Kompromat, perhaps? Or maybe the same drive that led them to pursue the nasty battlefield of politics in the first place compelled them to keep playing… love of the game or something.
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Horsepuckey. Comey only looks non -partisan by comparison to the shrieking hellhounds that came after him. His irrational belief that Clinton Was Getting Away With Something I Just Know It went a long way to handing us the mess we have now.
If Trump had been grateful to him for his help he’d still be happily toiling away in the E-mail Outrage Mines.
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I don’t know, they could’ve done this same service to their “cause” under any number of other roles and institutions. Something about their desperation makes me think they know something I don’t, and that this is their last chance. It either makes me hopeful that they know this will be the last Republican admin for a LONG time, or makes me incredibly anxious that they know this will be the last chance to get rich enough to weather the quickly-onsetting apocalypse…
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Comey’s timing of announcements aside, the emails were shady behavior. Only problem: the entire Bush administration did it before her, and we didn’t get an investigation then… that’s where it went off the rails into partisan bullshit land. If you’re paid by the people to do the people’s business, you put the communications on public-owned servers, subject to FOIA. Deviation should be jailable, and the whole Bush administration should have been prosecuted for it. Since that didn’t happen, Hillary should have gotten the same treatment from a “fair” system, even if it was a continuation of impropriety.
I know… “butter emails!” I only wish that was her only failing as a candidate, actually.
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A couple of people on this podcast offer a scathing analysis of Barr:
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Since we’re talking about “how did we get here?”, doesn’t that leave just … one? I mean, you aren’t wrong, but using the “every [thing] since [unimaginably long time ago]” construct is an odd way to describe the dramatically abberant dubya.
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Part of that was due to being young enough at the time (early 40s) to rebuild some semblance of a career even if he never really recovered his reputation. And now even the NRA doesn’t want him any more—he was just ousted from his largely ceremonial position as their President this last week.
If he’d been in his 70s at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal he likely wouldn’t have even lived long enough to have his conviction vacated, much less get a chance to destroy a whole new career.
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As long as the system itself remains intact, that is.
TPTB are doing everything they can to completely break society as we now know it; maybe because they think they will be ‘long gone to terraform Mars’ by the time the irreparable shit finally hits the fan, or maybe because the greed just blinds them completely to the inevitable negative consequences.
Nevertheless some of us are taking names and making lists…
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I think this gif just about sums it up.
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Working for Trump voluntarily SHOULD destroy your reputation.
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This is an excellent point. I think the interpretation of “reputation” in use here is not serving us. Barr has a reputation as a cleaner for questionable regimes. He is living up to his reputation as best he can, under the circumstances.
People are conflating “reputation” and “integrity.” Barr will have a stellar reputation in the circles he runs in, and the better he protects the President, the more stellarer it will be.
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Versailles served a valuable purpose. The nobles had rebelled (la Fronde) during Louis XIV’s childhood, and he despised them. By bringing them under his thumb, bankrupting them in expensive potlatches of pageantry, and cutting them off from their provincial power bases, he neutered them. Most of his key ministers like Colbert were commoners. In essence, he made the French Revolution inevitable by weakening the nobility at the cost of bankrupting the French state as collateral damage in his moves to ensure the nobles could never again threaten a King of France.
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…and Trump is doing it now. They aren’t keeping their emails on government servers, either.
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As Hillary Clinton once observed, you can’t shame the shameless.
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How did we get here? Lazy assholes couldn’t bother themselves to listen to the news or go vote. Selfish assholes donated to and voted for the lying thief they thought was most likely to make them richer. Stupid assholes donated to and voted for what was shiniest and loudest. Hateful assholes donated to and voted for the most hateful lying thief running that year. Religious assholes surrendered entirely to insanity and hysteria and donated to and voted for the lying thief they thought was most likely to bring about “The Rapture”. Too many assholes donated and voted they way they did because they’re worthless dirtbags who don’t care if the asshole they vote for wipes his butt with the Constitution and sells this country to Russia. Too many assholes in this country are too lazy and too venal and too hateful and too fanatic and too full of religion bullshit and too stupid.
That’s how.
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The problem isn’t that voters and potential voters are uninformed; if anything more people follow the news than ever.
The problem is that so many people are MISinformed, often willfully so.
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When the Trump Administration started, I lived in terror that Agent Orange would destroy the world.
Considering the growing ubiquity of killers, crooks, and intolerable assholes in the world, though, I may be starting to look forward to the likelihood. I suspect that most of us deserve to be wiped out.
Yes, but without the amount of money and power. Loyalty to the king plays well with the base. It’s a good long-term strategy, because the Dems are your enemies, and who gives a shit if you have their support.
It’s a riot in slow motion. Imagine a much-hated teacher leaves the classroom, and the school bully starts to act out. The beta bullies also act out. Then the toadies get involved. It’s totally bonkers. They know there will be consequences when the teacher arrives (maybe), but the point is to just riot and do everything you ever wanted while there are no consequences. So in a sense, it’s not really their last chance, it’s their immediate chance, right now. Get while the getting’s good. I mean, are you going to wait untilt he next Republican administration to loot and pillage? What if that doesn’t happen for like, a loooong time?
The apocalypse is “socialism”. The apocalypse is the American public moving to the center, and then to the left. The apocalypse is the end of neoliberalism and government by unchecked corporations. The apocalypse is that they can’t cheat forever. So yes, they are desperate, because the writing is on the wall.
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Well, I was including Reagan, but you have a good point! It’s only two, plus two neoliberal Dems.
ETA: Plus H.W. doesn’t entirely get off the hook either since he was deeply involved in Iran/Contra unlawfulness & pardoned Reaganite criminals… It’s just that he was seen as ‘normal’ mostly because of his demeanor. There were plenty on the left who saw him as a psychotic hawk, not to mention his VP
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This is somehow both darker and more optimistic than I had gone. But good points all around.
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