Pretty sure you can't claim privilege about topics that you discuss on twitter

Most of this **** doesn't filter through to most of the public. Trump preventing former fbi director's testimony would filter through.

Also pretty sure this.

Would be ironic if all that tweeting comes back to bite him.

Not the whole thread. It goes on to show that Democrats can easily take over the masculinity messaging. The United Steelworkers put out a message during the campaign calling Trump a 'soft handed boss', Bernie's commercials usually featured men in working class 'manly' jobs. It'd be pretty easy Teddy Roosevelt style to make conservation and environmentalism a necessary part of 'manly' outdoor activities. Half those truck commercials have them driving through some river or on some rugged outdoor rocks.

RICs know that they're better off letting Comey testify with half biased questions drilling him on Hillary than they are looking horrific blocking him, losing voters, and letting Comey go on TV or something freely giving opinions, probably to testify under oath to some other investigation at a later date.

This is correct. They're just talking hypothetically if Rs were to ignore the law and grant Trump blockage anyway.

Why are Franken and Leahy so reluctant to come out and say that Sessions committed perjury? In their letters they state lack of candor or testimony that could be construed as perjury. Even the usually forthright Franken seems to dance around the word using word like "misleading".

Seems pretty clear that he did in fact commit perjury. And if me or anyone reading this would've done the same thing, we'd be in much more trouble than Sessions seems to be in.

It takes a court to block the testimony so legality counts

There are at least two types of issues at play here.

1) Politics. Even if Comey is prevented from testifying to Congress or Courts b/c of "Executive Privilege," he could still give interviews about at least some topics. He'd have to be super careful about not divulging classified info and he probably wouldn't choose to disclose anything that he thinks would truly jeopardize an ongoing investigation. However, the President doesn't have unilateral authority to tell Comey he can't go on 60 Minutes.

So, if Trump prevents the testimony, Comey could probably write a strongly worded letter to the NYTimes laying out many of the things he was planning on discussing in his public testimony and Trump would have to deal with whatever political impact those revelations have.

2) Legal - if Congress and the Courts refuse to let Comey testify on the basis of Executive Privilege, building an actual legal case for obstruction becomes much more difficult because you don't have direct witness testimony about what happened. (Some of the other legal eagles who know the rules of evidence better than me can correct me if I'm wrong, but you couldn't just roll the footage of a hypothetical 60 minutes interview in lieu of testimony. And even his "memos" would need probably need some sort of authentication before they would be admitted).

It already has on the Muslim ban, on his reasons for firing Comey, on Obama wiretapping him, on whether he tapes conversations... The man is a covfefe machine.

I agree that Sweeney's twitter thread thing is more than just the Coal Rolling idea (e.g., that tons of right-winger dudes see destruction of the environment as a masculine virtue and that's what triggers them).

But I don't know that it's that easy to reframe. The problem is that the GOP's masculinity messaging IS coarse, bottom barrel identity politics. That they borrow from cheap Madison Avenue tropes like BIG TRUCKS = MANLY MEN is a good point, and more importantly, Republicans are fishing for people with very traditional views about gender: Men like big polluting cars and don't sip coffee like Pajama Boy and want to engage in hand to hand combat with ISIS, unlike pussy liberals who want to give refugees a hug while wearing pink turtlenecks or whatever, and women swoon at big dick swingin' guys.

So how easy it is to reframe progressive values as compatible with THAT kind of masculinity without upsetting existing values about gender equality? The right can get away with calling girly-men pussies because they embrace the notion that tough guys = good and effeminate men = bad and their voters are into that ****. Are Democrats, anymore? At some point you're going to have big groups of the existing Democratic coalition throwing justifiable fits if the Democrats contort themselves to flatter masculine sensibilities. I'm not saying it's impossible but I don't think it's easy; returning back to the New Deal Democratic marketing aesthetic of masculine men working manufacturing jobs are messages that were effective with a vastly different Democratic Party.

I mean:

I think everyone gets #24. Democrats are having a hard time pitching themselves to the guys in the truck ads because the guys that see themselves in truck ads are deeply wedded to traditional, regressive views about the appropriate roles of men and women in society and Democrats are supposed to be the party that is fighting for a different world. What Sweeney is really asking for is probably something kind of far larger and more pervasive and that's to re-define masculinity as not that stuff. But as he noted before, truck ads and Budweiser ads are deeply embedded all over the place in culture. Up-rooting it isn't like This One Weird Trick To Make Men See Themselves as Progressives, it's a kulturkampf. That's a big project.

Here's an interesting thread that's kind of a counterpoint to the original thread:

https://twitter.com/studentactivism/...25282478608385


https://twitter.com/studentactivism/...29278756974592


https://twitter.com/studentactivism/...33812950593536

It's impossible to follow Rick Wilson on Twitter. Cock penis ass clown tweets every second of every day.

idk what the courts will do but I'd defer to Tribe on almost any legal matter related to the Constitution. If you went to law school and took con law he probably wrote your textbook.

This is a pretty accurate assessment.

Allowing him to be interviewed on CNN or 60 Minutes in lieu of a hearing would be a nightmare scenario.

It furthers Russian interests by discrediting and embarrassing the United States on the global stage. Even if we get out of 4-8 of Trump without catastrophe how can the rest of the world count on us when our foreign policy will be so volatile depending on who has the White House.

It's not just Trump's shenanigans. GWB did much harm to our image around the world. Obama's FP was also a radical departure from that of his predecessor. We must seem like Jekyl and Hyde to our allies around the Globe. If the news reports that they are now hesitant to share intelligence with us are true then it may now be doubtful we could get them to join us in any sort of effort due to lack of credibility.

Trump's flippant remarks about our NATO obligations also serve to further this goal, imo, by at least spreading the idea that we would be unwilling to uphold our end of the bargain.

Along with unsubstantiated claims of riggage and voter fraud it's one of the few issues that I can recall his messaging being mostly to entirely consistent.

Right. You're both saying the same thing and I should probably rephrase to be a clearer. Creating a democratic message that superficially touched on traditional masculinity would be very easy to do. It's not like Democrats are actually suffering for "real men" nor very hard ways to message that, throw in a couple of Park Rangers and you're good.

But you're right, if the conspicuous anti environmental consumption is just signaling for the deeper traditional masculinity as articulated by specific Republican policies then the messaging won't be easy to separate masculinity from environmentalism any more than when Democrats field actual vets who can assemble their guns blindfolded and then get called anti vet and anti gun by Lazyboy draft dodgers.

John Kerry.

Trump is almost 71yo, his anti-environmentalism is reflective more of the past than the current or future of USA.

They can't prove Sessions did it intentionally even though it's pretty obvious that he did.

re: masculinity

I enjoyed reading this article about a book about masculinity written by a "self-described transvestite", mostly because I spent the whole thing imagining how a /r/mensrights reader would react to it. :P

Not sure this approach is any more likely to succeed than the idea of Democrats appealing to more traditional masculinity, but the book sounds interesting.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN18T2S8

Yes. Hat tip to einbert; John Kerry is a great example of the Democrats embracing the One Weird Trick to win back masculinity mentality, only to discover the right-wing owns all the frames so it's a fools errand. Howard Dean was far closer to the Democratic ideal, but 'welp, throw a war hero up against a draft dodger patrician, that can't lose' meme eventually won out.

What we all discovered is that the right simply needed to have George W. Bush cosplay a fighter pilot and stick him in a cowboy hat more and have him swagger around a ranch and talk slower, and call the other guy a traitor pussy windsurfer and the whole thing fell apart. It's a topic fit for a longer post for another day, but it's the WWE-ification of politics. Republicans will always put on a better show because the audience isn't really into genuine masculinity but cartoon images that flatter traditionalist sentiments and ultimately seek to undermine gender equality.

Federal student loans send impressionable young adults to places likely Berkley where they fornicate and riot. Vouchers let you send them to American Madrassas and create the next generation of Fallwells, Huckabees, Santorums, Pences, etc.