There’s something about a meatless steak that’s just… wrong. These things have been created in a lab to fit an agenda — to taste like meat, to look like meat — but they’re not meat. They’re fake. They’re chemical concoctions made with protein extracts from various vegetables.
The Nunes memo reminds me of that. It promises to be a big juicy steak. Instead, it’s a huge nothing-burger concocted in a lab to meet an agenda. What it states, when you boil it down to its elements, is that the FBI followed normal investigative procedures when investigating reported money laundering, illegal lobbying, and espionage. Even the tip they followed to get a warrant to bug Carter Page — the Steele dossier — was more than enough to get a search warrant in any court in the nation.
At which point the partisan hacks say, “but what if the FBI was doing this to Hillary Clinton?” Well, if Hillary Clinton had a Russian money laundering ring being run out of one of her properties… if Hillary Clinton had close advisors on the Russian payroll… if some of Hillary Clinton’s advisors were illegally lobbying for a foreign government… I sure the hell hope the FBI would be investigating all of that. Because that’s their job. And if they don’t do their job, what’s the point of having them?
But I guess the fact that I want people to obey the law makes me a hopeless partisan hack… WTF?
– Badtux the “Where’s the beef?” Penguin
Badtux the Snarky Penguin 
Remember, Tux, we live in a post-truth world. Especially in SovokAmerika. It doesn’t matter what the REALITY of the FBI investigation, or the warrant application, or the actions of not-yet-President* Shithole’s advisors were. It’s the APPEARANCE that counts, what kind of sophistry could be spun up from it by someone like numb-Nunuts.
“The memo!” It’s a shouting point. “Magical conjuring words” is what Charles Pierce calls ’em. Just like “Benghazi!!!!!!1!l!!!” and “rule of law!” (during the Bush-v-Gore December 2000 Brooks Bros. recount riot) and “perjury!” in the Great Clenis Hunt. When I’d look at reich-wing websites, mainly ZeroHedge, there would be headlines on posts about “Release the damn memo.” The few comments I could stomach to read indicated that the bullshit-spouters didn’t have much of a clue what was IN the memo, but they had a feeling that something was being hidden from them. Something that would bring glory to their KKKult Leader if ONLY the truth would be released.
The fact that it was ginned up by one of Twitler’s boot-lickers, then kept hidden by his own political faction, was irrelevant to the fuckwitz. It was a bright shiny object for the Two Minutes’ Hate, which was more like two months of it. Even though there was no meat, the false promise of juicy, bloody flesh was enough to get the dogs biting at the chain link fence. Reaction, not reality, was the goal. It worked.
This deal with Trumpolini vilifying the FBI is another facet of how he’s leading the USSA into civil war. I think the Feebs are largely thugs. They have deserved opprobrium since J. Edgar’s days, which means “as long as they’ve existed.” At least when it comes to the FBI’s political decisions. But that’s not why Shithole has gone after them. It’s only because of ego. Based on news stories and comments from (purported) FBI types I’ve read, now there are fault lines within the agency. Pro-Twitler vs. anti. Just like all across Amerikan society. An operation isn’t going to function well if it’s split into tribes where half of the staff detests the other half due to ideological differences.
Amerika is going down. Like Rwanda and Yugoslavia did. I don’t know when or how the new civil war will play out; how much of the breakup will involve bloodshed. Since it’s the United Shoots of Amurdering, though, I reckon there will be plenty. As one of the two decent American presidents said (Teddy Roosevelt was the other) “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I hope you and your astute readers can get through it as well as possible under whatever the circumstances turn out to be. Smart people have a better chance of surviving than dumbfucks. Which means that a lot more Repiglickins than decent will be dead when the dust settles, woo-hoo!
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In my fondest dreams I see a Czechoslovakia scenario where the two Americas peacefully separate, like the Czech Republic and Slovakia did.
That, however, seems rather unlikely to happen. Our mouth-breather states are quite aware that without the successful blue states, they’re just Mexico with better PR.
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If we do separate, I’m 100% for the Wall. I’ll help pay for, and build it.
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That’s going to be one hell of an effed-up wall. The whole south except for South Florida, then west to Texas up through the Dakotas and west again, then down through Utah and Wyoming. And there are certainly parts of every state that hate the other. In Colorado there have been 1 (more?) petitions to separate the state, so has California.
And who gets Austin, TX? And all the space assets in Texas, Alabama, etc? Because the new Confederate States sure won’t want, or pay for, a space program.
In addition to a failing American Empire we’ve living in interesting times, aren’t we?
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You’ve no doubt read about the way the un-mixing of religions played out when the Brits split India and Pakistan into separate nations as the Empire pulled out of the Raj. Mass migration in both directions, with bloody bodies on the roadsides all the way. Not pretty. I could see something like that happening in the ex-U.S. Only with cars, not trains and oxcarts. Do petrol stations stay open during chaoseparation?
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Headlines I’m seeing now: Autonomous Cars Are Coming.
Headlines to follow: Terrorists Hijack Autonomous Cars, Drive Into Crowds.
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Yeah, it’ll boil down to like when the Soviet Union dissolved, all happening at state lines, not parts of states. You’ll see a lot of people moving from place to place, like when the borders of Poland were redrawn to move it westward after WW2 and Poles were expelled from the areas given to the Soviet Union and Germans were expelled from the areas given to Poland. Except there’s no clear ethnic or religious lines here, just mental mindset, so it will get… messy.
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As far as the space assets go, they ended up in Kazakhstan when the Soviet Union dissolved. The Russian space agency leases them from the Kazakhs. No reason why the Civilized States of America couldn’t do the same with the space assets owned by the Red States of America….
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I’m guessing the New Confederate States (NCS) won’t be as amenable as the Kazakhs.
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Given that the New Confederacy will be in as dire a financial position as Kazakhstan if it ever happens there’s a split, I suspect they’ll lease them out for a pretty penny to whoever is the highest bidder. I mean, *they* certainly don’t have any need for a space program. Hell, half of’em think the world’s only 16,000 years old and there’s angels toolin’ around in outer space!
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Civil war?
How ’bout let’s not, but say we did?
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Yeah, that was the Czech solution. “You Slovak guys don’t want to be part of the same nation anymore? Fine. Let’s split up without all that civil war stuff.” And they did.
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