The gist of the argument is that regardless of what Mueller’s probe ultimately uncovers, we already know enough to know that Buttercup is owned by Putin. In fact, I would say, we’ve actually known that since before the election. Hillary Clinton certainly knew it. Here’s the infamous “no puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet” exchange from the debates:
Every single thing she says in this clip is true now and it was true then. Putin’s ownership of Buttercup hasn’t become any more true or less true between that moment and this one. What’s happened is that the mounting evidence that Buttercup is Putin’s puppet has simply become harder and harder to explain away. Clinton mentions that Buttercup is willing to break up NATO. Well, since this exchange, we’ve seen Buttercup go off on these apparently unmotivated attacks on NATO and our European allies. What Clinton is saying here, before we went through any of this heartbreak, is that Buttercup if elected will go after NATO because that’s what Putin wants and he does what Putin wants him to do.
Of course, not enough people believed her. This is frustrating. But this is what always happens. When you have a piece of unwelcome news–like, say, that the planet is being cooked by greenhouse gases, or that the case for the war in Iraq was built on lies–nobody wants to believe you. Hillary Clinton really did her best in these debates, but she couldn’t break Cassandra’s curse.
Cassandra was cursed with the ability to foretell the future–without ever being believed. It’s a very frustrating position to be in, and it is a position that the American ‘left’ often finds itself in. We don’t have enough media exposure or cultural power to make people believe the inconvenient truths we’re trying to tell. But here is one thing I learned from the George W. Bush era: eventually, when enough actual evidence piles up, that curse gets broken. In 2003 you couldn’t find a single mainstream politician or pundit who would say that the Iraq war was unjustified and unnecessary (and a super bad idea). By 2008, the fact that Obama had not voted for the Iraq war resolution (because he wasn’t in Congress at the time) was partly responsible for his primary victory over Clinton and his victory in the general election. Public opinion had turned. The reports from the UN inspections of Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction program had exposed the central lie on which the case for war had been based. It became clear that we were accomplishing nothing and committing atrocities to do it. Eventually people realized what a disaster the war was and eventually it was ended. After a tragic and completely avoidable waste of human life.
It’s frustrating how bad things have to get before people start to accept the bad news. But we may be seeing, in the media response to the Helsinki press conference, the first cracks in Cassandra’s curse. The idea that our current president is controlled by Moscow is no longer unthinkable or unspeakable even for mainstream media outlets. It is on its way to becoming common knowledge.
The problem, Klein’s piece argues, is that there’s no obvious remedy for this: the Republicans won’t go after Buttercup and the Democrats can’t. But as I was explaining to PJ this morning: most politicians do what they think is best for them. If it gets to the point where the Congressional Republicans think that sticking with Buttercup is worse politically than turning on him, turn they will. And that all has to do with where public opinion is.
I don’t know. There have been so many points in this administration where you think, surely, surely this is the end. And then things go on. But I think we may be starting to see a kind of cumulative effect. For instance: having determined that Comey is not a loyalist, and therefore likely to pursue ‘the Russia thing’ to its limits, he fires him. To buy time, basically, the Congressional Republicans agree to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference. That’s where the Mueller investigation came from. Buttercup has since then been trying to discredit everyone associated with it, even the FBI itself. That’s appalling; it’s appalling that it has worked as long as it has; but the Stzrok hearing, circus that it was, has exposed the absurdity of Buttercup’s claims about this. Mueller’s Friday indictments laid the ground for the Monday evening questions which elicited the most shameless performance so far of Buttercup’s beholdenness to Putin. We’re all thinking, this is insane, nothing ever sticks to him, why not…but it does stick to him. It does, over time, slow him down.
Take this thing about separating families applying for asylum. So much about that situation is still awful; but there is also the fact that Buttercup reversed his position in response to public disapproval. I had just assumed that would never happen with this president; but it has. (Perhaps because Putin doesn’t actually care too much about US border politics.) And that shows you something I never thought I would see: he’s worried. Regardless of what he projects, he’s afraid that if he pushes too far, it’s all going to collapse.
Why would this matter when the last thing didn’t matter? Because this is an additive process. Last thing + current thing matters more. Last thing + current thing + future thing + (however many future things it takes) will eventually matter.
Last night there was an impromptu protest outside the White House over Helsinki. According to The Hill, there’s another one planned for tonight. There’s some talk about keeping it going until Buttercup resigns. Monday night’s group was small, but maybe tonight’s will be bigger. Maybe the answer to the question “why aren’t Americans in the streets?” is about to become “we are.”
This paragraph is kind of buried at the end, but let me say one or two things about it:
“While Mr. Trump’s insistence on granting Mr. Putin that status was misguided, it paled beside his betrayal of the FBI and his own senior intelligence officials. Incredibly, Mr. Trump appeared to endorse a cynical suggestion by Mr. Putin that Mr. Mueller’s investigators be granted interviews with a dozen Russian intelligence officers indicted in the DNC hack in exchange for Russian access to associates of William Browder, a financier whose exposure of high-level corruption and human rights crimes in Moscow led to the adoption by Congress of the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on those responsible. Mr. Putin’s citation of bogus Russian charges against Mr. Browder was matched by Mr. Trump’s garbled reference to “the Pakistani gentleman” who was falsely alleged by right-wing conspiracy theorists to be behind the leak of DNC emails.”
All right now.
Putin is as obsessed with the Magnitsky Act as Buttercup is with his electoral college victory. You remember that meeting between Russian operatives and Don Jr. et al. at Trump Tower that was so shocking to everyone back in the day? Don Jr. made some noise about it having reference to “adoptions,” but it was really about the Magnitsky Act.
There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” That would be Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican representative from California, and our own Buttercup. Here’s a nice long piece on Rohrabacher from The Atlantic, which basically does everything *but* just come out and say that Rohrabacher is a Russian asset. Anyway, Rohrabacher’s most embarrassing manuevers have also been around the Magnitsky Act. He was responsible for getting a Russian-made anti-Magnistky Act propaganda film screened at the Newseum in Rosslyn–he wanted to show it to Congress, but his colleagues wouldn’t let him–and has been lobbying for years to either eliminate or gut the Magnitsky Act.
Why does Putin care about the Magnitsky Act? Because it costs him money. The Magnitsky Act enables the US government to freeze the US assets of Russian oligarchs who are responsible for major human rights violations. Since many of these oligarchs launder a lot of their money in the US, this is a serious inconvenience not just for Putin but for many of the oligarchs who might one day band together to take Putin out if they got pissed off enough and thought he was vulnerable enough.
“[William] Browder is one of a few sources I’ve seen recently trying to make the argument that none of this is really about destabilizing democracy around the globe or sowing chaos in the US; that we are giving Putin too much credit for caring about things other than himself, his money, and his continued political survival. If that’s true, it would explain why, despite having installed his puppet, he’s still responding in draconian style to the passage of this new Congressional act that makes it more difficult for said puppet to do what Putin obviously wants him to do–which is to return all the assets that were frozen when Obama imposed the sanctions. It is also worth noting that a lot of Russian money has already been laundered through Buttercup’s properties, and so in a lot of ways, Putin already owned him even before 2016.”
Why am I going over all this? Because I’m flabbergasted that Putin is now trying to leverage Buttercup into letting Putin start harassing the people who were responsible for the passage of the Magnitsky Act. It shows you that Putin, whatever else you may say about him, is capable of remaining on task even when interacting with Buttercup; it’s kind of mindboggling to reflect that just as Buttercup may have run for President purely to get back at Barack Obama, Putin may have helped Buttercup become president purely to get rid of the Magnitsky act; and that Buttercup is at this moment and probably for the rest of his presidency a tool of Vladimir Putin. Or, as the good people of the Washington Post editorial staff put it:
“In Helsinki, Mr. Trump again insisted “there was no collusion” with Russia. Yet in refusing to acknowledge the plain facts about Russia’s behavior, while trashing his own country’s justice system, Mr. Trump in fact was openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power.”
Every single fucking Reagan Republican should be in the streets demanding impeachment right now. All that “soft on Communism” bullshit for all the 1980s when YOUR PARTY would turn out to be the one that delivered up the US government to a Russian dictator.
Pregnant Women Say They Miscarried In Immigration Detention And Didn’t Get The Care They Needed
Pregnant women in immigration detention under the Trump administration say they have been denied medical care, shackled around the stomach, and abused.
Two weeks after arriving in the US seeking asylum, E, 23, found herself in a detention cell in San Luis, Arizona, bleeding profusely and begging for help from staff at the facility. She was four months pregnant and felt like she was losing her baby. She had come to the US from El Salvador after finding out she was pregnant, in the hopes of raising her son in a safer home.
“An official arrived and they said it was not a hospital and they weren’t doctors. They wouldn’t look after me,” she told BuzzFeed News, speaking by phone from another detention center, Otay Mesa in San Diego. “I realized I was losing my son. It was his life that I was bleeding out. I was staining everything. I spent about eight days just lying down. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything. I started crying and crying and crying.”
Stuck in detention and having lost her baby, E says she wouldn’t have come to the US seeking a safer life if she’d known what would happen. She asked that her full name not to be used out of fear of repercussions while in detention and for her family back home.
“My soul aches that there are many pregnant women coming who could lose their babies like I did and that they will do nothing to help them,” she said.
Protest the working conditions, not what the boss makes.
Getting paid more does nothing for the working conditions where it’s so stressful someone attempts suicide. Or do you really think that kind of work suddenly gets better because bigger paycheck?
Also, I just want to point out, a lot of this is illegal as fuck. If these claims are true and not just butthurt little kids because “wha whaaa whaaa! I want more money!” Then they should file a report and get that shit handled. Posting on social media isn’t going to do shit.
You’re only half right, and clearly not abreast of the issue, m8.
While you’re correct that the working conditions are shit and illegal af (my m8 worked there in their Kent WA facility) and the way they purposefully stretch your hours and call you 30 mins before they want you there for random shifts that they will fire you if you don’t take. The piss bottle thing is legit. If he didn’t run across the warehouse and sort quickly enough he got screamed at and told he had to do manual unpaid overtime or he was shitcanned, and they would blacklist him for any other company he would apply to.
Any time he got a phone call from work while off shift he would end up in tears due to stress.
Reporting the conditions didn’t help.
The other problem is they are being paid the absolute lowest wage that is legal to pay them, and of those 60 hr weeks? Obit 40 hrs of it gets paid. Rest is mandatory unpaid ot.
Jeff Bezos makes billions. Please tell me why he can’t afford to pay his workers fair wages and to fix working conditions? Why he refuses Seattles $15 minimum and the yearly taxes? I know it’s bc he can get away with it currently, but that’s why ppl are upset. That’s why they’re bringing up his wage. Bc this issue is a 2 parter m8. Just sayin.
That’s the thing. All of this people can legit sue for. I’m taking you at face value here. I’m coming at this like you are telling me the gospel truth. Reports need to be filed. Lawsuits filed. Because this shit is ILLEGAL. But people would rather bitch on social media.
Get me?
Galaxy brain tumblr user: Why don’t the completely broke, ununionized factory workers just sue Amazon, the multi billion dollar multinational corporation?
They have to run every time they move, they don’t even get pee breaks, they work 60 hours a week, where the fuck are they going to get the time and energy to organize or file a lawsuit? Where are they going to get the money? You fucking moron.
Also lol @ “if it’s illegal just report it and it’ll get fixed”. Mate this is America, when was the last time that worked for anybody?
And, not only that, but as of the Supreme Court’s ruling this May, workers can no longer band together and file a class action suit if their individual contracts include a mandatory arbitration clause. You can thank McConnell, Trump, and Gorsuch for that one.
so anyway I met a guy when I was walking out of the metro today
“I’m Polish, I just haven’t been here for thirty years,” he said, and even under the stubble and the fucking haggard look that had me make eye contact before he walked up to me because damn bitch, you okay bro? and I know what kind of desperation puts that kind of look on your face, I pegged him at some mid-thirties, so he’d be like, what, four fucking years old when he left the country, “I’ve just been deported from Chicago, I have no family here, I have no home, I have nowhere to go. So I’m trying to get on a train to Berlin, but all I have,” and he shows me a handful of silver and yellow pennies and a crumpled banknote that is very distinctly not Polish currency, “is these and one dollar, I haven’t slept in two days, I haven’t showered in a week, I haven’t had water,” and he really fucking looks the part too and his voice breaks when he says the train from Warsaw to Berlin is so-and-so fucking expensive, BUT it’s cheaper from Poznan even counting the Warsaw-Poznan course and I’m just glad this man had the sense to beg near an ATM and to ask if I speak English before he said all that
and he was dead certain I’m not serious when I handed him enough for that train ticket and as much over as I could spare so he can remind himself he’s a human being
and I guess why I’m making this post is
@America, kindly get your SHIT TOGETHER
STAT.
Please reblog this. Please keep reblogging this. Please make Americans see this and see it again and over again. Their government is doing this to their own people, and it doesn’t result in anything being made great.
Can we start calling the random deportation of longtime US residents “flying TrumpAir”?
Last month U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released previously unreported statistics on the numbers of active duty and veteran service members who were seeking deportation protections for a spouse or a dependent.
The data shows that rejections of veteran requests have increased under President Donald Trump, from about a 10 percent rejection rate in fiscal 2016, the last year President Barack Obama was in office, to an almost 20 percent rejection rate through the first nine months of fiscal 2018…
The protections, known as Parole in Place, allow members of the military to petition the government to drop any removal proceedings against a spouse or dependent who entered the U.S. illegally…
Parole in Place requests from both active duty and veteran service members spiked 31 percent from the last year of the Obama administration to the first year of Trump’s presidency, to 6,586 applications in 2017, as the new president directed the Department of Homeland Security to increase the number of deportations it processed.
Multiple active duty families have contacted Military Times with fears that their spouse or dependent will be deported while they are deployed, and veterans have contacted the paper worried that despite their military service, their family will be split apart.
*snort*
Cue “sad Trump” blaming Pompeo for the loss of “His Nobel Peace Prize.” “Oh well, Pompeo did the best he could. You really can’t expect any better. He really tried. But if I had been there….”
Hearseeno 