[Oldmanmatt]

It feels like the Democrats have played the memo badly. They could have sat back and said "its crap - release it, see what we care - its soooo obviously baloney" etc... But instead they have squealed and drafted alternative releases etc.. which (I think) has had the negative effect of giving the memo kudos.

Whilst Trump may somehow bluster his way out of fixes like this (or not - who knows yet) - I am sure that history will not portray him well...

I think the Dems are as much a part of Trumpism as the GOP. They seem suspiciously inert. Only a few have bothered to actually oppose anything vocally. Yes they vote as a block, but there is no apparent, coordinated resistance.
Too many of them profiting from the tax “reform”...

[mrjonathanr]

[Oldmanmatt]

Someone just told me an anagram of Donald Trump:

Lord Dampnut...

[andy popp]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-lawyer-calls-on-justice-department-to-immediately-end-russia-probe/2018/03/17/c7c58ac8-29f2-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?utm_term=.345c58c306d2

I now think they are very close to trying to fire Robert Mueller.

[mrjonathanr]

McCabe was expecting this at some point wasn’t he? Pretty weak line of argument that- because Sessions deemed him unreliable he therefore must be, ergo the investigation as a whole is invalid. Surely the administration will unravel if Mueller is fired..

Appositely the Guardian are leading with this, it’s frankly astonishing:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

[andy popp]

McCabe was expecting this at some point wasn’t he? Pretty weak line of argument that- because Sessions deemed him unreliable he therefore must be, ergo the investigation as a whole is invalid. Surely the administration will unravel if Mueller is fired..

Sure, the line of argument is pathetically weak. But that actually doesn't matter, not anymore. This is one piece in a jigsaw puzzle: the Nunes memo a couple of months ago, attempting to cast doubt on the origins of the investigation; the Nunes (again) committee's hyper partisan report this week claiming to have demonstrated there was no collusion; the firing of McCabe for disciplinary reasons, planting in people's minds the possibility that there really is wrongdoing at the FBI, now this call from Trump's lawyer, who is playing coy about whether or not he was speaking in a personal capacity (there's no way this move wasn't sanctioned), all played out against the President's Twitter commentary, not to mention the right wing media. Its accelerated the last few days and there will no doubt a lot of people saying to themselves, "You know what, maybe there is something to the idea this all a witch-hunt." I think they (the administration) are literally psyching themselves up to take the really big step. Of course, I could be wrong

I'm not at all sure the administration would unravel. Almost anyone with a shred of sanity is long gone, replaced by the most unqualified, craven Trump loyalists (note, the pace of exits from the administration has also massively speeded up recently). As to congress, I don't see the GOP acting as they should.

[Teaboy]

I now think they are very close to trying to fire Robert Mueller.

I'll be gutted if Lancashire Bouldering website closes (sorry, not trying to undermine the seriousness of this situation).

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Similarly, when I read:

"Almost anyone with a shred of sanity is long gone.."

I found myself looking for the "Same hairstyle, only a little whiter (trash)" thread... somewhere to put this:

"Putin 'will use World Cup like Hitler's Olympics', agrees Johnson"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43487948

There's a deftness, issnn't therre..
Nice work Boris.   

[Oldmanmatt]

So...
This happened:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/john-dowd-resigns-trump-lawyer.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=http://m.facebook.com


Just after this:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/976770619424563200?s=21

Which appears to admit/brag about connection to the scandal?

Hmmm.

[TobyD]

Just read the report of the comedian Michelle Wolf's Correspondents' dinner routine in the Guardian:
Noting the president’s no show, the comedian said: “I would drag him here myself, but it turns out that the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab. He said it first. Yeah, he did. You remember? Good.”
 

[Oldmanmatt]

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375

Fintan O'Toole wrote this yesterday in The Irish Times:

“To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities.

Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about forty percent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your forty percent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too.

And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.
But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery.

Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

People have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group.

It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.

To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”.

And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious?

Second, the hardcore fans loved it: Fifty-eight percent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.
This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable.

So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow."

Let us protect our freedom with all our democratic power, and continue to be brave with everything we must face.”

***JUST TO BE CLEAR, I DID NOT WRITE THIS PIECE. A WRITER NAMED FINTAN O'TOOLE WROTE IT IN THE IRISH TIMES (LINK BELOW). THANK YOU! ***

[Mugabe251]

It's a great thing Trump was elected merely because he brings out the most extreme embarrassing pettiness and histrionic behavior from British and yank liberals that I've ever seen. The last Republican president didn't get anything close to this, despite dragging us into Iraq and Afghanistan, but I suppose that's small change compared to calling Haiti a shithole.

[teestub]

It’s quite difficult to directly compare unnecessary foreign conflicts with attempting to undermine the judiciary and legal branches of your own country.

Bush Jr was lucky that social media was still somewhat in its infancy during his precedency.

[Oldmanmatt]

It's a great thing Trump was elected merely because he brings out the most extreme embarrassing pettiness and histrionic behavior from British and yank liberals that I've ever seen. The last Republican president didn't get anything close to this, despite dragging us into Iraq and Afghanistan, but I suppose that's small change compared to calling Haiti a shithole.

Are you actually fucking mad or is it just an act?

[TobyD]

Are you actually fucking mad or is it just an act?

Anyone who posts anywhere under childish pseudonyms deserves to be entirely ignored. OMM, good opnion pieces on this by Martin Kettle and Simon Jenkins in the Gruniad in the last few days.

[tregiffian]

He does some of what it says on his tin.

[andy popp]

He does some of what it says on his tin.

No, he really, really does not, not even if you're being ironic. If you think so, you're stupid or you're being glib (which is stupid).

[Oldmanmatt]

There have been rumours about the fragility of NATO for some time and the proposal of an economic alliance of the English speaking world has been a recurring feature of the Brexit campaign.
Then, a few days ago, the UK adopted the US air to air missle system, Trump comes blustering into the NATO summit; then:

https://news.usni.org/2018/07/12/navy-hopes-commonality-least-interoperability-frigates-australia-canada-u-k

To be clear, that’s quite a big deal and it’s not “NATO standard” and infact excludes the majority of the alliance.
Now, watch and see if the UK/Swedish future fighter programme quietly disappears.

I actually think Trump is a tool (in both senses), I think he can be wound up and pointed at an objective as a wrecking ball and someone is pulling his levers.
One character that spans the gamut of the current shite is Murdoch, almost every organ playing from the right wing/Nationalist play book is under his control. Not all, but most.

Anyone know where I can purchase a military grade Tinfoil hat?

[lagerstarfish]

Anyone know where I can purchase a military grade Tinfoil hat?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tin-Foil-Hat/192527900857?hash=item2cd38ea0b9:g:x8sAAOSwWHZa6QCm

get it now, before import taxes go up

[Oldmanmatt]

Anyone know where I can purchase a military grade Tinfoil hat?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tin-Foil-Hat/192527900857?hash=item2cd38ea0b9:g:x8sAAOSwWHZa6QCm

get it now, before import taxes go up

Perfect!

Now, I just need a cammo cover for that.

[Oldmanmatt]

Things really are quite screwed up though.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-ambassador-lobbied-uk-officials-over-jailing-far-right-activist-tommy-1024411?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=NewsweekFacebookSF&utm_source=Facebook

[Mugabe251]

Are you actually fucking mad or is it just an act?

Anyone who posts anywhere under childish pseudonyms deserves to be entirely ignored. OMM, good opnion pieces on this by Martin Kettle and Simon Jenkins in the Gruniad in the last few days.

This is the sort of pettiness I was talking about haha

[andy popp]

One of the the dumbest, least thoughtful takes on the Trump presidency yet. Yes, I know you're going to say I've proved you right, but you'd be wrong about that too.

[Oldmanmatt]

Are you actually fucking mad or is it just an act?

Anyone who posts anywhere under childish pseudonyms deserves to be entirely ignored. OMM, good opnion pieces on this by Martin Kettle and Simon Jenkins in the Gruniad in the last few days.

This is the sort of pettiness I was talking about haha

As opposed to picking Mugabe as a user name...

Compensating for something?

Actually, let’s be clear here.
Supporting Trum makes you a complete imbecile. A sycophantic little dweeb unable to deal with your pathetic insecurities and fears of “foreigners”. A person who lauds a petty gangster and traitor. An idiot of the highest (lowest) order.
A sheep. A follower and a disgusting waste of space.
Mugabe, was worse. So you are a complete moron.

I’m not hard to find. I have no problem relaying that to you in person if you can dig yourself out of your fake persona and come out from behind your cowardly pseudonym.
You’re one of those people that followed the school bully around saying “yeah! Wot he said” aren’t you?

There’s nothing petty about this, but you are quite pathetic to hide and sling shit.

Edit:
I should add something. To everyone else, I don’t normally lose my rag on the forumand I’m not a seething mass of anger pounding the keys now, either.
Enough is enough. Trump is not a joke and real people are being harmed in very real ways. Twats like Mugabe facilitate that. How long should people continue to be civil in the face of this? In the face of blatant facistic, white supremist, evil?
And this is not going to improve soon, if ever.
So, you either support it, or condemn it utterly, because anything else is tacitly and consciously allowing it to happen.

It seems recognised that a facist regime needs only the support of 35-40% of a population to be able to take control, as long as 10-20% sit idle.
Eventually, the responsibility falls to the ordinary people to confront it as best they can.
 

[lagerstarfish]

Andy,

assuming you are still there;

how is the UK anti-trump protest stuff being reported and received in the USA?

on a local scale (Sheffield); even the church-going old ladies on our street think our Lord Mayor is doing the right thing by banning Trump from the city