the tight-lipped Mueller, who defended the Stone prosecution and the Russia probe as a whole. “Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes,” the former special counsel wrote in the Washington Post. “He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.” But Trump and Barr have persisted, with the latter on Tuesday decrying the “grave abuses involved in the bogus” investigation in a Capitol Hill testimony.

Strzok’s forthcoming book—and those of Norman Eisen, special counsel to the Judiciary Committee during Trump’s eventual impeachment last winter, and Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann—seems an attempt to reclaim the history of the special counsel’s probe from the president and his allies. Whether they’ll be able to do so remains to be seen. Past books about the president, including by former FBI director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, made big waves in the Washington media and irked Trump, but didn’t exact lasting damage on the president.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:14 pm**

The voice of Putin.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:47 pm**

Idly wondering, What's Barr's angle? Why is he trump's feisty lapdog? Why further Putin's interests? He must have a long game...what's in it for him? Does he believe he'll be running the WH in a second term? Is he, like, into fascism? Working for the Christian apocalypse? Is he Himmler?

One can ask the same questions about any of trump's cronies, but Barr seems especially rabid. Does he think he can use trump after so many others have failed?

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:48 pm**

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:14 pm The voice of Putin.

Dance my sweet, fat babushka! Dance!

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:00 pm**

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:47 pm Idly wondering, What's Barr's angle? Why is he trump's feisty lapdog? Why further Putin's interests? He must have a long game...what's in it for him? Does he believe he'll be running the WH in a second term? Is he, like, into fascism? Working for the Christian apocalypse? Is he Himmler?

One can ask the same questions about any of trump's cronies, but Barr seems especially rabid. Does he think he can use trump after so many others have failed?

This piece at Vox might or might not completely answer your questions but at least it is some food for thought here. To sum it up Barr is a bit of a monarchist and thinks the President should be more like a King than the head of 3 co-equal branches. He once made comments to the effect that the American revolution was against Parliament versus the King. So if the President says I support Russia then his duty is to support this. It calls into question his testimony that he doesn't pay attention to Trump's tweets. Whatever falls out of his mouth is by definition US policy and it seems antithetical to this view to ignore these pronouncements. In other words, Barr likely lied through his teeth yesterday.

Sean Illing
What’s the most important thing people should know about William Barr?

David Rohde
I think the most important thing to understand is that he has one of the most extreme views of how powerful an American president should be.

Sean Illing
What does that mean?

David Rohde
It means that he does not believe that we should have three co-equal branches of government. He believes the president should be more powerful than Congress and the courts. In his mind, that’s the only thing that can keep the country safe when it is threatened by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse. He believes that is what the founders intended.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:13 pm**

Ok, he's an authoritarian and a religious/cultural warrior who's doing all of this for the good of the country. That's a lot more dangerous than someone who's in it for himself.

Posted: **Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:35 pm**

If he thinks the president should have that much power, why does he think it should be Trump. He has to see that isn't good for the country. Is he just entirely loyal to the office?

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:57 am**

Alefroth wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:35 pm If he thinks the president should have that much power, why does he think it should be Trump. He has to see that isn't good for the country. Is he just entirely loyal to the office?

Barr doesn't have time to wait for a more suitable GOP cult leader to become President.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:03 am**

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:57 am
Alefroth wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:35 pm If he thinks the president should have that much power, why does he think it should be Trump. He has to see that isn't good for the country. Is he just entirely loyal to the office?
Barr doesn't have time to wait for a more suitable GOP cult leader to become President.

Ah, so the more correct answer is that Barr believes a Republican President should have more power than the other two branches. If it's a Democratic President then fuck him.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:11 am**

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:47 pmOne can ask the same questions about any of trump's cronies, but Barr seems especially rabid. Does he think he can use trump after so many others have failed?

... overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:22 am**

What would Barr get from using Trump? I would assume he's a believer. He believes in what the GOP is and that this is what is good for America. There is no shortage of GOP vision believers who endorse abuse of power at every level to advance the GOP and what's good for the GOP is good for America and what's good for America is good for them. When he is attacked by those outside GOP, it only re-enforces GOP is friend. Not GOP is enemy. Trump is the GOP. If you could hear local political advertising from 2018 and even moreso in 2020. This is known.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:36 am**

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:22 am What would Barr get from using Trump? I would assume he's a believer. He believes in what the GOP is and that this is what is good for America. There is no shortage of GOP vision believers who endorse abuse of power at every level to advance the GOP and what's good for the GOP is good for America and what's good for America is good for them. When he is attacked by those outside GOP, it only re-enforces GOP is friend. Not GOP is enemy. Trump is the GOP. If you could hear local political advertising from 2018 and even moreso in 2020. This is known.

This is 100% true. They wrap that type of thinking into false patriotism. The thinking then extends to the point to where the GOP are true Patriots and anyone who disagrees with them is not a Patriot. The first time I realized this was during the lead up to the Gulf War when Cheney did his traveling show lying to the people about the reasons to invade Irag. Anyone who disagreed with the invasion was seen as an America hating "libtard".

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:55 am**

Imagine if Obama had ever tweeted something like this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 0389558273

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:57 am**

Enough wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:55 am
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

I have yet to hear even one compelling argument against it and lots of people saying it's a completely safe and legitimate voting method.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:00 am**

Enough wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:55 am Imagine if Obama had ever tweeted something like this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 0389558273

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

And there it is. What took so long?

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:10 am**

Virus is fake. Open the economy but cancel the elections. Mail in is good for the elite but will destroy the nation if used by the masses. This is example why I can't even hold a conversation with someone who endorses Trump/GOP. I am to the point of where when I see GOP candidate endorsing storefront, they are on my never again list. (I drove by the gas station I was going to stop at last night. They no longer exist for me)

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 am**

Authoritarian asshole will only get worse.

Still, I wonder if telling your own believers "voting in any form is unsafe and insecure" is the best electoral strategy?

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 am**

LawBeefaroni wrote:
Enough wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:55 am Imagine if Obama had ever tweeted something like this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 0389558273

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

And there it is. What took so long?

We should have done a betting pool

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:28 am**

Holman wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 am Authoritarian asshole will only get worse.

Still, I wonder if telling your own believers "voting in any form is unsafe and insecure" is the best electoral strategy?

So far the largest decrease in mail-in registrations has been in the older, white demographic.

Probably why he's doubling down on invalidating mail in voting.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:30 am**

Holman wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 amI wonder if telling your own believers "voting in any form is unsafe and insecure" is the best electoral strategy?

His believers already have who they want in charge and would likely be fine with having no election at this point.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:14 am**

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:28 am
Holman wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 am Authoritarian asshole will only get worse.

Still, I wonder if telling your own believers "voting in any form is unsafe and insecure" is the best electoral strategy?
So far the largest decrease in mail-in registrations has been in the older, white demographic.

Probably why he's doubling down on invalidating mail in voting.

Yeah, and that might be because of Trump arguing against mail in voting. He does run a real risk that his voters don't register for mail in voting because Trump has attacked in, but then on election day they don't go vote in person because of delays or because they think it's unsafe.

Posted: **Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:34 am**

$iljanus wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:27 am
LawBeefaroni wrote:
Enough wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 8:55 am Imagine if Obama had ever tweeted something like this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 0389558273

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

And there it is. What took so long?
We should have done a betting pool

I did make a thread....

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