I posted back in January what a smooth move it was, because between that and the action taken on Clinton before the election, it made Comey look like he was Trump's pal and prompted the administration to keep Comey on, when obviously the FBI had been part of the security agency dossier hit, which was itself proven pretty thoroughly by the Washington Post reporting the story about the Comey/Trump meeting, since obviously no one in that chain is lately in the habit of publishing secret meetings between the head of the FBI and the president elect on issues of supposed national security.
And now six months later Comey appears before Congress and explains that in the best interests of the FBI, he's been keeping copious notes on every meeting he's had with Trump concerning the same topic. ayyy Lmao.
Belphegor posted:I appreciate the 'coles notes' lol. Your posts are the best cars, but sometimes I have to read between the lines/ connect some contextual dots. It's not a bad thing per se, but a sign you are posting at a !high! Level
every day i strive for concise get fiscal like memes.
This is the top headline on Fox News dot com right now and it's likely true because Comey was probably packing his fishing rod and bait box every time he went in to meet with Trump, hoping to get whatever he could to rat Trump and Trump's people out later. But given how magnanimously pleasant the response from the press has been over the last couple days to Comey testifying that he's been exploiting them this whole time, calling up his friends in the middle of the night to "leak" damaging stories, I feel like most reporters' and Democrats' response to any tapes of Comey fawning over Trump to get him to say rude things is going to be Yass queen drag him. The way they see it, now the spies work for the Democrats and so it shall be forevermore.
Usually that radiates out from the core of agency leaders and para-government retirees into the Washington cocktail set among both parties, and from there to the press, through leaks from the politicians, their appointees and their staff. But often enough, and this is one of those times, the deep state core does an end run around the rest of Washington straight to the press, and part of that is communicating an implied threat to both bourgeois parties' leadership about how they aren't strictly necessary for that "security" core to exercise power. Comey could not give a shit less what the White House and Congress think of him, he'll likely exercise just as much political power in his country from a beach house in Florida as he did in his previous post, if not more. He was more or less honest about how a special counsel is just a means for his clique to apply that kind of pressure, because saying that to Washington politicians and the press adds to that clique's influence. It's a threat leveled against everyone else at the hearing.
okja is delightful and grim and this is my favorite part pic.twitter.com/Y8uBNgPnNZ
— hunter harris (@hunteryharris) June 28, 2017
The fact that she is not our President right now is the country's fault, not hers. If you can't see that, you learned nothing from 2016. pic.twitter.com/DeX3dFilRU
— Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) July 5, 2017
thirdplace posted:for real, if you punched someone hard enough to reach orbit, there's no way that a normal 71 year old man would survive that. plus there's no air in space, so you wouldn't be able to hear him even if he did!
thirdplace posted:for real, if you punched someone hard enough to reach orbit, there's no way that a normal 71 year old man would survive that. plus there's no air in space, so you wouldn't be able to hear him even if he did!
He's fine, he's running around, he's jumping
cars posted:To me this is a lot more important than the implications for the bourgeois parties because understanding the material aspects of imperialist ventures and the anti-left police state means keeping track of how the U.S. deep state manages top-level political discourse over time. They need money to do what they do and they need to keep their hands free, and they do that through these concentric circles of in-the-know people.
Usually that radiates out from the core of agency leaders and para-government retirees into the Washington cocktail set among both parties, and from there to the press, through leaks from the politicians, their appointees and their staff. But often enough, and this is one of those times, the deep state core does an end run around the rest of Washington straight to the press, and part of that is communicating an implied threat to both bourgeois parties' leadership about how they aren't strictly necessary for that "security" core to exercise power. Comey could not give a shit less what the White House and Congress think of him, he'll likely exercise just as much political power in his country from a beach house in Florida as he did in his previous post, if not more. He was more or less honest about how a special counsel is just a means for his clique to apply that kind of pressure, because saying that to Washington politicians and the press adds to that clique's influence. It's a threat leveled against everyone else at the hearing.
it would be very great if you wrote a whole thing about the Comey saga from your pov from beginning to end. what do you need to do this
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:today is the one year anniversary of pokemon go to the polls
I wish they'd GoT o the polls
— ''Steve'' (@extranapkins) July 17, 2017
Thinking about the girl that got away... little bit more than 140's worth. #MadamPresident pic.twitter.com/Zgm8TiFRlh
— Joss Whedon (@joss) July 22, 2017
drwhat posted:it would be very great if you wrote a whole thing about the Comey saga from your pov from beginning to end. what do you need to do this
maybe. I would have to find some way to articulate it that drew directly from other historical examples without too much digression. I used to write a lot more in my free time for wider audiences but I try to restrict it now to things where I can provide context that makes what I write potentially useful for analysis because otherwise it's just like, oh I wrote something I'm glad to accomplish things. I do that anyway, I think it's good to work on your quick draw but I don't show it to people anymore most of the time. And if people feel comfortable with their style I don't think that's a bad way of doing things unless what they write will contribute something.
Like I started a thing on marijuana laws under Communist states but I didn't really have the econ knowledge to provide the necessary context and then weeded DPRK became a meme and that probably did everything I was trying to do better than I could. on the Superman article I had a clear reason for writing it, how superheroes are a big deal in the current U.S. monoculture around the world and how liberal writers who write about Superman about 75% of the time mention that he was aggressively politically left when he started, but don't provide the full suite of examples (they like Superman beating up a wife beater which is a good social cause but they cite it because it works as a vague "apolitical" power fantasy) and never talk about how that whole political left angle made Superman and superheroes popular in the first place or what changed, mostly because they're seeking validation for being nerds and not digging too deep. So I had a clear goal there, to address a deficit I saw using things I already knew and provide evidence for the power of vigorous leftism in history from a common touchstone for people around the world, and how it rose and fell in just a few short years while its market-friendly ephemera triumphed. because Online people constantly see Superman called "socialist" nowadays.
So I'll try and do some re-reading on other deep state dirty tricks in domestic U.S. politics the Comey gambit reminds me of and think about it more. I know it's pretty easy for me to do tea leaf reading with a receptive audience so my self-praise for getting things right there is Ironic.
Anyone who can think of anything similar in U.S. history I might have missed send it my way, a lot of the focus we have on those tricks here is on the subjects of colonial/imperial policy which is probably right but yeah. And also since the registered users on this forum are a small group I can put stuff in that other people mention and it'll get me good will for stuff I write on the cheap
Meursault posted:The girl that got away... an 80 year old woman we've been forced to hear about for 35 years
rhizzone.txt
http://www.thedailybeast.com/norm-macdonald-sounds-off-on-snl-i-think-theyre-playing-into-trumps-hands
Did you watch Saturday Night Live this past season?
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh my god, did you see that? And this wasn’t even a tragedy; just a guy got elected. They open the show with Kate McKinnon singing “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. And I was sad Leonard Cohen died, I love Leonard Cohen. But at the end, Kate McKinnon said, “I’m going to get through this and so are you. I was like, what the fuck are we getting through? That a man was duly elected president? What are you, crazy? Like, at first, I seriously thought she meant Leonard Cohen’s death. And I was like, well I can get through that. I can get through anything. I got through my own father’s death. You think I can’t get through a man getting elected president of the United States? It was so absurd that, for some reason, she was the one that was supposed to let me know that it’s alright to go on. Go on as if nothing happened. Nothing exploded.
How do you think the show has done with Trump in office, with Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy and all the guests they brought in?
I love Alec Baldwin. And one of my best friends, Jim Downey, writes the political sketches. Or used to. And they were great. But they were always funny. I don’t know. I have different ideas on that than most. But I think they’re playing into Trump’s hands. Because if you satirize someone, or mock them, you’re trivializing any danger that they might be. I don’t know any other way to do something. You can’t get a laugh without making the person more likable. Plus, I don’t think comedy does anything anyway. I was reading this book—I’m kind of obsessed with Hitler, you know? And they were saying, when Hitler took power, all these comedians and sketch troupes would do Hitler. They’d put a comb under their nose. They all hated Hitler and they’d make fun of him. Hitler didn’t care and then he did all those bad things. I don’t want to get into the details, but this guy was no saint. So I have no historical precedent that comedy ever changed anything.
So if you were still doing “Weekend Update” on that show now, what would your approach be?
I don’t know. I always wrote non-political jokes, because I just hate politics so much. Jim Downey wrote the political jokes. And I was kind of shocked, because someone sent me a thing of all the Hillary jokes I did. It was like 20 minutes of them. And they were all, everyone of them, the premise was that she was a huge liar. And that was like 20 years ago. I didn’t know that. I guess she was. My theory is this: People hated Hillary Clinton so much that they voted for someone they hated more than Hillary Clinton in order to rub it in. And if you think about it, this is also the only presidential election we’ve had where only one guy ran.
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:norm
damn its true