The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

[mistymage]

1. When Madam Speaker received the Letter she had the perfect opportunity to Tweet “OK, Boomer!”.

2. I’m amazed at how many MAGAts think Libruls don’t have guns.

3. I’m happy Trump will forever have an Impeached next to his name for all of history (I know, jumping the gun a bit) but I’m also sad that no Republicans so far are concerned a bit about all the smoke, fire and fallout this president and his associates have had surrounding them.

[mistymage]

NM/double post

I wish we could upgrade from hamsters to cats… but I know cat wheels are just too expensive.

[Kobal2]

@mistymage

1. When Madam Speaker received the Letter she had the perfect opportunity to Tweet “OK, Boomer!”.

1. Yet she did not, in fact, seize it
2. Shame.
3. Shame.
4. Shame.

[Gatopescado]

@mistymage

I wish we could upgrade from hamsters to cats… but I know cat wheels are just too expensive.

Have you ever tried to get a cat to do Jack-All Shit what you wanted it to do???

[asahi]

@mistymage

but I’m also sad that no Republicans so far are concerned a bit about all the smoke, fire and fallout this president and his associates have had surrounding them.

I think we’re about to see an escalation of nastiness.

[Nava]

@asahi

It’s true that Democrats play the PAC money game, but I push back at the idea that there’s an equivalence. The issue isn’t that Trump and the GOP are taking money from corporations; it’s that they’re using conventional and otherwise legitimate funding sources and mechanisms as subterfuges for illegitimate sources of funding.

Isn’t that called “money laundering”?

[Nava]

@steronz

I’m not sure what people actually envision happening when they’re talking about military coups. If the brass isn’t all on board, then nothing will matter, and all we need to do is look at how the brass reacted to Trump’s interfering with their discipline process recently to see how enthralled they’d be with abandoning 243 years of peaceful transitions of power to support a dipshit like Trump.

Looking at coups from the last 100 years or so:
successful, quick, bloodless () ones were initiated by that country’s equivalent of the Joint Chiefs. The () is because some of them led to bloody purges or regimes, but that’s a political matter, not a military one.
with the occasional exceptions (cf Gaddafi), those started at lower levels either lead to a civil war or peter out. Apparently a lot of Americans think you guys are the mirror version of 1936 Spain.

[El_Kabong]

@SteveG1

His “base” is threatening civil war if he s impeached and / or removed. Fuck him, fuck them.

Fucking traitor bastards.

Well, he’s impeached, so bring it on, sofa warriors.

[El_Kabong]

@Fiveyearlurker

I’m having a hard time parsing the Republican argument that impeachement is reversing the duly elected president’s election. Isn’t that what impeachment is supposed to do. I mean, it’s literally the reason the word exists, and why it is in the Constitution in the first place.

Well, there’s that, and the fact that nothing is being ‘reversed’. I mean, it’s not as if Hillary Clinton gets to be President if Trump gets kicked out.

[Leaper]

@steronz

I’m not sure what people actually envision happening when they’re talking about military coups.

I think they envision large numbers of conservative Christian Republicans among the top brass who will support Trump viciously and without question, and large numbers of people below them who will choose to, or have no choice but to, obey their orders. Because that’s how it works in Congress, and because the military has always been seeing as an authority-centered, conservative institution.

[Ukulele_Ike]

@steronz

…Ground units require air support, air units require boots on the ground, etc…

Did you know that when there were still Zeppelins, it took a ground crew of a couple dozen men to hold the ropes and drag the Zeppelins into the Zeppelin hangars? It’s true! You could look it up.

[elucidator]

Well, if your boots aren’t still on the ground, you should let go of the rope.

[Ukulele_Ike]

And let the mighty airship drift off into the sky? Be a man! Be BALLAST!

[KarlGauss]

@Bryan_Ekers

That’s odd, since other parts of your constitution are pretty explicit about frowning on insurrection.

Well, maybe not the in the Constitution but:

@Declaration of Independence

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

[margin]

@El_Kabong

Well, he’s impeached, so bring it on, sofa warriors.

Tremble before the Chairborne Rangers!

#lettersfromsecondcivilwar.

[Ike_Witt]

@margin

Tremble before the Chairborne Rangers!

I might have to steal this…

[Kobal2]

@Nava

Isn’t that called “money laundering”?

It’s called “money in politics”, really. It’s fucked up reprehensible baby-eating turtles all the way down. And back.

[D_Odds]

@Leaper

I think they envision large numbers of conservative Christian Republicans among the top brass who will support Trump viciously and without question, and large numbers of people below them who will choose to, or have no choice but to, obey their orders. Because that’s how it works in Congress, and because the military has always been seeing as an authority-centered, conservative institution.

I agree that is how many see it from the outside. But while my short tour of duty was many moons ago, that wasn’t my perception from the inside. I do think it skews authoritarian (necessary in a military environment) and conservative, more so than the general population, but not as significantly more so than some seem to believe. And the military employs a lot of minorities - people who Shit-Gibbon and the Republicans have spent a lot of effort screwing over. I have a number of career minority military in my family who are much more recent than me, and their perception skews fairly closely to my own. Even in the officer corps, while you find MAGA-idiots and more importantly, a fair number who see their military career as a stepping stone to cushy lobbyist/defense industry jobs, just as many respect the rule of law, they respect discipline, and they don’t respect how Trump stomps all over that. They won’t say anything - they can’t say anything because Trump’s their boss - but the number who wouldn’t follow an insurrection is quite significant. Hard to say which side is larger, but it isn’t a given that Trump has the military in his back pocket if he starts issuing illegal orders. One thing every enlistee is told early on is that one does not have to follow illegal orders.*
*This isn’t always the easiest thing to determine, as enlistees are not legal scholars schooled in the many shades of gray that show up. But acting against US citizens, especially on US soil, is one of those easy to determine cases. Every enlistee should know that is as illegal as it gets.

[Tatterdemalion]

@D_Odds

I*This isn’t always the easiest thing to determine, as enlistees are not legal scholars schooled in the many shades of gray that show up. But acting against US citizens, especially on US soil, is one of those easy to determine cases. Every enlistee should know that is as illegal as it gets.

May I interject an anecdote from my own military service here?

When I was in boot camp I got the lecture on not following illegal orders.

We were marched into a classroom, and stood to attention. The drill instructor called us all to attention, and told us that an officer would be addressing us shortly.The officer entered the classroom and called at ease, and then we sat down and he gave us all the lecture about military law and Nuremburg and we shouldn’t obey illegal orders and stuff with pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

Then the recruit company commander called attention and he left.

The chief came back into the room and explained what the officer really meant.

He told us that the officer had to say that, but as (very) junior enlisted types, we wouldn’t actually ever be given any illegal orders, and we should remember that all orders must be obeyed immediately.

Then we did a whole bunch of push ups, and marched off to the chow hall.

I got the distinct impression that the military’s commitment to discipline was stronger than it’s commitment to the rule of law.

[Nava]

@Kobal2

It’s called “money in politics”, really. It’s fucked up reprehensible baby-eating turtles all the way down. And back.

But that’s in general, I was talking about the “taking money illegally and claiming it’s from legal sources” part. Spanish parties are supposed to get their money from the government and from their affiliates: politicians found taking it from other sources have occasionally ended up in prison (occasionally).