Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yes we did.

We have all the best words.

Han shot first.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Too inconsequential to be sued

I’m going back to the respite thread.

I really should read my own blog.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Not all heroes wear capes.

The revolution will be supervised.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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109Comments

  1. 1.

    efgoldman

    Why does everything have to cost so much?

    Because it’s a house and you “own” it.
    Now that I’m home, we have to chase the refi for a $15-28k septic system, mandated by state.
    And the small matter of a leaking oil tank in the basement. Somebody (not us) has to clean it up, remove and replace it. Fortunately I have a very large (multi thousands $$) credit with the oil company. And we don’t have a bulkhead/walk in

  4. 4.

    M4

    Progress is progress! I secretly hope to have my own money-pit of endless home improvement projects some day, whenever I’m done with city living.

    It was Free RPG Day today, so me and a friend went down to the nerd store and got some tabletop adventure booklets. Tonight I might stay in and play Stardew Valley or something, had a stressful week.

  5. 5.

    efgoldman

    @M4:

    I secretly hope to have my own money-pit of endless home improvement projects

    Be careful what you wish for

  8. 8.

    efgoldman

    @debbie:

    Whatever is in the way back corner seems to be growing very well.

    Hemp?

  10. 10.

    raven

    I look back on the 4 year sewer/house addition and think, this is just where we live now.

  11. 11.

    Skepticat

    Homeowners never finish the project list; I think there’s a law about it.

    And speaking of, does anyone think it wildly ironic that Jeff Sessions says, “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” Law for thee but not for me, I guess.

  12. 12.

    Humdog

    Do you have access to stone from a friend’s property? Not river stone, but either gravel or flagstone? Maybe it isn’t too expensive as it is a local product. Stone is the only path material that could withstand periodic flooding.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    @efgoldman:

    And we don’t have a bulkhead/walk in

    That sounds like what they call “an issue.” We have a bulkhead, and they still had to cut the old tank in half to get it out. We replaced it with a Roth tank – more expensive, but I don’t feel like dealing with an oil spill in the basement ever again.

  14. 14.

    Humdog

    @efgoldman: I have the pleasure of paying for a new mound sewer system. I am going to imagine I bought a $25,000 car and buried it in the yard. Major lawn destruction is just a bonus.

  15. 15.

    efgoldman

    @M4:

    doesn’t look like any, er, hemp I’ve ever seen.

    I have a black thumb. I killed African Violets and those common ivies that will take over the whole room if you let them . I could trip over a hemp plant and wouldn’t know it from poisoned Romaine lettuce.

  17. 17.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Skepticat: As a friend said, the idea that the laws of the USA in the year 2018 are to be based on a 2,000 year-old collection of myths is terrifying.

  18. 18.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Humdog: Old guy here in rural RI buried his wife in her car. Not in their yard, in a real cemetery – bought 3-4 adjacent plots, and buried the car and her in it (after she’d died, of course.) He said “she really loved that car.”

  21. 21.

    divF

    @efgoldman: Oil-fired furnaces seem exotic to us Californians. On the other hand, seismic upgrades – shear walls, helical piers, reinforced concrete foundations – provide a considerable money sink, and are equally bizarre to those of you not in earthquake country.

    ETA: In the Three Little Pigs, the house made of bricks (unreinforced masonry) would have been uninsurable out here.

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    Get used to it – with a house that old, every time you fix one thing, two more break. The drainage solution will make the topsoil look cheap. I need to get my house painted inside and out and replace the driveway and roof. I have enough saved, but I just keep putting off getting the estimates because those big checks are hard to write.

    But more cheerfully, this thread is hilarious:

    Heads up!

    You can send prison inmates completely unsolicited mail!#PaulManafort
    Inmate Number 00045343
    Northern Neck Regional Jail
    PO Box 1060
    Warsaw, VA 22572 pic.twitter.com/4cyYNsBurH— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) June 16, 2018

  25. 25.

    Shana

    @raven: Aren’t you happy with the addition though?

    We did end up getting the max $20,000 back from the Virginia Contractor’s Fund to partially make up for the fraud of our original contractor. Didn’t cover the additional money it cost to hire a replacement to finish the addition/remodel but it did help. We do love the new kitchen though.

  31. 31.

    raven

    Lar par is a stressful ailment where the two folds of the larynx (or voice box) do not open and close as the patient breathes in and out. The folds remain closed – paralyzed – and the patient literally suffocates. This can be fixed with “tie back” surgery, which involves placing 2 strands of heavy nylon to open the left side of the larynx.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    Why does everything have to cost so much?

    Because Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Sinzo Abe, and Enrique Pena Nieto are ripping you off. You need fair and reciprocal trade!//

  36. 36.

    Doug R

    @Skepticat:

    does anyone think it wildly ironic that Jeff Sessions says, “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” Law for thee but not for me, I guess.

    As Stephen Colbert pointed out, Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions the turd stopped reading too early, he missed Romans 13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

  39. 39.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @M4: Last I saw about Elon is that he’s apparently buying the rejected Note 7 batteries. Then again, no matter where you go Elon will be with you. He has a rocket, don’t ya know.

  40. 40.

    ruemara

    I dunno, having a home is worth the forever to-do list.

    Taking a baklava break before I shoot my last two bands for the night. As much as I love shooting events, by the middle of the first day I hate crowds, amateur photographer & … well, darned near everyone.

  42. 42.

    Yarrow

    @raven: Didn’t know you’d decided to go with the surgery. Hope it all turns out well. Have you scheduled it yet?

  46. 46.

    Duane

    John, when you showed the picture of your flooded back yard, it looked like your shed was blocking the natural drainage area. Did the shed flood? Lots of water build up in front of it.

  48. 48.

    Ohio Mom

    @Gin & Tonic: Probably not. My friend’s son spent some time in the local jail for one too many DUIs. We discovered there are a lot of rules about what we could mail him: no books directly, they have to be purchased via Amazon, and no greeting cards with glitter were two of them I still remember.

  51. 51.

    Yutsano

    @ruemara: Speaking of which…
    I just re-signed my lease Thursday.

    Today I did a quick run to the drugstore and went a different way than I normally do.

    Where I spotted a house for rent that would be perfect for me.

    FML and stuff.

  58. 58.

    Gin & Tonic

    @M4: From what I’ve read, it’s a pretty novel concept: you put groups of people together in a sort of compartment that travels underground, on rails, stopping at certain designated locations to add or discharge passengers. I’m just shocked nobody has ever tried this sort of thing before.

  60. 60.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Gin & Tonic: Actually, Elon’s thing is a bit different. They have car elevators that put the cars on sleds and move the cars from point to point. The big expense and what consumes the most time with subway construction is station boxes, tunneling’s quick.

    On that note, I have to get things ready to take Madame to the hills to see the stars and for me to take Milky Way pics. Don’t shoot anyone with those free RPG’s.

  61. 61.

    Mary G

    @Gin & Tonic: Unfortunately not, it can only be a letter and they don’t even get that itself:

    Yes, that's NNRJ's process. They read it all, then give inmates a photocopy of the letter and other contents, and shred the original (not file it, I misstated that), the envelope, and anything else in it (including photos, drawings and news clippings).— MiseryX (@MiseryXchord) June 16, 2018

    Evidently people were soaking paper in opiods or other drugs, so the prison opens every one.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @John Cole:

    Why are you letting that javelina root around in your backyard?

  65. 65.

    Yarrow

    @Mary G: If the inmates get a photocopy of the letter and contents then Manafort could be getting lots of photos of dog shit.

  66. 66.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    ” They have free rocket propelled grenade day in San Francisco? ”
    Not sure it’s a good idea for you to come up to Northern California.
    Let us know the dates, so we can hunker down up here.

  67. 67.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Also Musk said he doesn’t like mass transit where you have to tolerate presence of other people in your vicinity. Muskian transit policy has its limitations. He’ll only consider modes that provide some kind of personal protection wrapper. A pod, or a car, or whatever.

    Edit: please post your promised Milky Way pix. Thanks in advance.

  68. 68.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Ohio Mom:

    We discovered there are a lot of rules about what we could mail him: … no greeting cards with glitter

    Outrageous! Why are prisoners treated better than we free people are?

  71. 71.

    jl

    I for one think Cole’s backyard looks good, and will get even better.
    It has a handsome dog, rustic wheelbarrow, and from what I understand from other commenters, some nice dope hidden away some place in the back. Good job, cole.

  72. 72.

    jl

    @Gin & Tonic: @Adam L Silverman: All I know is that I read a news item on Musk, where he said (paraphrase) being exposed to random people during one’s personal transit was icky.
    Seems like that is a driving factor in his transit ideas.
    If he wants to sink loads of money into supersonic underground pods, fine with me. Might be of some use.
    Around these parts, I’ve heard people talk about Musk being a transit visionary, but if so, I think his visions has some limits.

  73. 73.

    sdhays

    @jl: It amazes me how anyone can listen to someone who hates the very concept of mass transit opine on mass transit. He’s a billionaire. He has plenty of money to enjoy the weather deep up his own ass without having to share his personal space with any of us plebes. He just stick to playing with his rockets (he seems intent on running Tesla into the ground ASAP as well).

  74. 74.

    sdhays

    @jl: As Atrios likes to point out, it would be fine for him to sink loads of money into his subway for billionaires if that’s all that this meant, but no matter how much of his own money he promises to flush down the toilet just to watch it swirl, the real money is going to come from taxpayers, and his ideas are the equivalent of lighting that money on fire simply for the amusement of incredibly wealthy people. It can’t benefit regular people, certainly not enough to justify the costs. He doesn’t even want to build routes that regular people would use. He wants to build a route from his house to the airport (essentially).

  75. 75.

    Yarrow

    Elon Musk seems like one of those billionaires who gets more and more eccentric as they get older.

  76. 76.

    B.B.A.

    @jl: Musk grew up in apartheid South Africa. Segregation from the filthy, dark-skinned masses comes naturally to him.

    I visited SA a couple of years ago. It’s still very segregated, although now instead of Sandton being all white and Alexandra being all black, Sandton has rich people of all races while Alexandra is still all black.

  77. 77.

    jl

    @sdhays: I agree. If any taxpayer money, local or otherwise, gets sucked into Musk’s transit dreams around here, I’ll make a hell of a fuss. I’d have to see some legitimate evidence it passed some cost-benefit test that did not put a big value on a billionaire’s aversion to coming near ordinary people. I don’t see how it can do that.

    I’ve been following delays and problems getting transit improvements finished around SF Bay Area. From what expert analysis is in the news, it is depressing. Turns out, with BART, the original system is so old, that it is difficult to find system monitoring and control technology currently produced that can be integrated with stuff built in the 1960s and 1970s. So some expansions have come in far under budget, but are delayed due to endless testing and jury-rigging to integrate the systems.

    But some people here are impressed by a billionaire goofing around with levitating personal pods. While other countries have levitating trains.
    Maglev
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:

    Be careful what you wish for

    No kidding, owning a home is nice. No bugging the landlord/manager to fix stuff, you get to handle it all on your own. Either fix it yourself or pay someone to come in at their convenience and price to do it for you. And as EFG and I can attest (among others) at some point you really don’t want to play do it yourself, if you ever did.

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    @Doug R:
    He didn’t stop reading too early, he stopped reading because he’d found what he thinks is a loophole for him to do whatever the fuck he wants. Jesus could tell him in person that he’s going to hell and he wouldn’t believe him. Because he’s a racist fuck. It’s in his name, what else could he be with that moniker? I mean his initials spell out what he is JBS, Just Bigoted Shithead.

  83. 83.

    ronp

    hey don’t pile dirt up against the fence (assuming the fence is wood) it will make the wood rot, it will wick up all the moisture from the soil.

  84. 84.

    eclare

    @Humdog: Same here, $10K for the new line to the street, and then about $3k for new sod. But I will say the El Toro Zosia has been resistant and wonderful. I haven’t watered it in at least six years.

  85. 85.

    EBT

    Someone decided to show up at a partner’s place of work with a rifle, then walk past her slowly several times while glaring at her.

  86. 86.

    Jager

    @Humdog: We’re replacing our septic system in a couple of months, the bids have run from a low of just under 40k to around 80. for a 2 stage system,, house to a double tank, an automatic pump takes the shit to a mound 75 yards away. (The city sewer system ends about a block away.) In California the system is sized by the number of bedrooms. When the guy we bought the house from moved here in 68, it was a 1 bedroom, 1 bath 980 sq foot weekend retreat. He did some remodeling, all un-permitted. The house is now a 3 bedroom, 3 bath with 2470 sq feet. He’s paying for the septic system, we wrote it into the sales contract. And yes, everyday when I look in the mirror I ask myself why the hell are two people and Anze the Dog living in a house this god damn big. We’ve had some great parties, so there’s that.

  87. 87.

    ? Martin

    @EBT: Geez, nice. Thankfully that’s a felony where I live. Hell, walking by several times while glaring without a rifle is pretty damn close to a felony as well.

  88. 88.

    EBT

    @? Martin: Posted no carry at the store, so an automatic trespass. Using a weapon to intimidate is a felony, and she is queer so it’s a hate crime.

  89. 89.

    jl

    @Jager: ” it was a 1 bedroom, 1 bath 980 sq foot weekend retreat. He did some remodeling, all un-permitted. The house is now a 3 bedroom, 3 bath with 2470 sq feet. ”

    ‘some’ remodelling? And no permits?

  91. 91.

    EBT

    @John Revolta: Cameras filmed him coming in, harassing her, and walking back to his car. She is a manager so I assume shit is rolling downhill on to the guy?

  92. 92.

    Jager

    @jl: Yep, where we live was the “wild west, until the late 80’s, it was an unincorporated part of Ventura County. People just did what ever the hell they wanted. The canyon we live in, has an interesting history, we’re right next to LA County and during prohibition, the first house built on our 5 house road was a gambling den/speakeasy/whorehouse. All the Ventura cops were on the coast and the LA County cops couldn’t cross the county line. It was a popular destination. The Spahn movie ranch where Charlie Manson holed up isn’t far from here.
    The old whorehouse has been remodeled and a nice young couple with a darling little girl live there. There’s a house at the end of our street that was owned by Sonny Barger’s number two man in the Hell’s Angels, it’s been used in numerous movie shoots. I see rock formations all the time that I’ve seen in old westerns. Our house was built as a retreat in ’22, we’re only the 3rd owners.

  93. 93.

    El Caganer

    @Doug R: Love is the Law, Love under Will. Maybe that doesn’t apply, though, since that’s Aleister Crowley, not Paul.

  94. 94.

    Suzanne

    @Ruckus:

    No kidding, owning a home is nice. No bugging the landlord/manager to fix stuff, you get to handle it all on your own.

    Sore subject.
    So I had a 30-year-old jacaranda in my backyard. One of its branches was down low and very large, and in the summer monsoons, it was impacting the CMU fence between my house and our neighbor’s. So we paid to repair the fence and to have the tree professionally trimmed by a tree service (not a regular landscaper), including removal of the big bough. Well, removing the big bough killed the tree. We were unhappy, not only because the tree was beautiful, but because removing it was going to be at least a grand.

    So fast forward, and Mr. Suzanne mentions the saga to our regular yard guy. (This being Phoenix, all the landscapers are Latino. Probably most of them are undocumented.) Yard guy offers to remove it for $300. Dude and his crew were out here with the big chainsaw at 7 AM chopping it down. Turns out the tree isn’t completely dead, and one of the trunks was salvageable, so he cut it way, way back and it has some green sticking out of it. Crossed fingers. We tipped them very generously.

    Anyway, immigrants (with or without documents) work their asses off. And homeownership is a pain, but so is renting.

  95. 95.

    Mary G

    @Suzanne: I had a jacaranda in front of my house in South Pasadena. I loved that tree. My next door neighbor had had his killed by a truck – it was a narrow little street only a block long, so trucks were a rarity. Every time he saw one coming he would rush out and yell at the driver to be careful.

  96. 96.

    jl

    @Jager: I’ve passed through the area many times. Have some friends and ex-students near there. You live near BillinGlendale’s ancestral stomping grounds. I’m afraid to go exploring there. Except I have gone walking around Corriganville.

  97. 97.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    I know of a number of fellas who work in landscape architecture, the company owner has been a naturalized citizen for over 20 yrs. I build a 16 ft wide 8 ft tall rolling gate for him and a 20 ft x 8 ft for his neighbor. His crew are some of the hardest working men I’ve ever known and I’ve been a blue collar worker for most of my life. And while I still work in a machine shop I don’t lift the steel like I used to. My total limit for projects when I ran my shop by myself 25 yrs ago was 1200 lb of steel. No I didn’t lift it but I did have to move it and a lot of the individual pieces I did lift. Anyway they dig footings with shovels and mix and pour concrete using a wheelbarrow because most of the stuff is too small to buy premix or even rent a mixer. It’s old school and it’s tough work in the summer. I know from hard work, so do a lot of people I know. Those lazy ass fucking racist assholes who are ruining our country right now, they each should get 20 yrs at hard labor. Picking crops, digging ditches with a shovel or how about the one that was used for malcontents in boot camp, you dig a 6 ft deep hole in sand, fill it back in and do it all over again, until you get the drift that you don’t get to decide what you will and won’t do. And BTW the fellas digging that sand hole each had an armed guard watching them the entire time. Now those guys were 17-21 yrs old and it was a workout so I’d bet someone like our perfectly healthy president could do it. I’ll offer to stand guard. In fact I’d be honored to.

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @EBT:

    I’m assuming that happened here in Cali and not in one of those fucking backwards states where the cops shrug off anyone who open carries?

  100. 100.

    Gretchen

    We took some money out of the retirement, thinking we’d finally fix up the bathroom. Then the sewer backed up – turned out the pipes were corroded, and they had to dig up the basement floor and replace them. $7000. Then we had a major mouse infestation – guy came out, trapped, blocked all the holes, baited, checks back – $1000. That $8000 would have made a much nicer bathroom than the present linoleum-tub liner room. Instead, we have a house that’s no more attractive than it ever was. Except, I suppose, less sewage and fewer mice.

  101. 101.

    Aleta

    Trump is sweating as raging hellfires burn the soles of his shoes, so it’s time for Miller to be fed to the press again. Try to bait the Sunday shows away from the week’s atrocities.

    It was Bush, who … ran for president as a “compassionate conservative,” who initiated the “zero tolerance” approach for illegal immigration on which Trump’s policy is modeled. In 2005, he launched Operation Streamline, a program along a stretch of the border in Texas that referred all unlawful entrants for criminal prosecution, imprisoning them and expediting assembly-line-style trials geared toward quickly deporting them.

    The initiative … was soon expanded to more border sectors. Back then, however, exceptions were generally made for adults who were traveling with minor children, as well as juveniles and people who were ill.

    Mr. Obama’s administration employed the program at the height of the migration crisis as well, although it generally did not treat first-time border crossers as priorities for prosecution, and it detained families together in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody — administrative, rather than criminal, detention.

    Discussions began almost immediately after Trump took office about vastly expanding Operation Streamline, with almost none of those limitations. Even after Kelly stopped talking publicly about family separation, the Department of Homeland Security quietly tested the approach last summer in certain areas in Texas.

    Privately, Miller argued that bringing back “zero tolerance” would be a potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping migrants from flooding across the border. The idea was to end a practice … in which illegal immigrants apprehended at the border are released into the interior of the United States to await the processing of their cases.

    The situation was even more complicated when children were involved. A 2008 law meant to combat the trafficking of minors places strict requirements on how unaccompanied migrant children from Central America are to be treated.

    Minors from Mexico or Canada — countries contiguous with the United States — can be quickly sent back to their home countries unless it is deemed dangerous to do so. But those from other nations cannot be quickly returned; they must be transferred within 72 hours to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, and placed in the least restrictive setting possible. And the Flores ruling meant that children and families could not be held for more than 20 days.

    In October, after Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that gave legal status to undocumented immigrants raised in the United States, Miller insisted that any legislative package to codify those protections contain changes to close what he called loopholes. …

    And in April Miller was instrumental in Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy.

    “A big name of the game is deterrence,” Kelly, now the chief of staff, told NPR in May. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever — but the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”

    Technically, there is no Trump administration policy stating that illegal border crossers must be separated from their children. But the “zero tolerance policy” results in unlawful immigrants being taken into federal criminal custody, at which point their children are considered unaccompanied alien minors and taken away.

    Unlike Mr. Obama’s administration, Trump’s is treating all people who have crossed the border without authorization as subject to criminal prosecution, even if they tell the officer apprehending them that they are seeking asylum based on fear of returning to their home country, and whether or not they have their children in tow.

    “Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution,” perjurer Jeff Sessions said in a speech on Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind.

    “I would cite my false christian piousness” said Sessions, quoting Bible verse to justify his lies and racism as he took exception to evangelical leaders who have called the practice abhorrent. “Because (distortion) (deception) (misstatement) for the purpose of order.”

    -NYT (mostly)

  102. 102.

    Mai naem mobile

    @Suzanne: the house I grew up in as a kid had 4 huge jacaranda trees. My parents would park their cars under the trees and during the blooming season my parents the cars would have a carpet of the purple flowers almost daily. Anyhow, so I’ve always loved jacaranda trees. We planted one last year but jeezus they’re not the fastest growers in the world. I ran into an arborist while I was getting my tire fixed and I mentioned the jacaranda. She said that it’s a tropical tree and needs deep watering every 4 to 5 days. She said something about watering it enough so that the top inch of soil is still wet 24 hrs after watering.

  103. 103.

    sukabi

    July 2016 was a busy time for the FBI…this is something that I didn’t see at the time…

    business partner of Arron Banks, the biggest funder of Brexit, passed confidential legal documents to high-ranking officials at the Russian embassy and then denied it to parliament.

    The documents related to George Cottrell, an aide to Nigel Farage who was with him on the campaign trail for Donald Trump in July 2016. Cottrell was arrested by the FBI and charged with 21 counts of money laundering, bribery and wire fraud.

    …

    According to material seen by the Observer, Wigmore, who was Belize’s trade envoy to Britain at the time, forwarded an email to a Russian diplomat marked “Fw Cottrell docs – Eyes Only”. It is understood the email, dated 20 August 2016, showed six attachments of legal documents relating to Cottrell’s arrest by federal agents. It appears that Wigmore sent it to Sergey Fedichkin , a third secretary at the Russian embassy, saying: “Have fun with this.”

    Collins asked Wigmore and Banks a series of questions about Cottrell’s arrest. He noted Wigmore was with Cottrell when federal agents seized him at Chicago airport on 26 July 2016, and that Farage was sent his charge sheet by the FBI. “Did you discuss George Cottrell’s arrest with the Russian embassy?” Collins asked. Wigmore replied: “It never came up. While at the time it probably seemed a big thing, there was so much else going on at the time it just was not an issue. It never came up.”

    Collins told the Observer: “Wigmore kept trying to make the point that their contact with the Russian embassy was around social occasions, but we believe it went much further. On the surface, these documents didn’t hold any interest to the Russians, so why did they appear to pass them on? And why then deny it? Why did they mislead the committee about the true nature of their relationship? What are they trying to hide?”

    …

    In October the Russian ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, was identified by US special counsel Robert Mueller as a high-level intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The documents about Cottrell’s arrest appear to have been handed over during a period in which Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had his business dealings in Ukraine exposed and was replaced by Steve Bannon.

    The New York Times published a story about a secret ledger of payments to Manafort – that were paid via the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles – on 14 August 2016. On 19 August, the day that Bannon became campaign manager, Wigmore and Banks were invited to lunch at the embassy with Yakovenko. And on 20 August, documents suggest, Wigmore appears to have sent the papers about Cottrell’s arrest.

    A few days later Farage, along with Wigmore and Banks, travelled to meet Trump in Mississippi, where he introduced the crowd to “Mr Brexit” and promised to deliver “Brexit plus”.

  104. 104.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Aleta:

    Please don’t slide down the slope of mixing “satire” with quotes that you expect to be taken as from legitimate sources.

  107. 107.

    tobie

    @sukabi: The Belize angle is interesting. I guess the country makes some money laundering the ill-gotten gains of Russian oligarchs. I hadn’t made that connection.

  109. 109.

    Ohio Mom

    @Steve in the ATL: That rule would have totally flummoxed my grandmother, who never sent a greeting card that didn’t have glitter. Like the rule about having the staff xerox the originals, the rule against glitter has to do with preventing mind-altering substances from reaching inmates.

    I know this thread is dead but the most ridiculous thing about Elon’s idea for Chicago is that that there already is a perfectly nice subway line from the airport to downtown; takes a little over half an hour, and has connections to many other lines.

    I took it last month on a Saturday. It would have been better had there been an express option, maybe there is on the weekdays? The signage was very easy to follow too. I grew up on the NYC subway and I know a nice line when I see one.

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