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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDavid Frum's tweetstorm today regarding Sessions is chilling and shouldn't be ignored.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/2/1639536/-David-Frum-s-tweetstorm-today-regarding-Sessions-is-chilling-and-shouldn-t-be-ignoredDavid Frum's tweetstorm today regarding Sessions is chilling and shouldn't be ignored.
By philboy38
Thursday Mar 02, 2017 · 4:46 PM EST
Thought I would pass this along in case you hadnt seen it. This is David Frum noted conservative and Never Trumper with a tweetstorm of a response to the Sessions saga today:
Link on Twitter here.
2) Donald Trump is a uniquely dangerous president because he harbors so many guilty secrets (or maybe 1 big guilty secret).
3) In order to protect himself, Trump must attack American norms and institutions - otherwise he faces fathomless legal risk
4) In turn, in order to protect their legally vulnerable leader, Republicans in Congress must join the attack on norms & institutions
5) Otherwise, they put at risk party hopes for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to remake US government in ways not very popular with voters
6) American institutions are built to withstand an attack from the president alone. But
7) they are not so well-built as to withstand an attack from a conscienceless president enabled by a hyper-partisan Congress
8) The peculiar grim irony in this case is that somewhere near the center of Trumps story is the murky secret of Trumps Russia connection
9) Meaning that Trump is rendering his party also complicit in what could well prove
10) the biggest espionage scandal since the Rosenberg group stole the secret of the atomic bomb.
11) And possibly even bigger. We wont know if we dont look
12) Despite patriotic statements from individual GOPers, as of now it seems that Speaker Ryan & Leader McConnell agree: no looking.
13) So many in DC serenely promise that checks and balances will save us. But right now: there is no check and no balance.
14) Only brave individuals in national security roles sharing truth with news organizations.
15) But those individuals can be found & silenced. What then? We take it too much for granted that the president must lose this struggle
16) The oh hes normal now relief of so many to Trumps Feb 28 speech revealed how ready DC is to succumb to dealmaking as usual.
17) As DC goes numb, citizen apathy accumulates
18) GOP members of Congress decide they have more to fear from enforcing law against the president than from ignoring law with the president
19) And those of us who care disappear down rabbit holes debating whether Sessions false testimony amounts to perjury or not
20) Meanwhile job market strong, stock market is up, immigration enforcement is popular.
21) Im not counseling despair here. I dont feel despair. Only: nobody else will save the country if you dont act yourself. END.
Cha
(295,909 posts)annabanana
(52,791 posts)Eliot Rosewater
(31,097 posts)Imagine if McCain and GRaham, together, came out in strong opposition to fuckface.
napi21
(45,806 posts)the way he did in that article.
longship
(40,416 posts)He was fired from a conservative think tank for speaking out during W's admin and has been fairly vocal since.
SleeplessinSoCal
(8,994 posts)mulsh
(2,959 posts)a consistent and vocal opponent.
salin
(48,954 posts)in the Obama Care legislative process. He warned them about the Conservative Media Industry - that the GOP goals and those of Fox New (to make $$) and that is was starting to seem as though the GOP on the Hill worked for Fox News. This was back in 2011-2012. I think he fully jumped off the band wagon by around 2012. He's grown on me. Sort of like Andrew Sullivan who I couldn't stand in the 90s and much of the aughts.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)that there are still moderate, sensible conservatives, and neocon conservatives if he is one, who did not vote for Trump and who do oppose him.
We need to respect that these people exist, ally with them, and absolutely not shoot at them.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)JHB
(37,131 posts)...paved he road for Kremlin Don. Conservatives have spent decades -- the span of Frum's entire career -- cultivating Donnie's base of support.
Not saying to constantly foam at him, but never let Dr. Frankenstein pretend he didn't make the creature.
murielm99
(30,656 posts)Elizabeth Warren or John Dean. They came over to our side. Maybe Frum should be considered an ally, too. After all, we are trying to turn people like Mccain and Graham, and looking for a few more patriots on the other side. We should be wary, but accepting of help.
JHB
(37,131 posts)I'm not sending up warning flares over every Republican and former Republican who criticizes Trump.
Dean's had the experience of being made a scapegoat for Watergate and for a good quarter century has been criticizing the very dynamics that made Trump the top Republican. At the very least, he's mostly out to pasture.
Was Warren ever an actual conservative? Or just someone who was raised Republican, defaulted to it because that was normal for her, and shifted away when reality kept piling up against assumptions. It didn't happen overnight, but it happened.
Frum is a different critter altogether: He's still a conservative partisan, the type that likes to think of themselves as "real" conservatives. The type who thinks conservative successes over the past 40 years have been about the rightness of their ideas, that Trump is some sort of interloper who hijacked their movement.
The kind that can't acknowledge that those successes always depended on people who didn't care about "conservative ideals" but would vote for people who told them what they wanted to hear and pointed bile in the right direction.
Frum's entire career as political analyst and speechwriter has been in 90s and afterward, after conservatives decided the way to deal with Democrats who might, even partially, roll back conservative positions on taxes ad regulations was relentless attack. Everything was justified in painting them as criminals who needed to be brought down and expunged from the body politic. And to do all that, they relied ever-more heavily on bile and axe-grinding.
Dean was around when they started down the slippery slope with the Southern Strategy, but got off the road. Frum was there to watch his team replace the slope with a water slide, but thinks the problem is with the people riding the slide, not the ones who built it. McCain and Graham, despite all their problems, are at least working elected politicians. Frum, on the other hand, doesn't have any voters to answer to.
All I'm saying is that it's fine to use his stuff where it can be effective, but don't think Frum is an ally just because he's lobbing shots at the same target.
skylucy
(3,734 posts)TomCADem
(17,378 posts)Alice11111
(5,730 posts)Prosecutor, we may be fucked as far as formal investigations, like the FBI (what a joke), Senate and House. There may be some hope for McCain and Graham. They seem to.be some of the few who are not up to their chin in the Russian coverup. However, DT has been trying to smooze McCain w a bigger military budget. McCain knows if he pisses off DT, he will punisb him.
Sorry, but I see, MF Snakes on the Plane, here.
TG for our press!!!
UTUSN
(70,496 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Fri Mar 3, 2017, 11:13 PM - Edit history (2)
It was Klaus Fuchs who admitted to giving the USSR the secrets of the bomb...he waited to admit this until after the Rosenbergs were dead.
Otherwise, terrifyingly insightful.
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)But not Ethel. And IIRC, the government knew Ethel wasn't.
Saboburns
(2,807 posts)Fuchs stole them.
The Rosenberg passed them on. Well Elthel didn't. Her husband did, she was collateral damage. Which is a damn shame, and a black eye on this country.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Fri Mar 3, 2017, 11:58 PM - Edit history (1)
probably on the level of spy busywork, but there's no real evidence Julius played any real role in the Soviets gaining the ability to built atomic OR hydrogen bombs-and in any case, the USSR was certain to develop nuclear and hydrogen weapon capability sooner rather than later. According to Hans Bethe, the secrets Fuchs gave the USSR meant that they were able to develop the bomb in five years rather than four. How much difference could one year possibly have made? It's not as though the USSR would have fallen in that time, or that the East European satellite states would have collapsed.
If Julius had played a significant role in nuclear OR hydrogen espionage, they government would not have been offering, right up to the hour before the executions, to spare them both if only the couple agreed to give them names.
No country would offer to cut that kind of a deal with people they knew to be guilty of giving their most-feared enemy that kind of a secret.
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)be exonerated. The government wanted them dead, b4 the wind changed.
ProudProgressiveNow
(6,129 posts)tblue37
(64,980 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)as the atomic bomb in terms of damage.
The NSA has had leakers for a while. It wasn't just Snowden.
It's probably partly due to the amount of money Russia has to throw around.
And probably also white supremacists and partly American oligarchs and their political lackies who want to finally rid themselves of any restraints or regulations by any nation state.
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)sagetea
(1,363 posts)When I stop and think about this, the despair overwhelms. All I can do is keep going don't stop. Marches, voice, words anything I can.
The Elders at Oceti Sakowin warned of this despair and advised us to connect with each other, among other things.
I know I won't be silenced. Thank you for sharing this.
A'Ho
sage
Alice11111
(5,730 posts)Thought i would get over it enough to move on, but with the government being dismantled, and something catastrophic every few days, it is continual bombing. Yes, broken hearted
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)Hekate
(90,189 posts)PS: Before I get dinged for appreciating honesty and true patriotism in a conservative out of the Bush Years, let me just say that there are times of peril that bring out the true character of a person, and this is one of them.
leanforward
(1,073 posts)He hit the nail on the head. I believe he is a huge money laundering organization for the russians.
He can't release his taxes willfully.
Mr Frum's tweet #4 sum up my beliefs about pRezident dRumpf and the GOP. It goes back to what I have been saying, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The GOP would back the devil in order to get to their form/style of government. What ever it takes. They are against our norms and institutions in order win. Against a majority of the citizens able to vote.
I am a loyal American, in opposition to pRezident dRumpf and any GOP leming following him.
wishstar
(5,267 posts)I was surprised to hear him speaking so seriously to Matt Lauer on NBC this week about his concerns about free press being bedrock of our democracy and specifically because a President can be corrupted by their power making freedom of press so important. They also discussed Bush having told Putin that he should allow freedom of press in Russia.
Another Repub speaking out was Mark Sanford, R in Congress from S.C. who said on CNN today how much he is appalled by Trump's praise of Putin since Putin is a murderous dictator whose fingerprints are all over murders, etc.
murielm99
(30,656 posts)Senior Bush was a director of the CIA. He must still have contacts. They have never liked Trump.
I think maybe Dubya was just sticking his toe in the water to see the temperature. How will outright dissent be greeted?
The Bushes are still republicans, and greedy people. But maybe they know enough not to want our system destroyed.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I'm scared. Really.
NewRedDawn
(790 posts)saying in other posts. The majority of the Pukes are now PUTIN PUBLICANS and are complicit in treason with Putin's Puppet Trumpski.
JustAnotherGen
(31,683 posts)Love your user name! My dad was a Vietnam Era Green Beret involved in special and black ops. The 1980's version - I remember watching with him years ago and him stating: That's a brilliant way to invade.
ananda
(28,783 posts)I went to his twitter site only to see the most amazing series of tweets
ending with a nod to the murder of Thomas Becket (after Henry II cries
to his Barons: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?)
https://twitter.com/davidfrum
Frum: Thats why constitutional presidents measure their words. If they talk lawlessly, they may discover theyve inspired lawless action.
Cosmocat
(14,543 posts)Nm
dchill
(38,321 posts)sarcasmo
(23,968 posts)Release those taxes.
dalton99a
(81,068 posts)and live there in peace and anonymity.
bdamomma
(63,654 posts)K&R
We cannot be silenced, we need to stay out there. Plus this Russian thing is not going away.
Gabi Hayes
(28,795 posts)majority, in two years max, trump will be forced by the house to reveal his returns, or face certain impeachment
Lucky Luciano
(11,242 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 4, 2017, 10:22 PM - Edit history (1)
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)I've sure been thinking what you said. Only less articulate:
Geeeeeeeezuss. H. Kkkrist, for godssake! Fuuuuckk!
bucolic_frolic
(42,674 posts)"nobody else will save the country if you dont act yourself."
Is it a collective action or an IC thing?
Cha
(295,909 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Now I need to see who is Lawrence Tribe.
Cha
(295,909 posts)Link to tweet
Link to tweet
Laurence Henry "Larry" Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Tribe
And, apparently quite the supportive tweeter..
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Good find, Cha! Thanks!
bucolic_frolic
(42,674 posts)3) In order to protect himself, Trump must attack American norms and institutions - otherwise he faces fathomless legal risk
How does turning American norms and institutions upside down protect Trump from legal risk? What are they referring to?
Trump faces legal risk if he doesn't deport foreigners, trash the environment, shrink the government???
Stinky The Clown
(67,677 posts)Then they out him and he goes down.
He's being blackmailed.
bucolic_frolic
(42,674 posts)only the pee contest and the idea that he's heavily indebted to some Russian banks and oligarchs
Wonder what it could be? Must be something BIGLY YUUUUGE
bdamomma
(63,654 posts)agenda too? He is not hiding his agenda at all. I hate these dangerous men.
volksworker
(6 posts)His rundown is dead on and I salute him...........however in the past he has taken some beyond wacky positions against Obama and the left................he seems to have found religion. Hes right about one thing............without the leakers we would have no defense...........the flaws in our checks and balances system have been exposed
butdiduvote
(284 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 4, 2017, 01:15 AM - Edit history (1)
These people are slimeballs. How dare they? This country belongs to all of us.
bdamomma
(63,654 posts)they don't think the country does, it's that 1%. And those who voted for this POS they are in for a rude awakening. Also this regime/cabal has no respect for the American people.
tomp
(9,512 posts)the only thing that can reliably defend us is millions of feet in the street. We should be organizing the next huge march on Washington now. Waiting for the press, the courts, and the politicians is suicide.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Gabi Hayes
(28,795 posts)this sums up the way I felt about him back in the day....I got into an argument with him on a radio show over ten years ago, WRT Bush being a "hero," as he called him then. we got into it over, surprise....lying us into the Iraq war.
that said, more power to him. has he turned from the darkside? not that it appears to be making much of a difference.....time will tell, but, given the way the msm fell all over themselves in slobbering fealty to fatso's mendacious rant on tuesday, I don't hold out much hope
Hekate
(90,189 posts)Cha
(295,909 posts)This is why those like van jones were so wrong and so dangerous to our Democracy.
14) Only brave individuals in national security roles sharing truth with news organizations.