Here’s Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III trying to get off the boss’s shit list by tripling the number of leak investigations and “reviewing policies” for issuing subpoenas to reporters:
AG Jeff Sessions, citing leaks, says he's "reviewing policies" for subpoenaing the press. "They cannot place lives at risk with impunity." pic.twitter.com/U35g1QankV
— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 4, 2017
The excuse, as always, is that the leaks “place lives at risk.” Refresh my memory, y’all: Have any leaks from the Trump White House endangered troops or imperiled U.S. citizens or foreign assets — aside from when Trump opened his big fat yap and bragged to the Russians about intelligence on ISIS, torching an Israeli asset?
Anyhoo, the leak of the transcript of Trump’s conversations with the Australian PM and Mexican president is intolerable to the administration. Not because any valuable intelligence was exposed, but rather because a staggering LACK of intelligence was revealed: The president is a blithering idiot, a liar and a shitty negotiator.
David Frum wrote a piece in The Atlantic about the dangers of these leaks. Frum, a former Bushie who is fiercely anti-Trump, contends the leaks will harm the office long after Trump is toast:
But if no high national-security secret has been betrayed in these transcripts, the workings of the U.S. government have been gravely compromised, and in ways that will be very difficult to repair even after Trump leaves office. Trump’s violation of basic norms of government has driven people who would otherwise uphold those norms unto death to violate them in their turn. Contempt for Trump’s misconduct inspires counter-misconduct.
Nor is that the end. The less Trump can trust the regularly constituted government, the more justified he will feel in working irregularly. His irregular actions then justify more counter-irregularity from the rest of the government.
Donald Trump has launched the executive branch into a cycle of self-destruction for which he bears ultimate blame—but whose ultimate cost will be borne by his successors and the American nation.
Maybe. But writing in the New Republic, Brian Beutler takes the opposite view:
Many have been quick to assume that this leak will have a chilling effect on U.S. relations with other countries, without stopping to ponder the likelihood that some foreign leaders might be relieved to learn that factions within the U.S. government are taking extraordinary steps to weaken this particular president.
If there are norms worth fretting over here, they aren’t the ones that govern whistleblowing, but the ones that should govern what U.S. political leaders do when the president is too incompetent to serve. It is because of their cowardice—their refusal to uphold norms they were elected and appointed to guard—that these transcripts leaked in the first place.
Beutler makes a good point. Outside of the deplorable bubble, the majority of the country and the rest of the world know Trump isn’t up to the job. Personally, I’m unnerved by how comforting I now find the presence of institutions and people I once (and still) regard with healthy suspicion, including the intelligence community and Republican special prosecutors.
Beutler also brings up the three generals who are charged with babysitting Trump: McMaster, Mattis and Kelly. There’s another unnerving specter — unelected generals running the show behind the scenes. Some of y’all have expressed similar misgivings, while others have noted that at least McMaster and Mattis are intelligent, competent men who aren’t given to rash action, unlike their boss.
So, the leaks will likely continue, no matter how hard the KKKeebler Elf stamps his widdle feet and wiggles his oddly angled ears. Trump and his flunkies will continue to fume about it, and even people who don’t support Trump will wring their hands. But I think Beutler is right: We should blame the craven shits in Congress who not only have the power but the duty to protect us from an incompetent executive and are refusing to do their jobs.
Adam L Silverman
Both Frum and Beutler are correct.
Roger Moore
I’ve said it before: what Trump really wants is a lèse-majesté law. In his mind, that’s the way the government is supposed to work- at least when somebody he likes is President.
dr. bloor
Boom. Whoever is leaking these transcripts is guilty only of realizing that norms and safeguards are no longer operational, and it is hardly his/her/their fault.
In the meantime, it will be interesting to watch the Beltway media respond to this.
germy
KKKeebler wants to start jailing journalists. This is the country he wants.
zhena gogolia
Every time I talk to one of my local non-political-junkie-normal-person-acquaintances here, she says, “Can’t they impeach him?” She just doesn’t get that they can but they won’t. It seems to obvious to her that they should. I think that’s kind of the “man on the street” feeling of non-Trumpers right now.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: It should not be normal for private conversations to be leaked. This government isn’t normal.
sukabi
Agree with Beutler and you….if congress had done their job there wouldn’t all these leaks. The leaks are a cry for help …
Jeffro
Norms will resume once “normal”, or something close to it, is back in the Oval Office. Simple as that.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: No they won’t. You can never get back to the old normal. Rather a new normal will have to be found. Usually this takes repeated attempts, there is frequent periods of backsliding and/or stagnation, and often it devolves into violence.
The Moar You Know
I agree with both Frum and Beutler. Their views on the horror in the White House and leaks are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, with a normal administration, leaks like this would be grossly irresponsible and mandate legal action. And hell yes, a guy like Trump makes those same leaks mandatory.
Mike J
@Roger Moore:
Many on the right believe that Obama actually acted that way. Fox news said it night and day for eight years, and demented old kooks like Trump believed it.
Chris
None of them, of course, are worried about the chilling effect on U.S. relations that it might have to hold those conversations in the first place.
Karen
There are times when I wonder if they are trying to push the people into a revolution; history shows that those really don’t work out of the “common man”
Jeffro
@sukabi:
True. Both a cry and also a method of helping the system fight back against infection.
Raoul
I’m not too keen on having a quasi-Junta with Trump as the figurehead. But at least those guys have some sense of the catastrophic danger of nuclear war, which has been my admittedly low-risk-of-occurrence/ultra-high-impact-if-he-does -it worst fear of Trump — that he’d order either a first strike on NK, or send 100 missiles to vaporize Iran in a fit of pique. The babysitters probably don’t want to be on mop-up from that.
Betty Cracker
Seems like leaks that plagued prior administrations were different than Trumpian leaks in two ways: 1) there were far fewer, and 2) they seemed in service of promoting a particular policy agenda or undermining/advocating a faction/person within the WH rather than targeting the POTUS. Does that track with y’all’s recollections?
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman: That’s sort of where I come down on this as well. Leaking transcripts is not a good way to run a country. And, extraordinary times may require further norms to be violated. That’s the real price of what the GOP has inflicted: As they trash lots of norms, and inflicted a chaotic moron on an entire nation, we have to accept more damage to the office and our national prestige (and standards) to get through.
I have no idea what comes after Trump. I don’t know what sort of national reckoning is possible. If we don’t face it, we’ll just be lipsticking a stuck pig for a generation or more.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: History is a brutal teacher. How the US is governed and how the office of the presidency works is going to look very different ten years from now because of all that’s happened in the last year, and odds are that most of us here are not going to be happy with the changes. I’d like to be positive about this, but “hoping for the best” is a bad way to plan for the future.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: Yes. All administrations leak. Each one a bit differently. A lot of the leaks are strategic messaging. Putting material out to see how it is responded to (trial balloons), getting the administrations take and spin on something that is going to have to break as news, etc. Unhappy administrations also leak. This is usually positioning to shift blame.
This administration leaks much, much more and much, much differently. You have the blame shifting and some attempts at positioning, spin, and trial balloons. But a lot of the leaks are either outright infighting or blame shifting. And some of them appear to be attempts to get the President’s attention through the media venues he pays attention to: NY Times, WaPo, Fox, CNN, Morning Joe on MSNBC.
Hoodie
Another way of seeing this is that these types of leaks are normal for this context, and thus do not violate “norms.” There were a lot of leaks when Nixon was president, almost none with Obama. The leaking is just more evidence of Trump incompetence and mendacity. Trump does not know how to run a leak resistant organization, at least partly because he’s insane and a pathological liar. This is the normal response to that. No one is leaking classified information; it’s all just stuff about Trump’s dysfunctional behavior.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman: Geez, this is new talk from you. Backsliding into violence? Why can’t things just go back to the way they were before if a majority want it to?
Uncle Cosmo
ought to be a rotating tag line here. If it isn’t already.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Um, ok. There’s no reason why restored/new norms couldn’t resemble the old ones (or possibly be better). We’re not post-WW II Germany here; everything need not be rebuilt from scratch.
I dunno about the violence piece either. Sporadic domestic violence (usually from the right) has been with us throughout our history…predicting it is not hard. How intense it gets will depend upon what GOP leaders do to speak out once Trumpov’s playing out his final moves.
Restoring norms will only happen, though, if we absolutely refuse to just “look forward, not back”. There has to be a full airing of how all this came to pass (and not just the Russian attack on our country, either) and consequences for those who have broken the law. Otherwise, yes, we will slide, backslide, stagnate, and limp along as you’ve noted.
Raoul
@Jeffro: Sorry, no, that just isn’t gonna happen. Our politics is deeply damaged, and just moving the shitgibbon along won’t fix it. That the Senate was one unpredictable mavericky vote away from ‘skinny repeal’ that no one wanted and would have thrown the insurance and helthcare industries (1/6th of our economy and millions of lives) into chaos tells me that the idiot/bastard at the top is a symptom, not the disease.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
My general impression is that most leaks coming from the White House in previous administrations were authorized, i.e. they were a way of applying an air of glamor and intrigue to a press release. There were always additional leaks coming from executives far from the White House, which could either be genuine whistleblowers or somebody settling a score within the department, but they were generally pretty limited. The extent to which people very close to the President are trying to undermine each other by leaking damaging information is really unpresidented.
stinger
@Betty Cracker: I’d definitely agree, Betty. Actually, what struck me most about the Australian leak was not just the “president” being revealed as an abject cowardly beggar, but the fact that he was so uninformed and ill-prepared for the meeting. The Australian PM repeatedly corrected Trump about the numbers of refugees the US would take, the fact that we don’t have to take any, the fact that we can rescreen them ourselves even after Australia has thoroughly vetted them, and all the rest.
Not sure exactly who comes off looking the worst–the “president” for failing to learn, or his staff for failing to prep him. Did they try but he refused to listen? Either way, he doesn’t come off well, of course.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman:
With Kelly restricting access to the toddler, will we see more people going to Fox to make sure he hears their story?
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: Unfortunately. In one way, and I’m trying to think through this for a post, a rebalancing of the powers of the Federal government with Congress reclaiming a lot of what it has ceded to the presidency is not necessarily a bad idea. What is a bad idea is to have it happen because Congress has decided it can completely ignore the Presidency and has no real plan of what to do with powers it is reclaiming, largely because it is led and controlled by people who don’t believe we should have a Federal/national government outside of the military, some law enforcement and intelligence, and to market business interests. Moreover, that significant portions of the Executive Branch have decided that they can also ignore this specific President/the presidency is also uncharted waters. It means there is no actual, specific US policy on anything. There’s a DOD policy. There’s a DOS policy (maybe). There’s a DHS policy. There’s a DOE policy. Etc, etc, etc. This is a recipe for very, very bad outcomes.
Timurid
Frum: “We may harm our institutions by stepping on the toes of the guy who’s currently running our institutions through a woodchipper.”
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: Hope may be an essential facet of life, but it is not a strategy. Planning, for both regular occurrences and contingencies, is essential.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman:
One wonders if the Australian PM had been talking about refugees and the boat-arrival-ban on Morning Blow, if Trump might have been able to grasp it. He seems to have an actual intellectual disability. I wonder if somehow visual + audio connects for him in a way that a phone just does not.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J:
It’s shit like this that I’m talking about when I go on my rants about how Pence wouldn’t be worse. His administration wouldn’t lead to this erosion and destruction of norms, which once gone don’t come back.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Raoul:
I’m not sure what can be done, aside from winning elections and beating back the GOP
MaryL
I don’t think the First Amendment is the first thing they’ve come for.
Raoul
@Goku:
Because an armed, angry, inchoate minority can do an intense amount of damage.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: It is not new talk from me. I have consistently written here that I don’t think we’re at the point where there will be wide spread violence. And I still don’t. That is different than recognizing the reality that state and societal formation and reformation are often iterative, violent, and prolonged with backsliding and periods of stagnation. Which I have written about here before, just not in regard to the US. It does not alway have to be violent. But it often is. Do I think we’re there in the US? No. Do I think we’re definitely going to get there? Not as of yet. Is it still a possibility? Yes, it is always a possibility wherever you see the type of institutional problems we’re now facing. But only if very specific things happen, such as a complete institutional collapse. We’re not in a complete institutional collapse. I don’t think we’re going to get one.
The one advantage of the infuriatingly inefficient system designed by President Madison is that it is infuriatingly inefficient when you want it to be and when you don’t. Right now that provides us with protection from threats and opportunities to turn threats into challenges. Do I still expect some sporadic, low level, periodic violence? Yes. We’ve always had that and we never seem to be able to figure out how to get rid of it.
sigaba
@Timurid: Frum’s gotta acquit himself with the fact that a lot of Trump voters, particularly the swingy infrequent ones who Republicans have been trying to engage since Reagan, voted for Trump exactly because they wanted the norms and institutions to be ruined and replaced by something more populist and authoritarian.
Mnemosyne
I’m just waiting for all of the Broflakes to assure us that Obama was the worst persecutor of whistleblowers EVAH! so therefore this is no big deal.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I don’t know. If I was Kelly, last night while the President was in West (by G-d) Virginny I would have gone in and put parental controls on all the TV’s in the White House. However, I doubt this actually happened.
Also, so that no one freaks out, despite never being seen at the same time and place as him, I am not Kelly.//
Roger Moore
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Because fundamentally norms can’t be handled by a simple majority; it has to be an absolute, overwhelming majority. That’s because the norms don’t have the force of law behind them, only the force of social pressure. As long as there’s a notable minority that refuses to go along, enforcing the norms will be nearly impossible.
I think the main thing that’s going to have to happen is for a lot of the old norms, or things that fulfill the same purpose, will have to be turned into laws so a less-than-overwhelming majority can actually enforce them. There will have to be an actual legal requirement for presidential candidates to release their complete tax records, a clear legally enforceable definition of what the president has to do with any businesses and assets he owns, etc. I also think Congress is going to have to rewrite its procedures. The Senate is obviously in need of more work- the whole business of approving presidential appointees is a gigantic mess- but the House needs quite a bit of work, too.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure Greenwald is on it.
No Drought No More
Forget who shot J.R. or Maggie Simpson. The greatest TV whodunit of my lifetime was Boris Batanov and Natasha meeting Mr. Big for the first time face to face. It was the also first time he was ever seen on television, other than as a giant, looming, and rather sinister shadow on a wall. It turned out Mr. Big stood maybe 3 feet 4 inches tall.. it was only his shadow that was so big. Sessions need only be endured. His administration of the Justice Department will soon be history, and it appears to me the little twit will be lucky to avoid a prison sentence.
Jeffro
@Raoul:
I don’t know what’s possible either (and I totally agree re: lipstick/pig)…but I think once we get to a post-Trumpov era, we…well, first we celebrate for a week!
Then on Day 8, we make sure that both a) all possible avenues of the Mueller investigations are seen through to the end, with the public fully informed, and b) we push for an even larger ‘truth & reconciliation’ committee that notes all the ways norms were broken along the way (even if they weren’t illegal). Post-post-Census redistricting, media consolidation, talk radio insanity, Citizens United, super PACS…whatever. Air it all out. And then have all participants publicly re-commit themselves, their parties, and the country to upholding our highest ideals once again.
Jeffro
@Raoul: I most definitely did not say that ‘moving the shitgibbon along’ would fix this country. Re-read, please.
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: There is RUMINT in social media by Ozzies in the natsec domain that the Australian transcript is actually much, much, much worse than the White House’s. That the Australian PM spoke to the President about information related to/derived from things picked up by Australian Intel as part of Five Eyes. And that the reason this was both brought up on this phone call and is being held close is to give the Australian PM leverage over the President in case he needs it to protect Australian interests.
I didn’t post about them or link to them here because they’re just RUMINT. What I’ve seen mentioned, really talked around in terms of the details, overlaps with other RUMINT coming out of/related to European intel agencies in terms of internal consistency to the innuendo. But it is just that – innuendo.
Frankensteinbeck
Trump has certainly damaged norms and changed things, although I would argue that the white freakout over a black man’s election is what actually changed norms, and Trump’s actions are inevitable results. In terms of leaks, assuming the next occupant of the White House is nice to his staff, I think the leaks will return to previous levels. This is not driven by politics, it’s driven by Trump being an asshole to the people with the power to leak.
@germy:
This was always the country Sessions wanted. He’s a hardcore Confederate monster. One of the weirdest facets of this situation is that the man doing the most damage in our government is the man who is protecting the potential fix.
@Mike J:
Like Clint Eastwood and his empty chair, they believe black men act a certain way, and they edited everything they learned to support that belief. Seriously, Eastwood lecturing his imaginary Obama on swearing is the perfect example. They ‘know’ what black men are like, so Obama must be like that.
Postscript – It is disturbing that a large portion of the US population is more racist than O’Reilly, who at least noticed, to his stunned surprise, that the patrons of Cracker Barrel were not yelling demands for their ‘motherfucking iced tea.’
Adam L Silverman
@sigaba: Or with nothing at all. I can’t tell you how many folks I know that simply wanted the way the Federal government works to be blown up and not replaced with anything because they’re convinced it is destroying the US. And these are not uneducated, incurious, and/or unintelligent people.
geg6
@Timurid:
That’s exactly how I see Frum’s concern trolling. Fuck him.
Tenar Arha
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. I keep thinking about how this will lead to further norm breaking. It was already happening though. Trump just sped it up, like he does everything. At this point, after what McConnell has done in the Senate with holding up nominations & then a Supreme Court Justice, does anyone think that the legislative filibuster is truly safe? (Including from the Democratic Caucus because even if most Dems & leaners care more about process, they/we also really care about getting stuff done).
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think that’s half of it, absolutely – that, and the ability of very wealthy libertarians to drive perceptions/media coverage in this country.
I’m pretty much of this view too.
MJS
@Raoul: Do damage where? Will these armed hoards invade the cities? Not likely- the people who make up the hoard are scared shitless of cities and no they won’t fare well there. So that leaves the suburbs and rural areas, which doesn’t make much sense
geg6
@Adam L Silverman:
I’d have to argue about the not intelligent part. Anyone who thinks this is someone I would consider pretty damn stupid.
Adam L Silverman
@Tenar Arha: The number of Supreme Court justices is a norm. I fully expect that if the Supreme Court doesn’t produce the wins that the President, his hardest core advisors and officials, and his supporters – in and out of Congress – want but cannot get through legislation or Federal regulation/deregulation that we’ll see an attempt to stack the court. Just an appointment of three or four more justices. My guess is that the Chief Justice will object, though likely quietly. The hardcore, revanchist troika on the Court, however, will encourage it to enhance and finally lock in their power and influence.
Adam L Silverman
@geg6: It is where intelligence runs up against frustration. The latter then overrides the former.
MJS
@Frankensteinbeck: Not to nitpick, but it wasn’t Cracher Barrel, it was a restaurant in Harlem
bemused
@Adam L Silverman:
Are those leaking to get Trump’s attention trying to deter him from doing something stupid or to have him actually focus on something important or other reasons? He doesn’t react in any predictable way or reacts in very negative ways when he does pay attention.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman: Yep.
I don’t think that many Americans understand what stability and prosperity we’ve enjoyed, and how precarious and at risk all that is now. Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, probably various places in Asia that I’m less familiar with can all be looked at for ways in which we can slide, quickly, into broad corruption, stagnating and politician/oligarch skimmed economies, and little hope for the poor or even working classes to have a better life.
I love to travel, and many Americans don’t, so they haven’t a clue how easy and delightful some places are that are sold to our credulous voters as socialist dystopias (Europe, spat the shameless asshole Mitt, who I’m sure has had many lovely high-dollar jaunts to such hellholes as Paris or Stockholm). Nor have the walked around Buenos Aires and sensed the deep melancholy of decades of lousy protectionist policies, or visited Ipanema and decided not to swim in the fecal-soup ocean while contemplating that the rich Brazil have body guards and can see the cascading favela slums from their 40 story private condo towers.
I tend to think, unfortunately, that we are headed rapidly to a generation or two of widening disparities, a large and dispirited under-actualized lower class, and a plutocratic set of overlords who suck at doing much but lining their own pockets.
But, maybe not. Perhaps the disruption of computing, internet, robotics etc now is generating the next wave of progress, in ways that people feeling/fearing the rise of steam engines and centralized manufacturing did in the early and mid-1800s?
Frankensteinbeck
@MJS:
I heard it was a Cracker Barrel in Harlem. I stand corrected!
Nitpicking is Balloon Juice’s hobby, passion, and religion. I will always remember fondly arguing about Orpheus’s age.
? Martin
Well, @Timurid: I think Frum is correct on that point. Our institutions are designed to operate in certain ways for a reason – and the President should be able to have private conversations with foreign leaders about sensitive topics. That said, Congress should be able to rebuke and contain an out of control executive. Because that mechanism isn’t working, people are deliberately breaking other protected mechanisms in order to force the issue. If our other institutions would do the task they are entrusted with doing, the leaks wouldn’t be necessary.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Minor quibble, but I don’t think that’s it. Sure, part of it is resentment from people for Trump being an asshole to them – but I think equally important is people being simply terrified of having seen up-close, just how utterly unfit for the job he is. Not “amiable dunce” Reagan or “lazy frat boy” Bush levels of ineptness, but actually batshit insane, Hitler-breaking-down-in-that-scene-from-“The Downfall” levels of crazy. They’re leaking like a sieve in the hopes that as many people as possible on the outside will realize how bad things are and, hopefully, push back hard against it.
Adam L Silverman
@bemused: I think it is both of those as well as to get his attention for themselves. From his (unauthorized) biographies, as well as biographical reporting, is that his leadership style is distributed chaos. Multiple power centers all having to compete for his attention and affection.
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: Governor Romney did his LDS missionary work in France. So he’s spent a lot of time in Paris over the years.
Chris
@Raoul:
This.
Americans, as a whole, simultaneously misunderstand both how good and how bad they have it. They don’t understand how much of the crap they treat as “normal” or at least not-realistically-fixable is in fact specific to their country and their own bizzaro policies, is completely alien to Canada, most of Western Europe, and parts of Asia, and could be fixed without too much trouble if they put the political will into it. At the same time, they also don’t understand just how much worse it can get, and in what ways the policies of the last fifty years have been pushing us more and more towards third world status.
MJS
@Frankensteinbeck: Just to be sure, I looked it up. It was Sylvia’s in Harlem. He was there with Al Sharpton. Probably afraid to go by himself
Timurid
@geg6:
This is the dick who thought our biggest problem was that ordinary Americans weren’t scared enough and must be terrified into prudence and virtue… who is now aghast when he sees what frightened people and the leaders they choose are really capable of.
Ruckus
@stinger:
How much of his staff knows any of the stuff they should know to do their jobs? And we are talking about the staff that has any contact with drumpf. Would drumpf even let them try, doesn’t he know biggly everything, isn’t he the CEO in charge?
Remember that his entire life is reckless action/words and having it cleaned up by lawyers later.
GregB
I think that Trump’s continued descent into madness amd his need to appeal to the worst impulses of the heroin-folk(TM) is going to bring more and more clarity to people who realize that massive social disorder at the hands of a dictator is not good for marketing strategies.
Yet, we do have Fox News and alot of the alt-right now talking in less couched terms about violence.
I also think that as Mueller digs deeper, the rot that will be exposed will be so revolting that Trump’s support collapses among the remainders of decent humans who still cling to his raft.
Raoul
@Jeffro: Your outline seems reasonable. But I get stuck on ‘fully informed public’. As long as Fox, Twitter and all sorts of means of disinformation are viable, we will not have an informed public. We will have at least two competing sets of information, one that is at least semi-coherent and more-or-less factual (but still, obviously, mediated) and another that is wild-hair nutso but consumed by 10s of millions.
The fracturing of media and the dissipation of anything resembling common truths is a genie that can’t be put back by just dumping Trump and reforming Congress.
Tenar Arha
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. I’ve also thought about on the other hand if 2020 gets a full Democratic majority & President elect, it could go the other way. I mean there’s Goresuch, whose seat on the Court was stolen from Garland. The only two legal responses to that are impeaching him for an actual cause or packing the Court. (Of course there could be a miracle and Roberts could have a change of heart after seeing what his actions have wrought too….;-)
JCJ
@Roger Moore:
And unprecedented!
Raoul
@Jeffro: Resuming ‘normal’ in the Oval Office won’t fix this. Yes, that’s nominally different that moving the shitgibbon along, but we can look back to history and the Clinton Derangement Syndrome to see that having a competent, effective POTUS can still be met with norm-shredding bullshit. See Gingrich, Newt for starters. And Obama for the main course.
Most especially, though, Jeffro, was the casual ‘a simple as that’ you tossed in up there. There is no simple in this swirling mess of politics.
kindness
Trump is by any means damaging the reputation of this White House. I don’t think it’ll stick to the next one. Reputation isn’t a stink that sticks to the walls once the stinker has gone.
GregB
@Frankensteinbeck:
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
It was really obvious under Obama, but they had to work up to that point. Rove’s project for a permanent Republican majority was not exactly according to norms, and neither was the clusterfuck when they passed Medicare Part D. Impeaching Clinton was a big norm breaker, as was Gingrich’s earlier government shutdown. Reagan and Nixon both broke some very important norms by cutting deals with America’s adversaries to help win election. Every time they break a norm, it makes the next breakage easier.
Adam L Silverman
@Tenar Arha: There is a lot of speculation, from across the spectrum, that the next time there is a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate that a mini pack will occur to make up for the seating of Gorsuch. I’m not so sure of that. What I do expect is that if the Special Counsel’s investigation actually exposes not just the Russian active measures, but significant interaction between various GOP officials, campaigns, funders, etc with the active measures that there will be pressure created to formally treat Associate Justice Gorsuch as an aberration. Whether this would lead to an attempted impeachment or something else I have no idea.
This is the problem with what Senator McConnell has wrought. He destroyed the last shred of cover that the Supreme Court was not politicized and not about politics. We have not yet begun to see exactly what that produces. But I doubt what it produces will be good.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
This is absolutely typical of paranoid authoritarian leadership. The leader is afraid of being ganged up on by subordinates, so he creates zero-sum games where they have to compete for his favor so they will hate and fear each other. It’s natural that the whole organization devolves into an atmosphere of endless backstabbing, and in Washington that’s often done by leaking damaging information to the media. My gut feeling is that the generals are going to be especially effective in that environment because they know each other and will form a natural alliance that Trump will find hard to break up.
Roger Moore
@Tenar Arha:
Another possibility is that deaths and/or resignations of current justices work out in the Democrats’ favor so they don’t have to pull any dirty tricks to get a majority on the court.
Raoul
@MJS: Timothy McVeigh and, what, one or two helpers, did an intense amount of damage to Oklahoma City. So, yes, I do think there are real risks for the public if the armed and crazy Trumpers feel that the country has been ‘swiped from them’.
98 or 99% of them might be recliner-chair twitter warriors, but 1% who have anger, motive and munitions can foment a lot of harm.
Coming at this from a different angle, i was just a babe in arms when many US cities faced frequent riots, and a 20-something when LA burned for days over Rodney King. Instability is a bigger risk than I think many folks realize. We’ve had relative calm for a while. It need not persist, it takes effort and intention to maintain.
germy
@MJS:
I live in a small city surrounded by larger exurbs. Around 2012 I was in a small building downtown that has a bunch of “artsy, liberal” shops. One of the empty stores was being used by some women who were preparing mailings and making phone calls for some Democratic candidates. I noticed three men loitering outside, making a point of staring and smirking at the volunteers. This was a few years before trump, but they looked like the sort you saw later at trump rallies.
There was no violence, but definitely menacing. One of the women told me they made her uncomfortable.
It’s easy for some assholes from the sticks to venture into the city to harass women. I honestly don’t know if they have the balls to take things beyond that.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, I’d read about that. But I also am sure that in his Bain days, he jetsetted to lots of places he opportunistically and cynically dissed in his run for the presidency. It was shameless bullshit. He was lying about the quality of life in the countries of some of our closest allies to try and lower his own personal tax rate. I don’t really forgive him for that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Republicans only think in zero-sum terms.
Major Major Major Major
@Raoul: Yeah, Romney wasn’t a true believer in anything but Mormon scripture and the almighty dollar. He didn’t malignantly try to make things worse for people (which is distinct from being a roadblock to making them better), which is a difference in kind from the current crop.
But her emails!!!
I’d like to point out that part of the implied impetus behind these leaks is that Trump has lied and mischaracterized the contents of these discussions.
1. We can’t be 100% certain that these leaks were from the White House of IC, they could be from the Australian and Mexican governments, or have been made by the US IC with the blessings of these governments.
2. Whoever made these leaks, could have weighed the damage Trump did in lying and misrepresenting the conversation, against the damage of having them made public
3. There’s no reason to assume some sort of well-intentioned insider leaked these documents at all. Their release could simply be a part of the ongoing Deplorable Civil War in the White House. If the leak is nothing more than the result of the combination of shitty people with shitty management, a shitty office culture and a shitty President, there’s no reason to assume that a competent administration populated by professions will continue these activities.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: Yep and yep. It is why I expect the attempts to oust McMaster to fail. The only possible way they would succeed is if he’s given a fourth star and sent to take over in Afghanistan. But just firing him is unlikely to happen even though it is easier to get rid of him as a still serving general officer.
Snarki, child of Loki
Okay, Evil Elf!
The press gives up the names of the leakers, and you have them summarily executed, okay?
I’ll give you a hint for the first one: 6 letters, starts with a ‘T’.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
The fact they rarely get held accountable for the norm breaking means they have every reason in the world to do it next time.
Nixon got off.
Reagan got off.
Bush, Sr. and Bush, Jr. both got off.
Sure some lower level flunkies got caught in the Reagan and Nixon White Houses, but that’s not enough of a deterrent. By the time Bush, Jr. came along, they got very, very good at covering their tracks.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
I’m getting a sense of doom and gloom from you all. What’s the solution? Kill them all and let their god sort them out? It seems that hopeless.
Raoul
@Major Major Major Major: His cynicism and pandering were all the more gross given his purported faith. He had the chance to help Americans by acknowledging that Romneycare worked in MA and that what the Democrats were working towards nationally was modeled on what had arguably been a signature positive of his governorship.
But he valued winning more than he valued morals or courage (though he also lost!). So I have zero respect for the man.
Frankensteinbeck
Theory: Sessions has already flipped. He is protecting Mueller so that when the dominos fall, Secretary White Citizens Council is the guy not going to jail.
MJS
@Raoul: 3 people, who inspired, what, one or two more? Can a low number do damage? Sure, for a very limited period of time. This crowd is 99.9999% coward. They very, very rarely venture 15 miles from home, and never into the inner city, even though to hear them tell it, that’s where all the problems are coming from. The riots in L.A.are a poor comparison, because with Trump supporters, there just isn’t the same concentration of aggrieved people.
Put another way, I’m far more concerned with Trump starting a war with North Korea than I am with his supporters rising up.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’m a big fan of hearing the lamentations of their women…
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: This. Plus he is already guiding domestic policy. It was the deal made to become VP. Be the most powerful VP in American history. This is stupid that people say “well if we remove Trump, we get Pence. You’ve already got Pence! But he’s not interested in destroying American democracy to the extent Trump is.
@germy: They do. They feel very empowered. We ignore them but keep fighting, they will eventually act out. We remove Trump, they act out. If they had lost, they’d act out. So fuck ’em, and keep an eye on them while we move forward.
gene108
@Raoul:
He wouldn’t have gotten out of the Republican primary, if he did not disown the Massachusetts healthcare law.
I kind of feel sorry for Mitt, in a way. He really positioned himself to be someone, who could bring real solutions to America’s problems, with a conservative tilt to them. Just see how he used free-market mechanisms to achieve universal healthcare in Massachusetts. He didn’t need to go all into single payer, which liberals are clammering for.
If he was running for President in 2000 or 1996, this would have been a great selling point for his ability to govern.
But he was running in 2012, when Republicans decided governing is for libtards and they want to take a wrecking ball to government, so a black man will never again be in their White House.
stinger
@Ruckus: And he probably “learned” from Fox News that the US was required to take 2000 criminals as refugees, and wouldn’t listen when anyone tried to tell him differently — including the PM of Australia. But with no staffing of the State Dept, there might not have been anyone who actually knew the terms of the agreement, or how to find the terms of the agreement, or that an agreement existed, or even knew that the “president” should be prepped for a call with another nation’s leader. So much ignorance and inexperience. From the top down.
Raoul
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’ll quote Adam, with a tweak.
I feel gloomy, but I also think naming what shit I see in front of me helps me plan for how to change it. I also think about Joanna Macy and the concept of active hope. “At the heart … is the idea that Active Hope is something we do rather than have. It involves being clear what we hope for and then playing our role in the process of bringing that about.”
Hope without clarity or action is just nostalgia. I am not nostalgic for what was. I am hopeful for what I’ve seen is possible: a world and a country that is realistic, pragmatic, caring and connected and in service to love and to one another. We are sooo far from that nationally. And yet, at some city and state levels, our polity is working, we are continuing to make progress.
That is the curse and the blessing of federalism. The West Coast and places like Minnesota can be leaders. Failures in places like Kansas could be instructive. Have hope, but let it be active. We keep on going.
stinger
@GregB:
I shall ignore the TM and steal this freely. Our “president” would!
Gelfling 545
@Frankensteinbeck: There’s a Cracker Barrel in Harlem? Surprising as they seem mostly to be located at exits of major interstate highways hereabouts. Also (here anyway) they have a reputation of not being especially welcoming to people of color.
JPL
LAO, twitter is saying that Pharmo Bro was convicted..
sad
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: Bain Capital’s entire business model is nothing but “malignantly trying to make things worse for people”. Don’t believe the hype, Romney was a competent, professional, EVIL motherfucker.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I am thinking the reason the generals are effective in controlling Trump is
a) Trump’s is 70 something going on 16, and all teenage boys see themselves as soldiers.
b) The only time Trump had to listen to another human being outside his father was the officers at the military school Trump was sent to.
As for leaks; consider Trump’s lack of control over his own libretto. Just like his pants Trump’s staff leaks at the slightest of provocations.
Another Scott
Interesting. Reuters tells me that PharmaBro Shkreli has been convited of securities fraud and conspiracy.
Cheers,
Scott.
Stuart Frasier
@stinger: How about “Heroinvolk” to go full Nazi?
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Two Martin Shkrelis in the same courthouse at the same time.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/04/in-martin-shkrelis-courtroom-another-martin-shkreli-makes-appearance.html
This. Is. Not. Normal.
Karen
@Adam L Silverman: when you did your piece on middle east it reminded me that one of the biggest drivers is resources; as of Aug 2nd the rest of the year will be using resources that can not be renewed.
https://www.ecowatch.com/earth-overshoot-day-2467599096.html?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=EcoWatch
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m serious. What’s it gonna take to fix this shit? Puting all the RWNJs in camps?
Yutsano
@stinger:
What really goads me is THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HIS VOTERS WANTED. When you’ve been fed a diet of 40+ years of news of government being incompetent and business is always more efficient, this is the result. You get clueless amateurs who don’t understand where all this is coming from. And that it can’t even come close to being reworked or reformed or even dismantled overnight.
No one in this administration has a clue where all these norms and rules came from. And none of them care.
@The Moar You Know:
Also why I think the candidacy of Deval Patrick is just a flight of fancy.
ruemara
@gene108: I agree. There need to be serious consequences, because they’ve literally broken democracy and several generations of Americans.
Raoul
@MJS: I guess I think of 168 dead, hundreds injured, families impacted, social fabric rippled as damage.
How much did what McVeigh did shift OK politics in response to tragedy? I honestly don’t know, but I think it is non-zero.
Surely the 9-11 attacks, just a couple dozen in-country, plus of course an outside support network, are part of our national psyche now, and I think a strong contributing part of our national narrative of fear of others.
McVeigh has been waived away as a lone-actor type guy, but I don’t think the deeper damage can be erased with conservative ‘he isn’t really us’ distancing.
LAO
@JPL: so sad. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Hehehehehe
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
In retrospect I wonder what Romney knew about Russia infiltrating the Republican Party. He was the one who said that Russia was our most dangerous enemy but never explained why.
Bobby Thomson
@Adam L Silverman: no, they are stupid. Stupid is as stupid does, and I am so god damn tired of that refrain “and this is not a stupid guy.” Find some other way of resolving the cognitive dissonance.
Mike in DC
@Another Scott: Pharma Bro is pharma boned.
Bobby Thomson
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: it will take losing a war.
stinger
@Yutsano:
Yep. Drain the swamp. Get rid of politicians. Bring in a businessman to run the country. So much ignorance.
They clearly never had Mrs. Umbdenstock for 10th grade Civics.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
I called the IT guy.
He said to shut down this reality and then turn it back on again. If that doesn’t help he’ll come upstairs to reload software.
Jeffro
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Not from me – I’m a regular Sammy Sunshine over here ;)
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
Objectively non-stupid people can get sucked in by propaganda more easily than people realize. My late father was not a stupid guy — he put himself through law school, owned his own title insurance. business, and retired early on the proceeds — but I sat with him at a table in 2012 and listened to him tell me that fascism and communism are the same thing because Mussolini started as a communist.
And where did he hear this? Fox News, of course.
Chitown Kev
There wouldn’t be all the leaking if there wasn’t so much lying and, in the case of these transcripts, someone on the inside that wasn’t disgusted with all the lying that has been normalized by this Administration.
rikyrah
The KKKeebler Elf needs to go Phuck Himself.
germy
@Mike in DC:
“This was a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks,” said Shkreli. “But at the end of the day we’ve been acquitted of the most important charges of this case.”
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Fascism. You target mainstream journalists after screaming about fake news for years and standing by while your presidential candidate directs his rally attendees to turn around and boo and otherwise menace reporters. I would hope that the MSM finally steps up and fights back at any intimidation tactics employed by the Trump regime to silence their criticisms of his screw ups. We need a free press to keep us apprised of the going ons at the Mad House.
barb 2
This is really an important discussion.
Trump wasn’t investigated by the press — or they refused to read the primary source material on the idiot. There are three books written by people who watched and knew Trump first hand. One from his time in Atlantic City and the gambling business. Trump’s management style was and still is chaos. Reporters are supposed to be our eyes and ears – most who followed Trump around rarely looked past the surface.
Trump is dirty – yet this part of his background was unreported. My husband argues that the corporate media bosses wanted their reporters to present Trump in the best light – it was in their financial interest to get Trump elected. Fox news is dirty, leader of the pack.
The “not normal” part of the electoral process is that our system is easily hackable. Computer illiterates are in charge of the electoral process in most states.Way back at the turn of the century during the Bush era — the computer literate folks demonstrated how easy it was to flip a few votes here and there and basically hack into databases so that the election results could be altered. Connect the computers to the Internet and they can be hacked — this is what the geeks have told me for years. This year they were screaming this — hackable, hackable — being hacked.
The first amendment is under attack by the illegitimate “winners” who used and abused the press and now they don’t like the truth is being exposed by the same media that helped the “winners”. Even if Trump leaves office — dead from natural causes (junk food) or via a jail cell — the cheaters still have the White House. No punishment is enough unless all the cheaters are held accountable.
Can the press report on themselves? How many are dirty? How many voters really care?
LAO
@germy: I’ve got bad news for him re: federal sentencing law and the concept of relevant conduct. Court will must likely sentence him on the acquitted conduct.
Brachiator
All this does is normalize madness. The fantasy, the supposed standard is civilian control of the government. If I wanted military oversight and shadow resistance from intelligence agencies, I would live in Pakistan.
And I hear Trump supporters applauding the military men in the White House. Oddly, some of these same people previously bought into the fantasy of Trump as a strong no-nonsense businessman who was going to shake things up and straighten things out. These people still try to hang on to this delusion, even as they include the contradiction of the generals having to help Trump focus his attention on whatever it is that he should be doing.
The Republican leadership sold out their principles when they kept Trump in the primary. It’s unclear whether they are operating out of fear or craven cynicism.
But the news stories that we don’t yet have is the articles that tell us what the conservative money men who control the GOP think about Trump. I don’t look for any of the Congressional Republicans to find their consciences as long as the Koch Brothers and the Mercers and the other oligarchs are still willing to pay for this show.
Yutsano
@stinger: Hell this is basic Schoolhouse Rock stuff.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I have a similar take. I figure Trump is very pleased with himself for having actual Army Men who have to listen to him. And he also feels inadequate around them because he well knows his own masculinity is all about money, bravado, and _performed_ toughness. So they make him feel important and self-conscious at the same time: he constantly feels like he needs to prove himself. He thinks politicians are all weaklings and idiots but he’s a little but intimidated by the military. (And I think it’s psychosexual too.)
Patricia Kayden
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Didn’t Obummer already put them all in FEMA camps? Alex Jones told me so. I am so confused.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Reality hard reboot underway.
germy
catclub
@Jeffro:
so maybe in 2035?
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: By handing over the gubmint to brave generals.
catclub
@Patricia Kayden:
Obama was a stickler for doing things legally, but hauling up that 1917 Law ( Espionage Act?) and trying to use it, was bad news.
A motivation to drop any law not applied in 30 years.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I do not know.
SgrAstar
@Adam L Silverman: A lot of these leaks are done to expose the President for the bumbling boob he is. That is public service with a capital P. The leaked WSJ transcript the other day, the leaked phone conversations- they reveal the preznit in his full-blown vainglory and incompetence. We need to see this, we need to understand it, we need to figure out (a) what to do about it now, and (b) how we can keep this from happening in the future. Can we actually recover? No idea.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: That’s what I have been saying. Pakistan’s descent into hell began by ceding civilian power to the military because they were the most stable institution. I don’t really wish to live in the United States of Evangelistan ruled by generals, however brave and benevolent and patriotic they might me.
Brachiator
@barb 2:
Not entirely true. Much was known about Trump. Nobody, especially his supporters cared. They hungered for a strong white man who would make everything better.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I have never advocated for the military taking control of the US, or anywhere else. I am not thrilled with the appointments of Secretary Mattis, now COS Kelly, LTG Flynn, and now LTG McMaster. Though I do think highly, in a professional sense of Mattis and McMaster. And recognize that given the choices that have been made they are better than than almost all the others. Largely because they are professional and competent.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator:
This is what is so shocking. They had how many Clowns running during the primary season and yet they settled on the Reality Star with zero political experience, zero self-control and a misogynist, racist background. Add to that his bankruptcies, sloppy marriages and zillion lawsuits. Really dudes? Had President Obama had the same characteristics, qualities and demeanor as Trump, there is no way he would have won the Democratic primary in 2008. Whatever faults you can find in the Democratic party, we don’t cotton to creeps.
No one who watched Trump during the primary season could be shocked at how he has turned out in the White House. I really hope that the Republican party is destroyed because of the Trump presidency. That is exactly what they would deserve for putting this dangerous idiot into the White House. (I hoped that after the Bush 43rd presidency as well but here we are).
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: To veer a bit into philosophy, most everything we “know” to be true is “propaganda”. We didn’t do the research ourselves (usually), we don’t witness most events ourselves. So we accept things we’re told based on how truthful we think the source of that info is.
By way of example, for all I know, there is no such place as Australia. Never been there so cannot testify I have firsthand knowledge of the continent’s existence.
I’m kind of a Heinlein hater but one of his best ideas ever was his idea of the “Fair Witness” – people trained to only testify as to their direct experience, with nothing outside of that influencing their testimony. I would say “the sky is blue”. A Fair Witness would say “the sky appeared to me to be the color blue when I looked up at 10:30 this morning.”
All this by way of explaining that not only is everyone susceptible to propaganda, but that we all have accepted quite a bit of it as fact, because you need to in order to function in human society. And most of it is likely true. But it’s good every now and then to step back and think “most of what I know might be bullshit”. Or as the man said, “question your assumptions”.
rikyrah
The Daily BeastVerified account @thedailybeast
BREAKING: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former chief of staff has turned state’s witness against him http://thebea.st/2uq4RxN
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yutsano: It’s worse than you think, the gubernment is coming to your local supermarket…the CA DMV is putting self serve kiosks in supermarkets.
raven
@schrodingers_cat: You just don’t ever stop when you decide something do you?
schrodingers_cat
@raven: I thought that’s the Balloon Juice way, and fuck LBJ!
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: That they are competent, makes them scarier.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Raoul: No, for all of making signs to avert evil when we hear his name, there are also people who hear it and think “He did it, he really did it, the beautiful son-of-gun really did it.” Most of them will never get past the gory fantasy; of the few who make plans, very few will manage anything both executable and competent, but only one or two need to get through.
If the assholes at the Malheur Refuge had had a different target and really been interested in mayhem and murder instead of posturing to their audience they could have killed a good many people.
Betty Cracker
@Chris:
Agreed. Mooch told a lot of lies in his 11-day stint as comms director, but when he said the leakers thought they had to “save America from this president,” he was describing the situation accurately, I think.
raven
@schrodingers_cat: Saying fuck LBJ and constantly hassling Adam are not the same.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jeffro: When I think of the threat of right wing violence, I remember the Oklahoma City bombing which caused a big enough backlash that things eased for a while.
wobbly
@Frankensteinbeck: It wasn’t a Cracker Barrel(!).
It was Silvia’s Restaurant in Harlem, N.Y. O’Reilly was there at the invitation of the Reverend Al Sharpton.
matyroshka
This seems particularly nuts to me. These people wanted to be in the White House, and they knew what he was like, as we all did. What changed? How are “people on the outside” supposed to push back when the people on the inside can’t or don’t?
schrodingers_cat
@raven: Is disagreement, hassling now? Besides I was answering Goku. The reliance on generals in this administration is frightening. YMMV.
David Fud
@But her emails!!!: Exactly this. If I wanted to keep the US distracted, busy, and from damaging the whole world, I would (as a foreign national entity typically allied with the US) make as sure as I could that there was as much chaos as possible in the White House. Also, it undercuts Trump with his supporters about demands about the wall, which is exactly what a Mexican politician would want going public. They cannot be seen as kowtowing to Trump, given his comments about Mexicans.
Gin & Tonic
@The Moar You Know: Now you’re making me question whether I’ve been to Australia. I mean, I boarded a flight at LAX that said it was going to Melbourne, and 15 hours later I got off, but I slept a lot, and it was dark a lot, so I don’t really know where the plane went. The people on the ground made it appear I was in Australia, but it could have been a big hoax. They may have flown in circles and landed in Nevada, where there were a bunch of actors with Australian accents. I can’t really be sure, can I?
Yutsano
@BillinGlendaleCA: Huh. In WA it’s all online or outsourced to various private registration shops that have more convenient hours than the DMV. In fact I don’t think you can do the car registration at the DMV. They just do licensing stuff.
JMG
@Yutsano: My son worked on both of Patrick’s campaigns here in Mass, so I know a little. I’d be shocked if he ran for President. His wife would be dead against it, and I honestly think his terms as governor got the public service bug out of his system. After all, when he left the Justice Dept., Patrick became general counsel for Coca-Cola Co. He’s comfortable in the upper echelons of American capitalism, and that’d drive the Bernie folks out of their minds, although of course many of them here were for Patrick in 2006, when he was the “most left” candidate. Politics is so dumb sometimes,
rikyrah
What the Mueller Grand Jury Means
Aug 4, 2017
Hours after news broke that Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia probe, has impanelled a grand jury as part of his investigation, President Trump declared at a rally in West Virginia that “the Russia story is a total fabrication. It’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.”
Trump’s comments, which were meant to denigrate and perhaps thwart the Mueller probe, were undermined by the fact that the grand jury has been at work for several weeks in the District of Columbia.
Grand juries don’t investigate hoaxes, and there are rules against using them for anything resembling a political witch hunt. As several former federal prosecutors told me, the grand jury is significant because it means that Mueller is in the midst of a ‘predicated’ criminal investigation. That is, he has reached the point where he has evidence of criminal conduct.
Chris
@gene108:
I actually wrote a paper in undergrad for I-forget-which-class that was about that, comparing Nixon and Reagan and Dubya and the steady erosion of any accountability for the executive branch’s misuse of power. Nixon’s crimes were committed in secret; when they came out, he was impeached, and forced to resign. Reagan’s crimes were also committed in secret, and the system did eventually expose and put a stop to it, but nobody was impeached or forced to resign, and it all ended with a sweeping pardon that… frankly, might as well have been a neon sign reading “when the President does it, it’s not illegal!” Bush’s crimes… were largely committed in full view of the public, and the system’s reaction overall was either approval or complete powerlessness.
Adam L Silverman
@SgrAstar: I am not saying that as a citizen I don’t want to know or see these things. As a natsec professional, however, I am concerned that the damage being done to counter the damage being done is going to take us to a place no one can necessarily foresee. That may be a good place, or a better place, but it could just as easily be a worse week.
Mike J
@catclub:
So no more law against treason?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Just remember that what comes after Bibi may be worse. Not better.
Marguerite Hill
@Adam L Silverman: Good! Let’s have a new normal, a brave new world once the truth comes out about Russian interference/collusion. Most sentient people — those who are not brainwashed by FauxNoise, Limpballs, and Alex BugEyed Jones — can see the cracks and imperfections in our electoral system. Our ongoing national nightmare may provide the impetus to tweak and correct so this doesn’t happen again.
Those nincompoops in the NY FBI office need to be fired, just for starters. If as an officer of the law you can fulfill your duty without political chicanery, you need to find alternative employment.
Second, there should be upgraded qualifications for elected federal positions. We see we can no linger leave it up to the political parties. Furthermore, there must be extensive scrutiny of candidate’s financial, educational, and personal history.
Third, we must have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission even if we have to get President Barack Obama and Mitch Romney to serve as co-chairs.
We have a pretty good system when all is said and done. But do we have the courage and integrity to fix it?
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Are you really this obtuse or are you just putting on act here for our benefit?
ThePandemoniac
Impeachment porn. Fresh impeachment porn on Seth Abramson’s twitter feed. Including a retweet of a GOoPer who claims that Hannity has lots of Russian Intel Service ties. I don’t know how to link his twitter feed without fear that it will be rendered in its entirety; so here’s the DKos story that lead me to it.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: It’s only okay to constantly harass LBJ!
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree, but I also agree that you’re being pretty unfair to Adam.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
Your model is why we have people who insist that the earth is flat. After all, the evidence of their own eyes and ears is that the earth is flat, so therefore it is. Any evidence to the contrary is by definition false, because they did not experience it themselves.
And if any one of them ever did, say, fly high enough to see the curvature of the earth with their own eyes, s/he would be excommunicated from the group because the group is not allowed to accept eyewitness reports.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ve been to Australia twice. Both times I was awake for the whole flight. So I’m reasonably confident that it’s a real place. I’ve not been to Melbourne, but I understand it looks nothing like Nevada.
MisterForkbeard
@ThePandemoniac: Ah, saw that. Schindler says his contacts tell him there are recording of operational phone calls between Hannity and known RIS agents.
As always with Schindler,take with a grain of salt.
Marguerite Hill
One of the main things we have to do is reinstate some form of the Fairness Doctrine with severe monetary punishments for misleading and lying to the public. I don’t mind hearing serious people say “No comment” when I know the restrictions their job places on them. But outright lies a la Sarah Hucksterbee Shambles and ConArtist Conway? No way!
Adam L Silverman
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): And if they didn’t have the following plan:
1) Step 1: Follow Ammon Bundy to the refuge while everyone is on vacation and break into the place.
2) Step 2: Wait for the Hosts of Heaven to intervene on behalf of our righteous, patriotic, godfearing actions.
3) Step 3: Remake America in Cliven Bundy’s and Cleon Skousen’s image.
Step 2 and 3, especially Step 2, were the weak parts of the plan!
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: What am I being obtuse about? I am apprehensive of Kelly’s appt as the CoS, for reasons I have mentioned innumerable times. You seem to agree with that. You also said that they are competent and efficient and I agree with that as well. I don’t necessarily see that helping the current admin operate in an efficient manner and enact the malevolent agenda is necessarily a good thing.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
It does apparently look a whole lot like California. That was the biggest complaint that a native Californian I know had about going there — it didn’t really look any different.
And my retired boss who went to South Korea said that it looked a lot like Southern California, too.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: @Mnemosyne: No map is accurate, but some maps are useful. It’s not about people’s reliance on maps, it’s about their willingness to believe the maps of shitty conmen and grifters.
The Moar You Know
@Patricia Kayden: Gavin Newsom, the next governor of California, in all likelihood, is Trump with better hair, less money, and the ability to keep his mouth shut so long as he’s not wasted out of his mind. The party seems to think he’s just great.
He’ll never have my vote.
Some guy named Weiner also comes to mind. There have been others. The GOP certainly does not have a monopoly on scumbags.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: My middle initial is “L”, so it’s about 1/3 the same.//
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@rikyrah:
Greatest loss? He barely won the EC! This fucking guy. I don’t know the extent to which he was involved in soliciting Russian help to steal the election, but he just has to believe his “win” was the biggest evar! His ego won’t allow any less and he’s deluding himself.
Even my parents, as politically murky as they are, hate this guy and can’t understand why he has rallies outside of the campaign cycle. That he takes so many vacations. He’s a goddam loser and that leaked transcript should prove it to his most diehard fans that he’s a phony loser fake.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Just like the moon landing.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: I am not trying to start a fight with you.FWIW, I think we agree more than we disagree. I am tired, I have had a long week. Time to take a nap.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Very much this.
As far as I’m concerned, Romney is Trump with (some) social skills. Both of them are useless assholes whose only accomplishment in life was being born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Both of them mistook that accident of birth as a sign that they were special and gifted rather than dumb luck. Both of them used that privilege their entire life to dodge the obligations of citizenship and pass them on to the less fortunate (beginning with the Vietnam draft and never ending). Both of them, rather than at least doing something useful with that privilege, made a career out of a business model whose only purpose was to enrich them by preying on their fellow citizens. Both of them, from what we’ve glimpsed, are complete assholes in their private lives – petty, dishonest, bullying and cowardly. And both of them think they’re entitled to the presidency.
Marguerite Hill
Finally, Rupert Murdoch must be deported. His publications and other commercial enterprises (THEY ARE NOT NEWS AGENCIES!) have damaged our nation and fellow citizens irreparably. The people who have been brainwashed are mentally disfigured and emotionally mutilated. He has to go.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: Nobody likes Gavin Newsom. And he’s certainly not
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: Yep. Also, given how dumb Hannity is it is entirely plausible and he had no idea who he was talking to.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. But it wasn’t just that the civilians ceded power to the military. The civilian governments were so weak, corrupt, venal that the military kept stepping in to provide “order.” And the intelligence service has often been an independent power with an agenda independent of either the civilians or the military.
I don’t believe in a brave and benevolent military. And a government run by the military is inherently unpatriotic, as far as I can tell.
ETA: I have been listening to various BBC podcasts remembering the partition of India. Interviews are with people who were directly affected, or their surviving relatives. A lot of it is very sad. The unnecessary hatred and cruelty that was unleashed.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I see things have moved into the deceptive measures phase…//
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. I’m entirely willing to believe Hannity did coordinate news releases and other things with RIS agents, given how all-in he is and was for Trump. I’m also willing to believe that Hannity may not have known he was dealing explicitly with Russians, and just thought he was working with ‘patriots’ that happened to have good communication lines to Russian news and Wikileaks.
Belief isn’t proof, though. I’ll just cross my fingers and hope, and then be on my merry way. :)
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator
I was being sarcastic.
That was the parting gift from the brave and benevolent British to their Jewel in the Crown, by withdrawing abruptly, months ahead of the originally scheduled date.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
Ah, but what is considered patriotic is subjective and malleable. One’s patriotism is another’s authoritarianism.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Huh? I don’t speak military/natsec lingo. I truly am tired. Keeping up with teens is hard.
rikyrah
but…it was supposed to be the CRIMINALS…REMEMBER?
Teen soccer star living in Maryland who earned college scholarship is deported back to El Salvador with brother
A teen soccer star living in Maryland who earned a college scholarship and was considered “one of the best in the country” was deported back to crime-ridden El Salvador this week, along with his brother.
Lizandro Claros Saravia, 19, set to attend Louisburg College in North Carolina, and 22-year-old Diego were sent back to Central America on Wednesday.
The brothers, who both graduated from Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, were arrested on July 28 by ICE officials in Baltimore.
“These kids did nothing wrong — but that is too low a bar. These kids excelled,” teacher Heather Bradley told the Washington Post.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/maryland-teen-soccer-star-slated-college-deported-article-1.3380871
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I was teasing, hence the snark tags.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: So we are friends, again? Pinky swear?
Patricia Kayden
@The Moar You Know: How is Gavin Newsom comparable to Trump? And Weiner was drummed out of the Democratic party the last time I checked.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: Nixon was never impeached.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: To his credit, Trump has never said that he would limit deportations to criminals and under him ICE certainly has not done so. Recently I read a story about ICE officials arresting three immigrants at a restaurant (they went into the kitchen and nabbed the immigrants after they had eaten their meals) and trying to process them for deportation. The comment section was full of Rightwingers applauding the ICE officials even though it turned out that the immigrants were not in the country illegally and thus were all released from ICE custody.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman:
The main problem with it is that Congress is elected even less democratically than the President, and a remarkably small minority can have effective control. Something needs to be done about that, and I’m not sure what.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@The Moar You Know:
TBF, he was likely going to be if he hadn’t resigned
patrick II
@Hoodie:
One problem is that the administration is the entity doing the classifying. If they want to stamp “classified” on the garbage disposal schedule they can. Which, under a Sessions justice department administration, makes reporting on just about anything they don’t want you to know dangerous.
Mike in NC
@Adam L Silverman: Give it a few more weeks before Trump tires of Kelly trying to “shove him around” and Hannity is brought in as Chief of Staff.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: Republicans actually won the popular House vote this time around, but I’ll grant you the senate.
The Moar You Know
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Not even “likely”. Goldwater and the other Republicans who went to meet with him were bearing the news that they had the votes for both impeachment and conviction, and asked him to resign for the good of the nation. Which he did.
And that’s too bad, because you can trace the existence of Donald Trump in the White House straight back to the fact that Nixon committed pretty serious crimes and never experienced any consequences for them at all.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: It’s Underpants Gnomes, all the way down!
rikyrah
Thus, the actions of the KKKeebler Elf this week:
The majority of Harvard’s incoming class is nonwhite
By Deirdre Fernandes
Globe Staff
August 03, 2017
For the first time in Harvard University’s history, the
majority of students accepted into the incoming freshman class are not white, a milestone for an institution that prides itself on educating future presidents, CEOs, and world leaders.
But Harvard’s push to broaden the diversity of its student ranks comes as the Trump administration intensifies its focus on affirmative action policies and suggests it will investigate how colleges shape the racial makeup of their campuses.
The US Justice Department is preparing to redirect resources from its civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, The New York Times reported this week.
………………………………..
Of the freshmen students admitted to Harvard this year, 50.8 percent are from minority groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Native Hawaiians. That’s up from 47.3 percent last year, according to the university.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Matt McIrvin:
Right now, the House is, ironically. The Senate used to have appointed members, meaning they were “indirectly” elected by the People through their state legislatures. Today, next to the Presdiency, the Senate is the most democratic in terms of how they’re elected. The Senate still gives outsized influence to smaller states.
I wouldn’t have a problem with that if the EC could be abolished and the president elected popularly. Smaller states would still have their voice in the federal government.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: RE: I don’t believe in a brave and benevolent military. And a government run by the military is inherently unpatriotic, as far as I can tell.
What’s patriotism for you?
Yutsano
@ Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) : He was pretty much told as much by the Senate Minority leader*
*I could be wrong on the exact person. But it was a member of his own party.
ruemara
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: But he’s not outside the campaign cycle. Don’t you remember? He filed for re-election on January 20th 2017. As he was being sworn in. He can collect money and keep campaigning without end for the next 3 years. I can’t be the only one who remembers.
@Patricia Kayden: This is my question too.
NotMax
Any chance we might be graced with a Dolt 45-free, happy birthday to Barack Obama thread?
Gin & Tonic
@The Moar You Know: You don’t think having to resign the Presidency is a consequence?
rikyrah
uh huh
The Ta-Ta Towel May or May Not Be the Most Ingenious Invention of Our Time
Boob sweat, be gone.
Elizabeth Loganat Teen Vogue
Aug 3, 2017 5:36PM EDT
A new product called the Ta-Ta Towel is a towel that slings over your neck and holds your boobs up when it’s hot and you’re shirtless. And it’s making us feel a lot of feelings. Feelings like, “what’s so bad about the bra-lette?” and “can’t the gals just hang out?” and “does it come in fun patterns?”The Ta-Ta Towel started out as a solution to a simple problem: boob sweat. According to the company’s website, Ta-Ta Towels creator Erin Robertson came up with her invention on a hot day in L.A., and it quickly took off (the company was founded in 2015):
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I realize that a lot of people want to believe that America was the Garden of Eden and citizens lived in a prelapsarian state of grace before the serpent called Nixon corrupted paradise, but this myth about the origin of political evil will not do.
LBJ, for example, was reviled by many back in the day, and his backing of civil rights legislation only partly redeems him in some eyes.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Hey, at least they didn’t sink to calling it the Hooter Hoop.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
Pretty much what you said.
I’ll add a little bit more: patriotism means to me not mindless worship of your nation, but caring for others and trying to make life for everyone, within your borders and out of them, as great as it can possibly be. I’m an American, sure, but I’m also 1 human among 7 billion on this planet. My citizenship extends beyond just mere borders. We’re all in this world together for a short time and we have to protect it as well as ourselves. Not just for future generations, but for the concept of life itself; as far as we know, Earth is the only planet with life.
And as the (so far) only known intelligent species in the Universe, we have an obligation to preserve this Eden as well as the human race, for as long as possible.
Whew! Sorry if I rambled! Hope that answered your question!
rikyrah
Are We Returning to Jim Crow?
Monique Judge
Wednesday 5:15pm
……………………
First of all, keep in mind that if this were truly about real
instances of white people being discriminated against in college
admissions, the Justice Department has a division that handles issues related to schools and education issues; it’s the Educational Opportunities Section, and it was put in place to enforce court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education
and federal legislation mandating that schools may neither segregate students by race nor discriminate against students based on sex, national origin, language barrier, religion or disabilities.
So why not go through that department? I’ll tell you why.
My theory is that the reason the Justice Department is going at this from the civil rights angle, and the reason it is attacking colleges and universities with affirmative action policies first, is that this is the
low-hanging fruit that will lead to the ultimate victory: wiping out
affirmative action in all aspects of American life, including
employment.
If the people at the Justice Department are able to get a court victory that sustains their belief that affirmative action policies are
prejudicial against white people, that opens the door for employers to say, “Hey, then why do we have to have affirmative action?”
You know what that also does?
It opens the door for open discrimination in housing.
It is the opening to dismantle the Civil Rights Act from a long-con approach.
NotMax
@Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe)
There are other intelligent species right here on this ol’ spinning globe.
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: Not particularly. What happened to Nixon is like taking a murderer’s gun away and saying “we’re good now”.
Jeffro
@NotMax: Seconded! That would be really nice, thinking of some of our favorite PBO moments.
It’s not really a “moment”, but I love the different slide shows I’ve seen of him interacting with kids inside the WH (especially the toddlers of staffers), out on the WH grounds (like Halloween), and quieting babies on the campaign trail. So clearly in the moment, and having a great time too.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@rikyrah:
Then those businesses get torched. It’s as simple as that. There’s no going back.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: @The Moar You Know:
It’s both: it was a consequence, but it wasn’t enough of a consequence to the perpetrator, and it wasn’t enough – any? – of an example to the rest of the country.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@NotMax:
Dolphins, apes, and others are fairly intelligent. But not enough to protect the planet from harm. Humans are. Walking upright and having opposing thumbs helps too. And yes, I’m aware we’re doing harm as well. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax:
And we’re trying our darnedest to make some more!
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Point noted. These days, with my perpetual Trump rage, I recognize snark even less well than ever, and I am often mistaken.
RE: I have been listening to various BBC podcasts remembering the partition of India. Interviews are with people who were directly affected, or their surviving relatives. A lot of it is very sad. The unnecessary hatred and cruelty that was unleashed.
The snark and anger here I clearly recognize. I can only be sad about the tragedies that took place during Partition.
jl
Obama tried to stop leaks with similar heavy handed investigations and didn’t accomplish much of anything to show for the effort.
I doubt Sessions will do as well, since I think he is not as smart and not as competent as Obama and his people. Sessions’ one advantage is that he is more ruthless and more willing to cut corners.
But here is where vast unpopularity of Trumpsters and their hangers-on like Sessions may be important: courts and Congress will look this stuff and the first thing that will cross their minds is “Oh shit, these clowns again, maybe best I just make this go away asap, I don’t want to get pulled into their mess.”
But nevertheless, we need to be vigilant and oppose unconstitutional BS that violates first amendment.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: I hated Nixon at least as much as the next guy, but I’m not convinced that we wouldn’t have been worse off as a nation had he been criminally tried in 1973-74.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Thanks for the response. Well said.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: I read an interesting idea about why we haven’t seen any evidence of (technologically advanced) intelligent life yet. The idea was that humans are one of the first technological civilizations in the cosmos.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/25/491307739/are-we-the-earliest-intelligent-life-in-the-universe
Yutsano
@Gin & Tonic: It does make you wonder what would have happened if Ford hadn’t pardoned him.
sharl
I’m glad the Cracker Barrel stuff was resolved. I’m old enough to remember when they were notoriously awful on racial and gender discrimination stuff, although if their Wikipedia entry is any indication, they cleaned up their act by the mid-aughts.
Some of the legal actions against Cracker Barrel were taken by the Federal government, and I have serious doubts that The Racist Elf’s DoJ would act in the same way; hell, they might even file as friends of the racist company in court. I hope it hasn’t gotten too bad yet, but just in case, I hope that folks within the U.S. Black community are developing and/or tweaking means of securely communicating information about high-risk roads to travel, places to eat and stay overnight, etc. It would be along the lines of The Negro Motorist Green Book that was published 1936-1966.
Which reminds me – and I’m sure someone in B-J comments already mentioned this – that the NAACP issued its first ever travel advisory:
Well done, Missouri! Make sure to include this in the next update of your tourism literature.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Interesting, that’s certainly less morbid than some of the solutions to the Fermi Paradox like “intelligent life always destroys itself”.
Bonnie
Most recent buzz from the pundits is that trump leaked the transcripts himself probably to get the press to stop talking about Russia. It’s his MO.
Sister Golden Bear
OT, but too good not to share. In-fighting is funny:
A retired attorney in Virginia Beach is so incensed that Republicans couldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act he’s suing to get political donations back, accusing the GOP of fraud and racketeering.
https://pilotonline.com/news/government/politics/virginia/retired-virginia-beach-attorney-sues-gop-accusing-the-republican-party/article_f7e5e7ec-f6ad-5d09-90d5-29774701b0c2.html
Major Major Major Major
@Bonnie: that doesn’t make sense for one second.
Brachiator
@Bonnie:
Ya know, this sounds reasonable. Trump loves to bleat the loudest about stuff that he himself is actually doing on the side.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
But the transcripts make him look weak.
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh it is! I hope it’s the case. Remember, Fermi lived during the Cold War, where things looked pretty grim. The one downside to it though, is that humanity is own it’s own and will have to solve it’s own problems without outside intervention. If we can, humanity might serve as a beacon to other species; something to aspire to be.
The Moar You Know
@Sister Golden Bear: I don’t think he has a case, legally, but were I a Republican I’d be fucking pissed at just how badly they’ve handled their accession to power, and far more pissed if I’d been stupid enough to give them money.
ETA from the article:
I think that’s probably quite accurate. Be interesting to see if he gets his day in court. He doesn’t really have standing, based on that he gave no money to the national party, but only to his state GOP.
nightranger
Frum can GFHS with his pearl clutching. These leaks are one of the few things saving us from the orange fart sack and his stupidity.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne:
Well except for all the Koreans…Oh wait…(looks at family pictures…).
The outside scenes of M*A*S*H were filmed in Malibu Creek State Park, the Century Ranch at the time.
A Ghost to Most
@Amir Khalid:
I spent 3 weeks in Melbourne 20 years ago, and it was a first rate town, with a large harbor, and fabulous seafood. It was fairly lush and temperate along the coast, turning into desert the further away from the coast you go. Mad Max movies were filmed in the Nullarbor (no trees) plain north of Melbourne. Sydney is spectacular, but I like Melbourne better.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I guess right now, the top two candidates are Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Neither of them are the best possible choices, but Villaraigosa is a lightweight who almost makes Newsom look like the second coming of Winston Churchill.
A Ghost to Most
@Brachiator: That’s depressing, that Cali can’t put up a Democrat better than those two.
debbie
Sessions is full of shit. Threatening the press is like blaming the ocean for containing the shark that bit your leg off. The leaks are coming from Trump’s staff, and it is the staff who Sessions should be threatening.
Quinerly
OT…I want to have Vicente Fox’s babies?: http://crooksandliars.com/2017/08/vicente-fox-well-never-pay-fcking-wall
A Ghost to Most
These fucking people
My dad tried to buy me a life membership to the NRA 30 years ago, but I refused it. Never felt better about that than right now.
jl
@Brachiator: @A Ghost to Most:
State Treasurer John Chiang is running. Probably doesn’t have much chance. I think he would be far better than the other Dems.
It’ll probably be either Newsom or Villaraigosa, since the non-insane GOPers, who have more than a 1 percent chance of winning the general and shown interest, have been pushed out by the party because they are not insane.
Anyway, I am for Chiang, since might as well show some symbolic support in the primary.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SgrAstar:
It’s also worth noting those two conversations completely undermine Trump’s claim to be a master deal maker. They were nothing more that him begging guys to do Trump a favor because Trump is so special, not Trump doing a horse trade. In fact what Trump was doing – telling the other guy want Trump wants, is the exact opposite of what they tell sales.
Quinerly
OT…the guy who introduced Trump to the Mooch is having a great time in New Zealand on the taxpayers’ dime. Plus his dog has her own twitter: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scott-brown-time-of-his-life-new-zealand-samoa
A Ghost to Most
@jl:
Sounds like a better choice, but Newsom and Villarigosa sucking all the oxygen can’t help.
Of course, Colorado is in a similar boat, having to replace Hick. I am rooting for Jared Polis, (D-Peoples Republic of Boulder), as my coal-humping colleagues call it.
Quinerly
Interesting Josh Marshall piece: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/were-back-to-manafort
Brachiator
@jl:
Yep. I agree that Chiang would be a great choice. He’s been very impressive in a couple of interviews I’ve heard with him.
Old Broad in California
@jl: It will probably be Newsom. Villaraigosa is slimy and not well liked either in the LA area, or by Hispanics, his two supposedly areas of strong support. Chiang would be good but is not well known and is a bit too Gray Davis colorless to get in, I suspect.
Frankensteinbeck
@A Ghost to Most:
This is truly the platonic ideal of projection. Because they can’t deal with the brownness of this world, conservatives have created their own fantasy world. To stay in it, they have to scream that everyone else is the liar. Amazing.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I agree with this take. This is not a problem of this election or who ran. This is a problem of our government that has been building for a long time. Congress has abdicated a lot of their power and at the same time has increased power in running the other 2/3 by having to approve so many people and the entire conservative mind set of no need to do anything because the government doesn’t work. . Their house isn’t really in any better order than the current executive branch. Just a very little bit less obvious.
prostratedragon
@Quinerly: This has been my background hum all day. Makes me wonder how Manafort got into Trump’s campaign in the first place, a likely path beyond the money story –not to minimize the apparent laundering and graft, but if someone has tried to sell or otherwise destroy the country it needs to come out.
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
I think we may have been harmed initially by Nixon being indited/tried but in the long term I think it would have been a very good thing for the stability of the country and that we actually would have a rule of law. The fact that people think that the president can do whatever the fuck s/he wants is a horrible way to run a country. Especially if the president thinks that. Case in point, our current asshole in charge.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: They did, but the Democrats probably need something like a six- or seven-point lead in the popular vote to actually take the House back against the Republicans’ districting advantage–and since the same thing is happening on the level of state legislatures, who control districting, it’s even unlikely this situation is going to change after the next census (not to mention the administration is fucking with the census itself).
It may be 2030 or 2040 at the very earliest before the US even has a chance of something like a free and fair election.
Quinerly
@prostratedragon:
I remember when Manafort originally joined he was sold as a Bob Dole connection. Had managed campaign(s) for him back in the day. Dole, for what it is worth, went all in for Trump at that point. I was suspicious then. The Dole connection added an air of Republican legitimacy, I suppose.
Quinerly
Fuck Dershowitz: http://www.wabcradio.com/2017/08/04/alan-dershowitz-tells-rita-cosby-new-mueller-d-c-grand-jury-racially-and-ethnically-stacked-against-trump/
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
At the moment, we have somewhere between a 9 and 20 point lead. Can it hold up? I pray so.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I think it’s more like 4-5 points, which is not enough for a win–see the aggregate here:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2018-national-house-race
PPP’s polls showing a 10-point gap get a lot of publicity, but they seem to be a consistently high outlier. The interesting thing is that Trump being a dumbass in office hasn’t budged this margin at all–both parties are just losing voters to “undecided”, which does not reassure me.
Matt McIrvin
…Now the thing that could save us is if there’s a Democratic turnout wave that confounds the models in all these polls. That could definitely happen.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
But in the elections so far, haven’t we heavily outperformed that? Come close to winning the +20R elections that were put up by the GOP precisely because they were utterly safe?
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: In some high-profile cases, at least. It’s not clear to me that they’re indicative. If they are, they might be signs of that confounding turnout wave.
Gin & Tonic
@Quinerly: Those of us who know Eastern Europe knew what he was all along.
Quinerly
@Gin & Tonic:
Yep. I agree. But there was the Dole connection that was sold in the beginning of his tenure with Trump.
KS in MA
@Quinerly: Fox is the REAL most interesting man in the world!
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: I’ll believe that there will be a Democratic Wave when I hear stories of voters on their own starting to register to vote. I seriously doubt that hatred of Trump is going to get people in CA to, say, come out to vote for their representative. Our voters are peculiarly obtuse when it comes to voting in mid terms. If they didn’t come out in 2010 and 2014 because the economy was “bad”, they probably aren’t going to come out if the economy is good and they sure as hell aren’t going to come out because immigrants are being treated unfairly. I think our voters might be lower information than Republican voters, who at least seem to understand that if you want to fuck over immigrants, gays, feminists and hippies, you should vote for Congressmen who promise to do all those things. Our voters never seemed to make the connection between “Obama gets what he wants” and “Needs a Congress to vote for those things” and “Gee whiz, the Governor of the state is an important office, too. Maybe I should pay attention to that.”
Uncle Cosmo
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
FTFY. (I presume you simply typed the wrong chamber of Congress.)
The most populous House district (MT-AL) is less than twice the size of the least (RI-1). Which makes it far more democratic than the Senate, where California’s Senators represent over 67 times as many people as do Wyoming’s.
Matt McIrvin
@Peale: Is this, however, a persistent characteristic of Democrats, or is it a characteristic of being in the party that has the Presidency? The historical data are ambiguous–there was an impressive Democratic midterm wave in 2006, but none in 2002, but 2002 was a very special case (the 9/11 election, more or less). 1998 was kind of a wash, under the shadow of Monicagate; Republicans were expected to gain but didn’t, much. 1994 was a 2010-like countercyclical avalanche for the Republicans. Get back before Clinton and you’re really in a very different political world.
I’m guessing there’s a Republican advantage term and a countercyclic-advantage term, more or less, but I don’t know what the proportion is.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Nor me. “Undecided” voters are the dumbest bastards in the pack.
@Peale:
This, also, too.
Quinerly
@KS in MA:
I like the way you think!
Quinerly
I’ll leave this here. No other recent appropriate thread up. Worth the read: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/03/tangled-web-connects-russian-oligarch-money-gop-campaigns
Quinerly
Wouldn’t it be nice if Rohrabacher went down with the Trump Titanic: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-94143120/
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: Well, you see, we have quite a few demographic groups that vote +10 or more in our favor, but a lot of those are new voters and non-habitual voters. So I’m leaning towards we may get some kind of anti-presidential surge, but probably not enough to overcome the GOP advantage in habitual voters. We need to vote like African american women in terms of turnout, but we don’t as a whole. And we aren’t going to make much headway until white millennials stop this crap of voting like their parents and eligible Hispanics and Asians stop voting with turnout at rates 20% below their white citizen friends in every singe election. I don’t see that happening. Maybe there will be a few more white professionals who are horrified by the whole thing who’ll carry the day, and college educated voters do vote in mid terms more than non-college educated…but until the turnout rate situation changes, there isn’t enough anger we can generate to make our voters turn out like African American women. I would not count on Democratic voter anger until I see it. Come on voters, prove me wrong!
Ian Robinson
It’s all fun and games until it’s too late. It’s amazing how we are not seeing the level of outrage we say when the entire media was consumed about emails on a server. Here we are, watching our fundamental rights being chipped away and it’s like we’ve come to an acceptance of it as the new normal. Unbelievable!!
Kenneth Almquist
According to David Frum:
1) “The two transcripts belong to calls whose substance was already widely reported in the media; they give away nothing new.”
2) “Both calls make the foreign leader(s) look good at home.”
3) “No high national-security secret has been betrayed in these transcripts.”
So what’s the problem? Frum claims that, “If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked—and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home.” But leaks of classified information have been a constant in Washington throughout my lifetime, most often of classified information where the case for classifying it is less than compelling. I’d say that the case for classifying these conversations is pretty much nonexistent. If the transcripts contained statements that would prove politically embarrassing to the foreign leaders talking to Trump, then the transcripts should be classified to avoid embarrassing foreign leaders and preventing them from being candid in future conversations with the United States. But Frum states (point 2) that that is not the case here.
Frum may be right when he claims that, “leaking the transcript of a presidential call to a foreign leader is unprecedented,” but leaking of classified material which is embarrassing to U.S. politicians and which probably shouldn’t have been classified in the first place is an old story. Another occurrance of isn’t a sign that stuff that actually needs to be classified is going to be leaked.