Hide the Pain Harold

Which is what people were telling you this whole time. But better to see it in retrospect than never at all, I suppose.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as OP memer actually.

8 years of boring competence under Obama dulled the senses of too many of us to Hillary's attractive qualities. I voted Johnson myself.

I have a few friends who voted Johnson, and I didn't mind as long as they've thought through their reasons for doing so. The ones who annoy me are the ones who still haven't learned anything. "You can't vote for this guy because six years ago he spent a whole three minutes in the same room as a registered lobbyist so vote for Puppy McMurderer instead because he's a Libertarian."

Still, I think people generally are lacking in their curiosity about what people who called it correctly even at the time saw in the first place.

Gary Johnson was a former governor of New Mexico, Mt. Everest climber, and had an ex-Republican governor of Massachusetts running-mate. It was a pretty impressive ticket, next to the two most-hated candidates in modern history.

I never bought any of the rabid anti-HRC conspiracy theories myself. But I found her to be overall phony, and with too much of a belligerent track-record on foreign policy for my tastes.

Trump was a dark horse who said some truly appalling things on the campaign trail, but also said some welcome things that broke with GOP orthodoxy.

I will even confess that I cheered internally when Trump won on election night. I thought if nothing else, it would be a departure from what we'd come to expect under Obama.

And, it was.

And: I was horribly, horribly mistaken for ever wanting that.

I mean, the citizens of New Mexico largely were in consensus that his governorship was a mixed bag, with him being most successful when he went with what a Democrat would have done in his position anyway. The "What Is Aleppo" incident flat-out lost me entirely; that's up there with "if someone asked me what the capital of Uzbekistanistan is".

I thought Hillary was fine. I've always liked her. I don't approve of the Kissinger doctrine either, but given that politics is inherently a compromising process to begin with, I could let it go. But, she's a statesman. It's annoying, but there's a set of skills in this job that a person just has to have whether they have good intentions or bad intentions. She flip-flops, but she flip-flops when she needs to break a gridlock. She softballs her positions on important things, but when she does that, she's doing it to pitch something else that's going to make progress. These aren't necessarily things I want - Bernie Sanders was and is closer to what I want - but it's a form of politics that doesn't go backwards. It keeps the good things functioning while we can argue about the bad things. You don't have to like a politician - you just have to make sure that their interests benefit your interests. And she responds to changes in public opinion; if a day comes when we win an argument, or at least make headway in an argument, she was always there to say "ok, it's not something I was in agreement with, but I can tell when the winds are changing" and what are we a Democracy for if not for that?

If you watched the clip of that Aleppo moment, I think it wasn't nearly as bad as it was reported. It was kind of a gotcha moment.

The reporter phrased the question as something like: "What do you think of Aleppo?" A question that was lacking in context and didn't introduce the key word until the very end. Which left Johnson little time to think about what had just been asked.

Johnson was confused and asked, "What is a leppo?" He had heard it as two words.

Cue media outrage and circus over Johnson's alleged lack of foreign policy knowledge.

I am pretty sure he knew what Aleppo was, and had well-developed thoughts about Syria, but was just confused in the moment.

I've watched that clip so many times. I really don't see it. Someone who wants that job and is essentially in the interview stages for that job should really be following foreign policy events with gusto and should know they're going to be asked about them. If you're interviewing for an engineering job, and you ask "sorry, what is Huawei?" there's really not much you can say to come back from that.

Even if it were an honest mistake, how many other honest mistakes of that nature are we going to expect from the man?

But Okham's razor says that it's much more likely that he was a foreign policy noob. Maybe he'd been cramming on the subject, but at the very best case, Aleppo wasn't a name with which he was familiar enough to recognize immediately.

I've graduated from a "Leftist" to a "Communist" in your mind? That's fun.

Anyway, I'm not all that surprised to find another liberal choosing not to extend the benefit of the doubt to Gary Johnson, a libertarian, on this Aleppo thing. Oh well. It's ancient political history at this point, and he never had a prayer of winning anyway. To each their own.

On the other hand, choosing to ignore or excuse Trump's open and obvious misconduct and obstruction over 3+ years in office, as you and others do on a daily basis, is a far graver error.

Anyway, I have to work on a deposition summary this morning, but you should go outside and get some fresh air before my comments drive you even crazier. I plan to later today.

Roll safe, buddy.

“Misconduct” is short-hand for everything you’ve refused to see over 3+ years

To wit:
1. Russiagate — 37 indictments, 7 convictions, 5 prison sentences under Mueller: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/mueller-indictments-grand-jury

Here’s a cool article on a lot of leads on potentially criminal activity Mueller could have pursued but didn’t: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/04/23/mueller-report-findings-1287072

2. Ukrainegate — 658-page House impeachment report: https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20191216/CRPT-116hrpt346.pdf

Condensed version (just the Articles themselves):
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/articles%20of%20impeachment.pdf

And all that’s *without* the benefit of all the obstructed documents and witness testimony that hasn’t seen the light of day... yet.

Yep, Trump’s own failings are so well-documented over 3+ years and have become such a pattern that it can’t be explained away anymore.

I even stuck by Trump through the whole Mueller thing, much longer than most of my liberal friends.

But Ukrainegate was everything the findings of Mueller hinted at and more. That plus the cynical legal chicanery deployed to get him out of it was the final straw for me regarding this presidency.

All this vs. a single scripted made-for-TV gotcha moment

Sometimes, things are different: can you understand?

Obviously, dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists and know-nothing trolls like yourself do not see it that way.

But if you ever care to educate yourself, here’s 658 pages on the subject setting forth what the House was able to learn despite the Trump Administration’s holistic obstruction of the investigation.

https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20191216/CRPT-116hrpt346.pdf

Dissenting viewpoints included in the interests of fairness & balance.

And no one thought a meme on Imgflip could be honest, yet here we are. (Upvote) :)

HRC was never charged with a crime, let alone tried. So double jeopardy never attached. Comey's decision could have been undone at any point.

It's been 3+ years since Trump vowed to "lock her up." What's taking Barr & Durham & Co. so long?

Should be an easy campaign promise to deliver on, right?