Such a devout coward. It’s gotta take all kinds of moral and intellectual gymnastics to sleep at night if you’re McConnell. Or maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t give a shit about anything besides himself and sleeps like a baby.

I get why those running in 2024 would vote no, but I have no idea why they worked so hard for Trump. Nobody else can run the party while he's still at the top and he's not going to hand the crown to someone outside of the family. It seems like the best outcome for someone like Cruz or Hawley would have been conviction while they voted no. Something like a 90-10 conviction would piss off the base, but it would eliminate future problems with Trump running and there are two years to rile up the base because of the Dem baby-killers coming after your guns.

Instead, they all get to lick Trump's boots for another couple of election cycles.

It is ALMOST like the incident at the U.S. capitol set a precedent.

Maybe they are just fascists.

But they're ambitious fascists.

And their ambitions die if they are thought to betray Trump. They need him out of the way, but they cannot do it themselves.

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Here are the 137 Democrats who voted to kill an impeachment resolution against Trump - CNN Politics

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/polit...tes/index.html

Democrats who voted 'no' on the impeachment inquiry resolution - CNN Politics

Definitely not a cult either.

:rolleyes:

For for impeachment based on actions that brought the charges is exactly and equally as important and voting against it.

And there's some guy, somewhere who has been in jail for 12 years or more because he had a joint on him and got busted for the third time. He's too hardened a criminal to even consider letting back into civilized society at this point.

A good thread from Jonathan Rauch on the potential lastin effects of Trump's presidency:

Oh the fucking irony


Trump lives in a reality that is hard to comprehend sometimes, calling out anyone (regardless of how true it may be) for their lack of wisdom/insight after the 4 years of his lunacy is just, well, so Trump.

Scavino was much better at writing in a way that almost sounded like Trump. Whoever did this barely tried.

Was probably Lindsey, sounds like him

Trump has fired Rudy as his personal lawyer on the same day both were sued by the NAACP for their involvement in the January 6th attack.

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Trump Calls on G.O.P. to Replace McConnell

This will be fun to watch in the future

Cruz going on vacation during the ice storm and DeSantis being unapologetically and aggressively political with vaccine distribution may give us a clue whether "LOL, the old rules are gone; nothing matters" applies to non-Trumps who are trying to run the Trump playbook.

I have no idea whether he will end up being a unicorn, or whether he rewrote the rules for the GOP going forward.

It looks like Ted is flying back this afternoon, and he is having to fly coach. Imagine getting trapped in the middle seat next to Ted Cruz.

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Isn't flying back the worst of all worlds for Cruz?

Best case, you probably don't go on vacation.

But, if you do go, then you double down and defend that and blame everything on the Democrat Party.

By coming back early, you are kind of admitting that you should not have left. Very un-Trumpy.

I can't think of a high-profile politician with worse political instincts than Ted Cruz. He always seems to make the wrong choice, going back to the 2016 convention.

Yeah, flying back does no good for him politically at all. His next opponent will definitely run an attack ad about Ted's trip during the crisis and it's not like Ted can run a counter ad saying, "Yeah I went to Cancun, but I flew back."

Cruz can't win here. At all. He's on vacation, with his family. He doesn't work IN Texas. He isn't a mayor or governor. He's not part of the State legislature. He's probably had that trip scheduled for months. Yet, weather fucks it all up. Not so support him, because he doesn't warrant it, but simply looking at the situation without it being HIM, it's totally no win. He stays, his family suffers, because he's not with them. He goes, he gets attacked. He stays on vacation, then he's a target, h comes back, he's a target. He's brought it on himself, and fuck him for being that person, but the situation itself, doesn't necessarily warrant all the attacks if he's a regular Joe.

I wonder what Cruz does on vacation in Cancun.

I bet $1000 he doesn't vacation where I do down there.

In 2021, there is nothing that Cruz needed to do to help (basically, be lobbying the WH for maximum disaster relief and coordinating with state and federal officials to facilitate delivery of that relief) that he couldn't do from Cancun with Zoom/telephone. Heck, if he's at a fancy resort (which I assume he would be), he probably has better access to those things than in Texas with no power.

It is just the optics that seem so horrible.

But politics is 90% optics. Sometimes, politicians have to do things that make no sense b/c they look like they make sense. And this was one of those things.

Molts his skin?

Mexico should deport him back to Canada

He was all over the Austin mayor earlier this year for a trip and has spent this week in full Quixote mode on windmills. Live by optics, die by optics.

He should put his power to use getting people to warming shelters. The thing is not only would it help people in need, but it would be political gold even to only appear to be helping. As I said above, though, his political instincts are terrible.

It is optics, but political instincts should have told him not to fly to Cancun. He should have been in Texas doing something to help. Serve in a food line, bring in supplies, help a shelter, etc. THAT is what you do as a politician if you can't do anything else. Not say "to bad, so sad" and go on vacation.

This is where your argument falls apart.

Not his fault, he was being a girl dad.

Not that it matters, but CDC Guidelines say that people returning from Mexico need to have negative COVID-19 test before being allowed to return.

This

Beto is organizing welfare checks on seniors while Cruz was vacationing with his family. I'm sure the vacation had been planned, but you're a representative for your state and your people are suffering. You don't go on vacation.

His story now seems to be that he flew down just to accompany his daughters, and always meant to fly right back the next day

sure....

Without getting that information to his team so they could get that to the media in the likely event questions arise?

Cruz has everything going for him to be a lifetime senator and I'll be mildy surprised if he's able to survive his next primary and general election cycle, yet he has 2024 presidential aspirations.

He did the thing where he strongly implies the lie, without actually saying it.

"With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon."

Ted Cruz is a scum bag, we know it. Republicans will still vote for him.

Between now and 2024, we will have 8 more natural disasters and 37 "AOC sent a tweet. Was it ANTI-WHITE?!?!?" scandals.

People won't be able to remember Cruz doing this, let alone caring about it.

But this is the kind of thing that ends his admittedly already long-shot presidential aspirations.

Even Ted Cruz's friends hate Ted Cruz.

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NEW: Ted Cruz booked his return ticket from Cancun to Texas at 6 a.m. today, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Cruz was initially booked to return on Saturday.

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 18, 2021

Somebody in Heidi Cruz's group text leaked.

Yeah, that story has past. He admitted today that it was supposed be through the weekend, and text that his wife sent out inviting their friends was in the NYT.

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Jphillips and I have insync timing.

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lol

I think it is the public's interest to know who said "This mfer said 'cancum'" because that is a great response.

Every time a Cruz scandal happens, I think of the episode of Shameless where Carl has a circumcision and it's recommended that he watch Ted Cruz speak to lose the urge to touch himself.

Fun Fact: Several top Bigfoot researchers now believe that the creature in the picture is female. They claim that it clearly has lady sized breasts or "sexual nerves".

It also appears pregnant

To be fair so does Ted

I might have been looking at the wrong picture.

I'm not going to watch the video, but I see all sorts of posts about Trump Jr blaming the TX debacle on a Democrat Governor. Is he that big a dumbass about who is currently the TX governor, or is he blaming a former TX governor or another state's governor for what is clearly a TX problem? I mean, they took themselves off the national grid for chrissakes!

I haven't watched the video either, but I am seeing a lot on social media about it and the argument is being made he was making a sweeping generalization about democratic governors in general.

Regardless, it is really pathetic how he is trying to be like his father and fail miserably at it.

I'm pretty sure Jr. was saying that the media, based in NY, wasn't criticizing Cuomo, but he said it in a hard-to-follow manner.

And he's wrong, Cuomo is all over the media, but Jr lying is to be expected.

Ted Cruz is a woman? That is not the twist I expected.

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Well if you expected it then it wouldn't be a very good twist would it?

:lol:

Genius

Isn't Ted Cruz celebrating the Republican philosophy in a nutshell which is when something bad happens it's on you to figure it out and help yourself, not government?

It's why I've never believed the people who talked about a Trump Dynasty. Trump's Trumpiness extends to exactly one person in his family: Donald Trump. Not Don Jr. Not Ivanka. Not Kushner. Not Eric or Barron - lol. I'm sure there will be another Trumpian fascist - they just won't be in the Trump family.

SI

Wait! MyPillow guy actually had "QAnon" as a discount promo code for his website?

LOL, how does someone that fucking wacky and broken get to his level of success? Man, Murica!

I think if we can find the answer to that question, it will also answer the question of why are the kardasians so popular. It would be like the unified field theory, but, for people like them, haha!

Supreme Court ruled today that the grand jury in NY can have access to Trump's tax returns. I think (God I hope) that this is the last challenge Trump has on this

I am guessing that the tax returns will show criminal conduct, but it will be complicated and obfuscated and hard for the layperson to understand.

We aren't going to find cancelled checks from Putin with "For Treason" in the memo line.

It will be hundreds of pages of financial filings, and the crimes will be things like "used an unreasonable estimate of depreciation of certain assets in a way that improperly induced certain entities to offer terms on loans that they would not have otherwise offered."

Not gonna change any minds.

Does anyone care if it changes minds? I can only believe that the long play people like McConnell are hoping for is that Trump will be charged with one or more crimes that will either tie him up during his next run for presidency or (less likely) result in him pleading or being found guilty which would effectively end his political career - at least with a major party. I can't imagine the GOP putting up a presidential candidate under indictment. As a matter of fact, I kinda hope NY doesn't indict him until around this time in 2023.

"He's a businessman. Everyone does it."

Capone went to jail on tax evasion and they made a movie about it and celebrated the win. Today, if trump went to jail for tax evasion people would be like, "so? that's not a real crime" and "it's not what you said he did, why can't you catch him on the 'bad' stuff?" and the scoffing would go on and on. idc which way you get him, but get him, because it's obvious that he's been skirting the law for decades.

I always figured MyPillow was some kind of front for distributing crack.

ETA: I think I'll start my own crack distribution network. Is "MyCrack" being used?

I think the GOP as a whole would love it if everyone named Trump was under indictment so they could use that as an excuse to "turn" from them. I mean more than they already have by trying to overthrow the government of course.

I think whatever they find will be difficult to explain to you or I unless you are a tax lawyer.

I've been watching things when ads for Floribama Shore come on. And I'm just...why?

At least as big a danger as jail is Trump getting civil sued to bankruptcy. All the evidence of inflating assets for loans can come back in civil cases.

I hear you man. I will never get it. Maybe I'm just predisposed to avoid 'drama' and 'gossip'. I don't watch things like the Bachelor or Tiger King, Survivor, etc...because all of them have their foundations based on some kind of drama (usually manufactured by the producers) and is completely uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some mindless entertainment now and then, but, how shitty or backstabbing people can act towards one another is not entertainment to me. If I want cheesy drama, I'll go watch an old episode of the A-Team.

I would have said this 5 years ago but I'm falling into the vortex a little a bit. There's a few I watch when I do other things. I may have gotten my girlfriend a Cameo from a noted reality show F-level celebrity. It's kind of like watching Family Guy to me, or pro wrestling, like it's an over-the-top cartoon, and it's funny when people do horrible and ridiculous things because they're not real people. They're all parodies of life.

I'm on this train, too. If there's going to be manufactured drama, I want the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose (see: A-Team). Not something where there are no literal winners or losers, only, well, a bunch of losers. To me, that's just nihilism. And a mean-spirited nihilism at that.

SI

Oh right on. Hopefully she has a good experience with it if it happens, since I know it can help kick start peoples careers. Love Family Guy and old school WWF! Obviously these shows are popular, so as long as there's a market, they will keep making them haha!


Exactly! I think that's part of why I don't those certain shows, it's that mean-spirited nihilism. I think that mean spiritedness is what draws many people to someone like trump or the my pillow guy.

Trump's taxes officially in the Manhattan DAs office. Apparently it is millions of pages.

I've thought that a good progressive slogan to run on isn't "I will make your taxes simpler."

It is "I will make millionaires' and billionaires' taxes simpler."

The complexity of the tax code does not apply to 99% of us. It is all there so guys like Trump can pay lawyers hundreds of thousands so that he can get out of paying the government hundreds of thousands.

Maybe I'm just jealous I didn't go into tax law :-)

I'm not jealous. God I hated tax law class. Worst grade of my law school career.

That's how I felt about IP. Hated the class and got my worst grade in it.

I actually really liked tax. They were like little math/logic problems.

I didn't have any sort of a business background, and I wanted to do litigation more than planning/corporate, so it didn't really make sense to pursue it further. But it was strangely enjoyable for a semester.

We'll never have a flat tax because the current system works well for the 1%.

I also really liked tax - it was a nice break from everything else in that it felt like there was a specific tangible answer to work towards, rather than just applying a legal standard to facts. I even took two semesters of it and floated in my head the idea of a Tax LLM if I couldn't find a good job. Wills and & Trusts was kind of similar, I liked solving a problem of where the money goes in a messy family situation.

I also really liked Business Associations. I think that was the 2L/3L course I took that was the most real-world useful, in terms of understanding why businesses do what they do and don't do.

I was afraid of IP. I enjoyed its dumbed-down second-cousin Copyright though.

Some of my best friends are attorneys, and since meeting them I've become fascinated with finding out how they picked their areas of expertise. My best friend is a Family Law attorney, and I just have no idea how he handles it.

I was working towards being a city attorney, that seemed like the right fit for me. I spent my first law school summer working in a city attorney's office. In looking for a 2L summer job, I basically cold-called an Alaska city about working in their office - they said, well, we already have a law student there, but do you want to be a prosecutor for the summer? I had never considered doing that before, but enjoyed it and gained a ton of experience up there, and here I am 15 years later still in that general field. I still tried to be a city attorney, I interviewed in New York and Chicago and a bunch of other places, but the prosecutor's offices were much more interested in me because I had already done multiple trials by the time I graduated.

For us non-elite students, from non-elite schools, you have to be a bit flexible with what opportunities present themselves. But I created a resume that made it clear I was interested in public service, so that probably helped too.

I have a friend who just became a judge and has been thrown into Family law stuff. I don't know how handles it. But he is not the same. I wonder if he regrets taking the job, it seems incredibly grueling.

Omg. I just drove past a house in my neighborhood. They always had a Trump flag. Took it down right after the 6th. Today I noticed it was replaced. With a space force flag.

I knew I wanted to be some sort of "transactional" lawyer - I never much cared for trial work - and I fell into insurance regulation/administrative law by clerking for the Department of Insurance during law school. One of the great/underrated things about a law school in a state capitol is all of the government clerking opportunities. After 5 years of clerking/practicing, I was able to make the leap to a firm. Specific regulatory expertise pays well, so while my buddies were trying to make it on huge billable hour requirements billing $100/hour, I was billing triple that. I think when I left private practice in 2012 for an in-house insurance position, I was billing near $600/hour.

So, I landed in a good field of expertise, but it was completely arbitrary. I had no clue what I was going to do when I went to law school.

lol

McConnell said that if Trump is the 24 nominee, he'll support him.

Gawd McConnell is a slithering piece of shit

#CPAC #AmericaUncancelled pic.twitter.com/mVqBuF2blY

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) February 26, 2021

"Bob, we need to throw a bone to the Evangelicals at CPAC. Any ideas?"

"Well, you know I'm not a big Bible guy, but I remember something about worshiping golden idols. I'm pretty sure that they were into that. Or maybe against it? No, I think they liked it. Well, anyway, something about worshiping golden idols."

"Sounds great. Senator Graham has a statute that I'm sure he'd be happy to lend us."

That statue is. Something else.

A political party should probably not abandon decades of principles and decide to stand for nothing except for the worship of one man.

But the GOP decided to do that. OK. Fine. I disagree, but that's not really an issue.

What I STILL don't get is why THIS man? He's one of the worst people in the world. His only redeeming quality is that he fell out of a vagina that happened to be in a family with lots of money.

You could group up every conservative in the country and pick natural born citizens over age 35 at random and you would probably have to get several thousand in before you found someone worse than him.

Have a living god. Pray to your golden calf. Weep with joy at the wonders of Dear Leader. But, you know, maybe pick a better Dear Leader?

Because he makes leftists madder than any other politician in our lifetime. It ain't that hard. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. *shurg*

*albion looks at self posting about Trump in late February*

You might have a point, Ben.

https://www.indy100.com/news/trump-c...tatue-b1807946

Sooo... This is normal, right?

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Sure, I have one of myself in every room of the house.

These folks are really in a dark, delusional place and they deserve where it will take them.

Problem is they could very well take us all with them.

Definitely not a cult.