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[smjjames]

And he's apparently getting shit stirred up that costs a President his job. Zelensky himself might be in danger, but he probably has the benefit of the doubt and the ability to spin it as trying to please a more powerful country without actually planning on following through.

re biden: Yeah, it makes no sense when you look at it that way.

[Baffler]

Baffler good friend. Can we please get a citation for the military aid being probably not witheld over the issue?

Here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uyWKAGgHIqDEORgjOyo0uq7JOXzhxOQf/preview

It could be argued and in fact already is being argued that it was "implicit" (which you will note is already a walking back from the original charge of an open conspiracy, an actual crime) but reading it myself I don't see any reason to believe that's anything more than an attempt by House Democrats to save face. Unless they've been saving some other information for some reason it's certainly not anything for the Senate to convict over, or maybe even to convince any Republican representatives to hop on the wagon.

To note, that op-ed was written by this guy, which says about as much as it needs to.

Or, to be more direct, he likes to stir up shit that goes nowhere. Hell, Trump probably read the same article that you did, latched on, and used that as the basis for his call.

It's also worth noting that the prosecutor was specifically pushed to be fired over their inaction, not their action. Why would Biden go out of his way to get a prosecutor fired who was known for slow-walking investigations into corruption, if it was to try and stop an investigation into the firm his son just joined? You'd think that that prosecutor was exactly who he wanted in place, if he knew that the investigation would die under his watch. Yet he pushed to have him removed.

If you're just going to accuse him of making stuff up I'm not sure how to respond really. Most of the stuff he mentions is public record. But still as I said before Joe's guilt in the matter is debatable and unlikely to be proven regardless, but he isn't even the issue.

[Frumple]

Re: military aid withholding, all you can really try to argue is that more nebulous 'corruption' didn't mean specifically this stuff related to trump trying to bludgeon a foreign country into investigating a political rival (though if you actually believe that, I have a folder full of bridges we probably need to discuss). Corruption being the reason behind the delay of assistance is something trump himself has explicitly stated, apparently more than once. And now we have an example of exactly what that meant.

It's mildly interesting that even some GOP critters that have seen the complaint et al (i.e. not the pared down memo people seem to be calling a transcript) are basically going, "Well... shit." though.

[Reelya]

If you're just going to accuse him of making stuff up I'm not sure how to respond really. Most of the stuff he mentions is public record. But still as I said before Joe's guilt in the matter is debatable and unlikely to be proven regardless, but he isn't even the issue.

They're accusing him of doing that stuff because that's all he's ever done. Read the stuff, he has a track record of omitting important facts to do hit-pieces against Democratic presidential candidates. notably, they're always hit pieces against Democrats: I can't find any example of him being accused of wrongly representing a Republican. He's a partisan hit-merchant, not a legitimate journalist.

The guy has no credibility, he's not a credible source, especially when he writes an article with strong similarities and biases to other articles he's been criticized for. If a guy wrote 20 articles in a row criticizing Democrats and they turned out to be fake reporting, why would you give the benefit of the doubt that he's written the 21st one accurately?

EDIT: it's also a good read about the "changes" he made at the Washington Times to sanitize their reporting. There was stuff like they were putting scare-quotes around the word "marriage" in the phrase "gay marriage". So, yeah, he came in and pointed out that was bad PR. The Washington Times has a pretty terrible reputation as a hit-merchant muck-raking endeavor against Democrats, so coming in to that and helping them clean it up is itself evidence that someone is pretty dirty. It's like designing a friendlier front-end for Stormfront or something: sure maybe "Stormfront 2.0" is less overtly racist, but it says something about the person who got hired to do that: "not a racist" isn't the right interpretation. He's a craftier vile person who's come into an organization full of vile people and been paid to help them up their game.

[PTTG??]

By the way, can we sit back for a second and take in the level of hypocrisy for Republicans to say it's unbecoming for a relative of a former VP to have business dealings with a foreign nation while their POTUS personally takes in money from hotels with his name printed on them in giant golden letters all around the world?

Just the balls it takes to say that.

To be fair, this is not good for Biden either. People are going to hear about the investigation again while he's already faltering, and they might not believe it, but they do think other people are going to believe it. And Biden's support is 100% "I don't like him, but I bet most other people do, so let's go with him."

[ggamer]

Ladies, gentlemen, and otherwise, I present: fucking ameteur hour

That's right, after Donnie publicly stated that whistleblowers should be treated like spies and executed, the nyt essentially publishes his identity. Perhaps retaliation for not coming to them first?

[PTTG??]

NYT says that it was to dispel doubts in the leaker's veracity. The thought that this lends credibility to the leaker is bizarre. Nobody, not even Trump, doubted the accuracy of the leaker. And anyone who did doubt the leaker would never reconsider that judgement simply because the NYT said that three other, equally anonymous people said that he was reliable.

Look, I'm not a seasoned journalist, but maybe if your career, profession, and nation rely on a reasonable expectation of anonymity for whistleblowers, don't fuck that up.

Now that that's taken care of, let's go back. Trump's calling for the execution of whistleblowers now?

[Doomblade187]

Not explicitly, but referencing spy hangings in US history. During a thing about the whistleblower.

[Naturegirl1999]

This is not good. How far is too far?

[smjjames]

This is not good. How far is too far?

That'd be a pretty good question to ask Republicans.

[ggamer]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is also right on the heels of them interviewing six "swing voters" (revealed to be diehard Trump supporters when you look through the nyt publication history, since they've interviewed them before) to push the false narrative that the "silent majority" doesn't hate Trump. Which is hogwash, I mean everyone I know who isn't one of Donnie's little trained fucking marmosets despises everything this man does, and would love nothing less than to see him out on his ass to see if pence can fuck up any worse.

Because that's the sad truth at the end of the day; Donnie and everyone who backed him to the hilt (and got rewarded with leadership positions in the gop) are all fuckups, desperately scrabbling for every nanoangstrom of reliability they can get their grubby little fingernails on. They know they have no future in the party after Trump leaves, so they bury their heads in the sand and scream out their asses. Man.

Sorry, that got a little unprofessional. I'm a little too personally close to the lower level stuff I guess lol. I'll put that rant under spoilers.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Holy shit, is the CIA actually trying to coup Trump? Fucking nice, I hope he orders the Marines to raid their offices.

[Doomblade187]

Holy shit, is the CIA actually trying to coup Trump? Fucking nice, I hope he orders the Marines to raid their offices.

I highly doubt it? Sounds to me some guy who didn't like Trump got a bunch of accounts of the call together and sent it as a whistleblower complaint, which is completely valid.

Now, if you listen to RW news, yes.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Eh, that's indistinguishable from how they'd do it if he was acting under orders anyway. I doubt the modern CIA would go for anything harder than abusing official processes against a sitting member of high office. It would explain why a bunch of the Republicans are suddenly making moves to break ranks too, if they've been getting quiet phonecalls about their pool boys and foreign investments.

Now that I'm thinking about this from the CIA's perspective, I could see how Donnieboy might be pissing them off. He's passed up on no less than four flashpoints that they'd probably have liked to have used (NK, Vuvuzela, I don't have a clever name for Syria, and Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran) because of his zombie brain. Frankly I have to agree, the forever hell war has been getting kind of stale. We got what, helping the Saudis exterminate Yemeni children until a few weeks ago where they found out they could blow up the global oil trade with a $5 drone made of balsa wood? That was fucking badass by the way, RIP in piss Saud.

Anyway if there is a shadow war going on my prediction is that Donald will win by accident and one of his more operator subordinates will purge the CIA while he brags about it on twitter.

[ggamer]

the american intelligence apparatus has shown itself to be increasingly incapable of doing anything but gathering information on its own citizens and stopping the one terrorist that attempts an attack every other year or so.

They're failing at every bit of COINTEL not related to harassing ethnic minorities stateside.

They're failing at INFOSEC, allowing dozens of agents abroad to die for, well, no real good reason.

Dozens of foreign diplomats can attest to basic failure of American espionage to understand and counteract unknown action on American actors

It's a huge shitshow on top of a pile of shitshows, bundled together and sold on the stock market to fill some 60 year old white dude's "fuck children" fund, and we're quickly approaching a default on shitshows. so to speak. that metaphor got away from me

We got what, helping the Saudis exterminate Yemeni children until a few weeks ago where they found out they could blow up the global oil trade with a $5 drone made of balsa wood? That was fucking badass by the way, RIP in piss Saud.

What a spot of irony it would be, if the saudi royal family died from a foreign drone strike, drowning in their own shit and blood. It would warm the cockles of my cold dilapidated heart.