Well, you would consider making a payment like this if your diplomatic strategy with the country in question was basically to suck up to its dictator and ignore his appalling human rights abuses. Such a strategy, while morally questionable to say the least, would theoretically be defensible on the basis that the ends…

I don’t think the fact that Trump didn’t pay is the problem here. It’s that he didn’t pay having said he would do so. Basically the options in dealing with Kim are to play hardball or to suck up to him. By offering to suck up and then reneging Trump in once again being completely inconsistent and nonstrategic.

Anti-Trump garb? Fuck me, no wonder his line didn’t protect him. Incognito would have turned 180 and sacked Rosen himself.

Reminds me of one of my all-time favourite Onion stories:

Perhaps it wasn’t cited because it’s completely fucking irrelevant.

Because there is, theoretically, oversight of what domestic actors are doing.

I’d never seen that flag before, but I swear that if you’d shown it to me without any context and asked me to guess what it is I’d have said “the proposed flag for a future American fascist state”.

“Good evening laygenlemen. So how about those Democrats in Congress failing to stick up for Ilham Omar, amirite? Take my wife...”

Well I was shocked - shocked I tell you- to read the following:

I’m no expert on tennis so can I ask: is it me, or is tennis right up there in the skeeviest sports going? It certainly seems that there is no shady middle eastern money tennis won’t take, no borderline or actual abuse it won’t happily live with and basically no ethical code of any kind that it feels the need to hold…

The kind of divide and conquer stuff above is a much more sophisticated kind of trolling than the usual “der der Trump triggered libruls MAGA you lost you’re so triggered” shit we tend to think of as trolling.

Actually the press is doing its job, which is to present the facts to the people and let them draw their own conclusions. The press has demostrated, time and again, that this administration wilfully and consistently lies about everything. The problem, the only problem, is that 40-50% of voters don’t give a shit.

Yup. In the absence of a smoking gun, which won’t be found, the only real purpose of these investigations is to put evidence of Trump’s venality, corruption and greed in front of the electorate. The problem is that half of the electorate already loathe him and the other half don’t give a shit that he’s a crook anyway.…

I’m actually pretty left wing, FWIW, but I’m also aware - because I’m older than you are and, frankly, wiser - that retreating to a hard left, no-one’s as pure as me, performative brand of politics (that includes being immediately unpleasant to anyone who doesn’t live up to the unachievably high purity standards you…

Please don't get your hopes up. There is no chance, zero, nada that anything is going to get released that can't be spun as exoneration. We're falling into the same trap again and we're not going to walk away with the cheese this time either.

Brexit is a good example of why referenda aren’t immediately passed into law. The UK voted to leave the UK. But when? It what manner? With what, if any, provisos? Unfortunately the vote was sold to too many people as something that would be straightforward (“why don’t we just leave?”) whereas in the real world…

There are some great, great names in the tournament and of course the hardcore fans below the line will always want to talk about Denmark ‘86 or Holland ‘78. But let’s be real: Jizyah Shorts in Brazil ‘70. The sine qua non.

Oh great, left wing purity tests. They did us so much good in the 70s and 80s, let’s get into all that shit again. Grow up, pal.

Super!

I think the argument is a little more nuanced than that, though as you use phrases like “fake progressive corporate mouthpieces” I suspect nuance may be a waste of time.