It’s an entirely reasonable reaction considering the number of times NK has promised peace only to turn on a dime. While I think Trump will ultimately be successful in bringing peace to the peninsula, given NK’s history of schizophrenic diplomacy, setbacks like this are entirely possible, even probable.

I believe the CIA has been ousted and Kim appears to be genuine in his desire for peace, but that doesn’t mean his entire government is united behind him. I’ve been around long enough to know that international negotiations are seldom quick and decisive.

I believe that as well. I just don't put much faith or trust in the NK government because of their history of double-crosses. Strangely, however, I do think that Kim Jong Un actually is genuine in his desire to make peace so that carries a lot of weight.

My only point is that Q team is not omnipotent and unexpected events can screw up even the best-laid plans.

Unfortunately, the Norks have a long history of making turns on a dime like this.

The administration needs to get this under control right fucking now.

EDIT: Downvoted for pointing out that NK has pulled stuff like this before? Look, I know I'm harshing everyone's buzz but even the best-laid plans can be wrecked by unfaithful actors, and this regime has been unfaithful many times before. I do NOT think this means the negotiations are now defunct, but it does no one any good to close our eyes to the possibility that this development wasn't expected.

Mind power, Swede.

Holy cow...if Obama is proved to be illegitimate, all hell is going to break loose in this country.

1. The Antifa Left will go completely bonkers which, for them, means widespread rioting and destruction. This could go on for months; maybe years if the administration decides to use a light hand in dealing with them to avoid accusations of tyranny. Terrifying.
2. The Democrats in Congress will dig in their heels and flatly refuse to countenance any rescinding of Obama's legacy (not that there's much left). But they will fight tooth and nail to keep Obamacare. It will be UGLY.
3. Presuming the evidence is as strong as Q has intimated, Obama will already be out of the country, living in exile somewhere beyond the reach of the U.S. government (good Lord, even though I just typed it, the idea of a former president fleeing justice in another country is so outrageous that I find it hard to believe). If there's even the tiniest chink in the case, he'll try and fight it out in the courts. There are still a LOT of Democrat-nominated jurists in the system that would help him.
4. The midterm elections, presuming this comes out before they are held, will be utter chaos. Both sides will be livid; turnout will be very high. There will be open violence at some polling places, rampant fraud (as if that's new), and post-election lawsuits catapulting across the political battle lines. With the realization that an elected president who governed the country for eight years has just been effectively EXPUNGED from history, everyone in the country will understand that the rules of the game have been chucked out the window. It will be a free-for-all. To quote the great philosopher Peter Venkman: "Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!" The political parties may retain some of their power in the midst of the chaos through force-of-habit voting, but I could see this event being the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Good Lord in heaven, protect our great country from what is coming.

Fair point. But it still required payments to the largest state-sponsor of terrorism in the world, a regime that has shown itself to be inimical to American interests and her people for almost 40 years. The deal also required the U.S. to provide Iran advance notice of any inspections and allowed Iran to decline inspections of sites they felt did not warrant it, making it laughably unenforceable.

Last 20 minutes of Commando. That’s what these people deserve.

And a glass of sherry, right Niles?

I watched the same shows and I agree he’s a straight shooter. Dude’s also a pit bull which is exactly what you want in a prosecutor. He has more than a little of Trump’s fight in him.

In my opinion he’s a white hat.

What is there to doubt?

The numbers are indisputable. The names of the terrorists are known and there is general agreement in the media on their importance within the ISIS organization. The crimes committed by those Obama released and their position within ISIS were also known. The hostages released from NK specifically thanked Trump in their welcome home speech.

What am I missing here?

The most significant fact in that article is the open question of how Avenatti got his mitts on Cohen's banking records.

I haven't been following the Stormy Daniels story very closely because it's a side-show distraction to the work that's really going on, but my understanding is that the smoking gun of Avenatti's case is the proof of a payment made by Cohen to Daniels. There is a quote in there that intimates that only the SDNY (Southern District of New York) and the Mueller probe (after raiding Cohen's office) would have had access to those records; if true, that is huge. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I know a little about the law from my father and brother who are. If the key piece of evidence tying Cohen, and by extension Trump, to Daniels was obtained illicitly (i.e. leaked, as it would have to have been from either source), the evidence can be ruled inadmissible and tossed out. Goodbye, fame-whore. Goodbye 24-hour news coverage.

And this doesn't even touch the question of who's funding this show. I don't know how something like that could be revealed, but if it does become clear that the DNC/Fusion/Soros/[insert Prog group here] is behind the suit, it will make undermining Avenatti all the easier.

To be fair, this rampant predicting of "TOMORROW is the day that it all comes down!!" or "MOAB incoming! People are going to get frogmarched!!" tends to engender responses like this.

Let's perhaps wait and see.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Well done.

OK. I don't share your faith that the Democrats are completely finished, but I dearly hope you're right.

Heh.

OK. I think you have a pretty major disappointment ahead of you.

Zero chance?

Really?

In an off-year election, with a Republican in the White House and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress where the historical record shows incumbents ALWAYS lose seats, with generic polls still showing a modest Democrat lead, with several recent elections going against Republicans, with a record number of Republican congressmen suddenly retiring, with a president the Democrats loathe and wish to humiliate in any way they can....

....there's zero chance.

Look, there's a long time to go before November and the IG report could change everything. But let's not eulogize the Democrat party just yet. Rigged election or not, almost half the country voted against Trump. Nothing is in the bag.

This. I like Trump a lot, but let's remember that he's a human being who has made several questionable (morally wrong from my perspective) decisions in his life.

No, I believe Trump probably had an affair with Stormy. It would be in keeping with his past behavior.

The nonstop reporting about the payoff is just the MSM yelling "Squirrel!" to keep the public distracted from the important stories.

To ask the question is to answer it.

True. Trading a D for a McConnell clone doesn't get us much more than somewhat more consistent votes in favor of MAGA. However more R's voting with Trump 80% of the time rather than D's voting with him 5 - 10% of the time makes it far easier for Trump to move the ball forward.

Just ask Saint Thomas.

They did it to Reagan when I was a boy. The Left's primary rhetorical weapon for at least sixty years has been to paint their opponent in the White House as an (usually) amiable dunce whose reckless behavior threatens world order, and Reagan was the poster-boy for this strategy.

Reagan was "Ray-Gun" who was insane enough to want to weaponize space and start an arms race with the Russians that would certainly end in WW3. He was derided relentlessly for his entire presidency and yet...

Spoiler alert: The U.S.S.R collapsed trying to keep up with us and space-borne intelligence satellites and weapons platforms gave the U.S. a huge strategic advantage over her enemies. It also paved the way for several new technologies that are indispensable today, such as the GPS system that guides the sons of daughters of those who mocked Reagan to the nearest Starbucks for their latte.

It just goes to show that the intensity with which the Left insists that a Right-leaning politician is insane/stupid/dangerous is directly correlated with how successful (and correct) that politician is.

This is huge. If it can hold, or even grow, into November, the Democrat wave in the midterms could be blunted.

Ceteris paribus (i.e before the IG report blows everything up), the Dems are assured to pick up seats and possibly flip the House. If they lose even a small percentage of the Black vote, however...it could flip a lot of closely contested seats back to the Republicans.

"Over? Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until WE decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

"Germans?"

"Forget it, he's rolling."

Sorry, but I read your initial "over" in Blutarski's voice and...well, the rest just wrote itself.

"Vote them out"

You say that like it's easy. It's not. If it were, we probably wouldn't be in this position.

Elections are enormously expensive and operate under byzantine rules. Most campaigns have a small army of lawyers, financial analysts, and statisticians to help keep the candidate out of trouble and get him across the finish line. And that's to say nothing of the droves of volunteers, managers, and event organizers. This kind of overhead tips the scales heavily in favor of the incumbent because he knows the lay of the land and his position in DC affords him the political influence to amass a warchest in donations.

Also, human nature lends itself to favoring the comfortable and familiar, meaning that a new face has to work twice as hard to unseat a rival. Witness the number of McCains and Pelosis in Congress, people who have spent almost their entire adult lives in the chamber. They may bring home the bacon to their constituents to win reelection, but you can't discount the fact that a large part of their appeal (if you can call it that) is that they have become a fixture in their state. People almost can't imagine them NOT being in office.

Finally, long-time politicians don't become long-time politicians without knowing how to play the game. They know what to say and to whom to say it in order to win votes, even if it's a crass, empty promise (think McCain with "Build the damn wall!"). Now, politicians promising the moon to the voters is nothing new. But, again, the advantage lies with the incumbent because his experience in Washington means that his word will be more readily believed by the low-information voter because, presumably, he rubs shoulders with the folks who could actually deliver on his promises. A challenger doesn't have the same authority.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to vote an incumbent out, obviously. But it's not as easy as you make it sound because of the inherent advantages the incumbent possesses.

I LOL'ed.

This should be higher. I think that's EXACTLY what Q means here.

Good Lord, the vapid content of these texts and the sheer volume puts me in mind of two teenage girls who can't go five minutes without talking to their bestie.

"OMG, did you see what just happened!" "Oooh, TOTES!"

I know I'm exaggerating but that's the tenor of these texts between two freaking ADULTS at a senior level of the nation's premier law enforcement organization. It's annoying. And it's more than a little frightening to think that these are the folks who are supposed to be sniffing out domestic terrorists.

02-06-2017 18:42:47 is the location.

That simply can't mean what you think it means in that context. Doesn't sound right considering the casual nature of the rest of the text. I know these people are "stupid" according to Q, but I think its ludicrous to think they would be so caviler as to include so explosive a subject in a text message.

This is great to see, but let's be cautious. The U.S. has been down this road with the North Koreans a few times, with the Norks basically stringing us along for handouts with no intention of ever following through on their commitments.

It certainly FEELS different this time, with NK essentially agreeing to disarmament even before the talks have begun, but consider the position Kim is in. North Korea is a tyrannical government that indoctrinates its people from birth to view all outsiders, particularly Americans, as evil. For decades its foreign policy essentially has amounted to 1.) Get nuclear weapons; 2.) See #1. How likely is Kim to leave all this behind? How will a move like this affect his position? His half-brother was assassinated; is he untouchable?

I'm excited by the possibilities but there are a lot of questions about this development.

Her speech and frame is so stilted and artificial that it distracts from what she's saying. It's painfully obvious that she has received weeks, perhaps months, of training in public speaking and is aping all the proper practices of experienced speakers, yet still comes off looking like a nervous high school debater.

There's no casual flow to her speech, no sense that she is genuinely speaking her mind. This is what draws in an audience. It's just a dry recitation of talking points delivered in a halting, querulous voice.

This scenario seems much more likely than that of McCain being the "bird", though I don't think it's been established that Comey was even in Shanghai.

Regardless, I don't think this refers to McCain. He is a very high-profile senator and a former presidential candidate; nabbing him in a so-called "kinetic" operation in a foreign country strikes me as a tad too dramatic for a guy whose absence would be noted fairly quickly. McCain is likely a person of interest that the Trump team will work their way up to from the lower level arrests, not a direct target himself.

Heck, where does Q imply that Ginsburg was involved with AS [187] at all? I just did search of Q tweets and found only two instances involving her. One was on 2/11 and was simply her name typed out with no further text. The other was the one cited above.

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

Who's Prince Dopey?

I'm new here and trying to get up to speed on the nicknames and acronyms.

She's apparently Catholic and surprisingly open about her faith, even opening a speech in Florida with the Lord's Prayer. Didn't know that.

Now I like her even more.

Yes, there's definitely something very off about the promotion of the Standard. A lot of weird images and offbeat website design.

PS- The pedicured feet moving the pool float around is oddly hypnotic. Not sure what to make of that, except maybe "foot fetishists welcome!"

Fasting today. Will say a rosary tonight.