Open thread for the baseball event!
ETA: Also Sunday Night Football, Iggles vs. Cowboys.
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Open thread for the baseball event!
ETA: Also Sunday Night Football, Iggles vs. Cowboys.
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Election 2016, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Both Sides Do It!, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Sociopaths, Their Motto: Apocalypse Now
Senator Harry Reid has just released a letter to FBI Director Comey that is utterly (and IMHO appropriately) brutal.
It contains two key elements. The first is a direct assertion that Comey has engaged in partisan political action, and may (by implication, has) broken the law by violating the Hatch Act.
The second is this:
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.
Hillary Clinton’s aide’s husband sent dick picks from a computer that may or may not contain emails that may or may not add to our nation’s stock of risotto recipes.
Donald Trump, apparantly, has consequential entanglement with the former KGB thug-led Russian government and its klepto-thug circle of supporters.
We know hair-raising innuendo about the former.
About the latter, from the same institution? Crickets.
Sauce for the goose damn well ought to be sauce for the gander. And Comey’s a hack who needs to go at the earliest politick opportunity. (And yeah, that’s not a typo. I like that old spelling.)
No BS here: if the FBI has pertinent information on Trump’s potential for conflict of interest due to his Russian encounters, we need to know this now.
Here is Reid’s letter in full:
Dear Director Comey:
Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another. I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.
The double standard established by your actions is clear.
In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.
By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.
Moreover, in tarring Secretary Clinton with thin innuendo, you overruled longstanding tradition and the explicit guidance of your own Department. You rushed to take this step eleven days before a presidential election, despite the fact that for all you know, the information you possess could be entirely duplicative of the information you already examined which exonerated Secretary Clinton.
As you know, a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates on March 10, 2016, makes clear that all Justice Department employees, including you, are subject to the Hatch Act. The memo defines the political activity prohibited under the Hatch Act as “activity directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”
The clear double-standard established by your actions strongly suggests that your highly selective approach to publicizing information, along with your timing, was intended for the success or failure of a partisan candidate or political group.
Please keep in mind that I have been a supporter of yours in the past. When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant.
With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong.
Sincerely,
Senator Harry Reid
Image: Alphonse de Neuville, The Spy, 1880.
This post is in: Election 2016, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment
A horrifying piece in the WSJ about just how broken our FBI is right now:
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
***At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned Mr. Comey that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.
The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in the bureau’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case.
Takeaways:
No one is in control. No one.
There’s a general level of incompetence that is staggering. How could applying for a warrant in this case be an oversight?
There appear to be careerists in the FBI who have been engaging in a wide-ranging fishing expedition regarding the Clintons for some times, to the extent of attempts at prosecutor shopping.
The place leaks like sieve.
It certainly appears that there needs to be a great deal of housecleaning in the FBI, from top to bottom. There are clearly a number of agents who are either acting out of personal political motivation or are frustrated from years of investigating Clinton and finding nothing actionable that now they just can’t live with the fact that maybe they haven’t done anything illegal or wrong, and are extra sure that this time, oh baby, this time they will catch them. Remember, investigators and prosecutors don’t get promoted for looking at cases and saying “There’s nothing there.” The glory and the headlines are when you can win the case and get a conviction.
The rot is deep, though.
And as an aside, please stop saying that Comey attempted to influence an election.
He didn’t attempt anything. He clearly successfully influenced the election, to the point that it is so obvious that an ethicist from the C+ Augustus Reign of Derp has filed a complaint that Comey violated the Hatch Act.
Update at 7:30 PM EDT by Adam L. Silverman
I’ve been in touch with John and just want to add a quick update:
You may have noticed in the WSJ article that John excerpted above indicates that Deputy Director McCabe, who had been reported on in regard to Governor McAuliffe’s fundraising for his wife before he was a deputy director, is the official that ordered that this needed to go forward. The reporting above indicates that he decided to have the two different teams of investigators converse to determine if the national security folks needed to go forward and get a warrant. So much for McAuliffegate and the alleged campaign fundraising quid pro quo, which never made sense because the timelines didn’t match up. One final point. The author of both the article alleging malfeasance on Deputy Director McCabe’s part, under influence from the Clintons and Governor McAullife through donations to his wife’s campaign for state office, is Devlin Barrett. The same author of the WSJ piece John excerpts above.
James Comey’s (and our) Very Broken FBI – Updated at 7:30 PMPost + Comments (196)
This post is in: Guest Posts, Movies
Via stalwart commentor Schroedinger’s Cat, your Halloween movie review from Mnemosyne, aka The Insufferable Movie Snob:
Every fan of The Haunting has at least one story about seeing it, and often more than one. Here’s one of mine:
Years ago, G (my now husband) and I went to see it on a triple bill at an old movie palace in downtown Los Angeles. The college kids sitting behind us mocked it at first: old-fashioned, black-and-white, Julie Harris’s oddball whispered voiceovers.
But then, as the film went on, they got quieter and quieter. Finally, about half an hour in, one of them turned to the other and whispered, “Is it just me, or is this movie kind of getting to you?” And then they shut up for the rest of the film.
That’s the kind of horror movie The Haunting is. It’s not a slam-bang special effects spectacle, or a gross-out endurance test. It sneaks up behind you and lays a cold hand on your neck, whispering to you, asking if you’re sure you know what that noise in the dark was that you just heard.
A quick technical note before we begin: when you see the film, make sure you get a letterboxed copy and not one of the older pan-and-scans. You will literally miss out on half the movie if you don’t get the full widescreen version.
Director Robert Wise got his start working for Val Lewton‘s B-movie unit at RKO in the 1940s, where Lewton produced (and usually wrote) subtle horror films that are still classics today: Cat People. I Walked With a Zombie. The Seventh Victim. One of my favorites is Wise’s third film as a director, The Body Snatcher, with Boris Karloff as an absolutely chilling remorseless killer. Wise’s films all show a great attention to sound, so it’s not surprising that he’s best known today for his two blockbuster musicals, West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
But Wise started as a horror guy with Lewton and, like his former colleague Jacques Tourneur, Wise decided to make a “Lewtonesque” horror film where the horror comes not from what the characters see, but from what they hear. In fact, you never see a single ghost in The Haunting. You hear them, the characters touch them, you see the physical effects of what they can do, but you never see one.
Except… it always seems like you’re about to see one just out of the corner of your eye, but the wandering camera never quite turns in the right direction. Watching it again, I noticed how the mirrors in the rooms are carefully placed so you can often see the actors in them, but only a part of them — their backs, their hands, their shoulders. Seeing the movement in the mirror distracts the viewer, drawing your attention (conscious or unconscious), and making you wonder if you’re finally going to see something. But you never do. I also noticed that the numerous potted palm trees placed in many of the rooms constantly sway in a slight breeze, again drawing the viewer’s attention and making us wonder just what is causing that motion.
As with most ghost stories, the outline of the plot doesn’t sound like much. The film opens with a sequence narrated by a man we will soon discover is Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), an anthropologist and psychic researcher who is trying to convince the current owner of Hill House to allow him to bring a team in to do experiments. He narrates the sequence of events at Hill House that gained it its awful reputation, barely able to conceal his glee at the possibility of being able to investigate a real haunted house. The director shows us three mysterious deaths at Hill House: a woman’s carriage crashing in the driveway, a woman falling down the stairs, a woman hanging herself in the library…
For the rest of Mnemosyne’s review, click over to SC’s blog…
Weekend Movie Club: <em>“The Haunting”</em> (1963)Post + Comments (32)
This post is in: Open Threads, Religion
India’s Festival of Lights:
Diwali is one of the biggest Hindu festivals celebrated among many people and communities in the United States… Many homes that celebrate Diwali have assorted sweets, savories and Diwali herbs. Some communities organize firework displays and states such as Utah have proclaimed Diwali as one of their state festivals…
Diwali is called the Festival of Lights and is celebrated to honor Rama-chandra, the seventh avatar (incarnation of the god Vishnu). It is believed that on this day Rama returned to his people after 14 years of exile during which he fought and won a battle against the demons and the demon king, Ravana. People lit their houses to celebrate his victory over evil (light over darkness).
The goddess of happiness and good fortune, Lakshmi, also figures into the celebration. It is believed that she roams the Earth on this day and enters the house that is pure, clean, and bright. Diwali celebrations may vary in different communities but its significance and spiritual meaning is generally “the awareness of the inner light”.
Lamps, fireworks and bonfires illuminate this holiday, as the word “Deepawali” means “a row or cluster of lights” or “rows of diyas (clay lamps)”. The festival symbolizes the victory of righteousness and the lifting of spiritual darkness. The goddess Lakshmi, who symbolizes wealth, happiness and prosperity, is also worshipped during Diwali.
Here’s to a new year of light, happiness, prosperity, and the victory of righteousness!
This post is in: Garden Chats
From ever-loyal garden commentor Marvel:
Over thisaway, we’re enjoying the few sunny days that punctuate our otherwise dank Pacific Northwest Fall. The trees have so far hung on to much of their colorful leaves (sorta) and we’ve been able to spend a day or two of sunny (sorta) days as we rest and marshal our strength for the final (and fairly strenuous) stretch of our yearly outside chores.
I often think of Fall as being a time of death & decay, but in truth, the changes that many of the plants up here go through this time of year sing of a sweet (if late) kind of life.
Most evenings, Jack & I like to sit in our garden shed, enjoying a glass of wine & recollecting our day. When we do, we look out at a fairly tame part of the back yard. There’s a lawn, a maple, an apple tree, some blueberries & a greenhouse. Leaves change color and come & go, but for the most part, the view changes little over time. It’s still lovely, the way the colors soften and everything seems to take on a soft glow in Fall.
Out front there’s a ground-hugging Japanese maple [top pic]. Its colors are extreme and seem a little backwards: early on, the leaves unfurl a deep mahogany purple and stay that way all through Spring and Summer. Come September, the leaves do a quick change from purple to a delicate green. Then just before they’re ready to drop in the middle of Fall, they turn a breathtaking coral.
We’ve got several big old rocks around the grounds, some situated in artistic spots, but most just sitting here and there. This time of year, after the first few rains, they spring to life with extravagant coats and fringes of moss. Come Spring, the moss will produce tiny prehistoric flowers.
In a last burst of glory, the asparagus — its airy ferns having spent the Summer gathering sunny sustenance for next year’s growth — transitions from dull green to brilliant gold. It’s an exuberant display before it lays itself down to sleep.
Finally, the ever-present borage just keeps plugging away. Its fuzzy purple blooms are pretty much the first and last flowers we see out there. The polllinators adore these plants (and count on them at the extreme ends of their seasonal activities here), so we treat them with care and forgive their invasive nature.
I hope we have a very, very Democratic time of it in coming days. VERY Democratic.
What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Fall GrowthPost + Comments (110)
This post is in: Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Security Theatre
This is how bullying works. You badger Comey and publicly impugn his motives enough, you get in his head, and he pulls a stunt like this.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) October 29, 2016
Before she became an excellent reporter, Ioffe was a Russian refugee. Thus, her understanding of the malign power of bullying within bureaucracies…
Justice officials warned FBI that Comey’s decision to update Congress was not consistent with department policy https://t.co/oPJuBtMdnn
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 29, 2016
Joy Reid, at the Daily Beast, “Republicans Weaponize James Comey’s FBI To Kneecap Hillary Clinton“:
… Something got lost in the sturm und drang over the FBI’s “October surprise” that dropped Friday afternoon, when director James Comey inexplicably dropped the bomblet that his agency had obtained “new” emails (or maybe duplicate ones; apparently no one’s read them yet) from a laptop shared by Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her creeper husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.
Behind Comey’s defiance of both precedent and the guidance of his boss, the attorney general, was the subtext of intense pressure being put on the FBI and the Justice Department by Republicans, some of whom rushed Comey’s vague letter to members of the press…
Congress, and some of the same committees pursuing email investigations, hold the purse strings over Comey’s agency. And one can only imagine the pressure being placed on the agency by Capitol Hill. The double standard of Comey’s talk about Clinton with his silence regarding whether or not his agency is probing the ties between current and former Trump aides and Russia suggests that whatever pressure the FBI is feeling, it’s coming from just one partisan direction…
Another reminder: Comey put out the letter because he knew he can’t control leaks from the agency he’s supposed to lead
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 29, 2016
It must have “something very remarkable” for Comey to send that letter 11 days before the 2016 election. Like Chaffetz pressuring him to. https://t.co/v61Btc0Tqr
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) October 30, 2016
“Keep an eye on that Chaffetz kid, he’s a comer… “
Late Night Open Thread: James Comey, Victim (of His Fellow Repubs)Post + Comments (235)