Trump is lying about the border situation again this morning. Here’s one tweet with five sentences — each a bald-faced lie:
Mexico is paying for the Wall through the new USMCA Trade Deal. Much of the Wall has already been fully renovated or built. We have done a lot of work. $5.6 Billion Dollars that House has approved is very little in comparison to the benefits of National Security. Quick payback!
Trump is holding a meeting on border security with Democrats and Republicans today, according to The Post:
President Trump invited congressional leaders to the White House for a briefing on border security, the first face-to-face session involving Republicans and Democrats as the partial government shutdown entered its second week.
The briefing will occur one day before Democrats take control of the House and Trump gets his first taste of divided government.
It was unclear whether the Wednesday session would break the budget impasse — in its 11th day Tuesday — as Trump has demanded billions of dollars for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and Democrats have rejected his request. Trump had campaigned on a pledge to build the wall at Mexico’s expense, a proposition Mexican officials called ludicrous.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security are scheduled to brief the top two leaders in each party in the House and the Senate. “Border Security and the Wall ‘thing’ and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker! Let’s make a deal?” Trump tweeted Tuesday.
In reply to the “let’s make a deal” tweet, Pelosi in essence told Trump to blow his “deal” out his ass. But perhaps more instructive was her response to the lies about the border situation that Trump read off index cards during his televised dust-up with Pelosi and Schumer on December 11:
What the President is representing in terms of his cards over there are not factual. We have to have to an evidence-based conversation about what does work, what money has been spent, and how effective it is.
Bingo, once and future Madam Speaker. It all comes down to Trump’s willingness to tell shameless lies at an unprecedented volume. To borrow an annoying word from Silicon Valley, Trump’s shamelessness and lying “disrupted” politics as surely as Lyft and Uber wrenched the individual transportation industry right out from under old-school taxicab companies.
Our Beltway media still hasn’t adjusted to the shameless and constant lying. Millions of our fellow citizens are still walking around shell-shocked two years into the Trump LIElapalooza spectacle. It’s exhausting, and it never ends.
But now the Democrats are up to bat, and Greg Sargent at The Post makes a good case for centering their tenure on reclaiming the truth — and using the border wall fight as the opening salvo:
The near-total lack of GOP congressional oversight on the Trump administration hasn’t merely let President Trump’s corruption and authoritarianism run rampant. It has also allowed Trump’s bottomless dishonesty, bad faith and megalomaniacal delusions to fester unchecked when it comes to major governing decisions — and one glaring example is the government shutdown over his wall.
Democrats have a big opportunity to begin changing this. When they take over the House, they can use the oversight process not just to investigate Trumpian corruption and abuses, but also to try to restore facts, empiricism and good-faith information-gathering to a place in governing processes and debates…
Democrats have an opening. They should formally request that the Congressional Research Service do a comprehensive report on the current state of border security. This is exactly what the CRS is for. As CRS has explained, it provides lawmakers with detailed empirical information at all stages of the process, including helping them “better understand the existing situation” so they can “assess whether there is a problem requiring a legislative remedy…”
Democrats can also hold hearings at which Homeland Security officials are directly asked to testify to the state of border security. As it happens, a 2017 Homeland Security report found that the border is more secure than it has ever been, which also undercuts Trump’s wall rage-fantasies. Democrats could bring in the authors of that report and ask them to reiterate and explain this conclusion and justify “why we need to spend X dollars on a wall,” [Cornell Law Professor Josh] Chafetz noted, which “itself would make good television.”
Sargent admits the obvious — lies travel faster than truth. Hearings and reports won’t yield as much click-bait as xenophobic lies. But he notes that “effectively presented truths can also go viral” — as happened when someone smuggled audio of crying children from one of Trump’s baby jails.
The meeting Trump called is reportedly taking place in the Situation Room to underscore the national security implications of the border fight. Or maybe that location was chosen to give Trump an excuse to keep the press out so he doesn’t get his balls handed to him on live TV again.
In either case, I hope Nancy Pelosi will make another statement emphasizing the importance of having a reality-based debate on border security funding. Insisting on the truth having a role in policy-making will be an uphill battle given that the president is a pathological liar, everyone in his party is either a spineless enabler and/or evil knave, and too many Beltway journalists are maladaptive, lazy and/or dumb as a bag of hair. But the truth is worth fighting for!
schrodingers_cat
From the last thread:
I am seeing an uptick in posts on the rose Twitter, arguing that Ds and Rs are the same because they blame foreigners for all our problems. One side blames Russians and the other side blames immigrants from central and south America. I suspect that they are Russian trolls. Has BS said anything about this showdown over the wall?
Also some blabbering about the Green New Deal and how throwing immigrants under the bus for a deal with the Orange One will get us progressive nirvana.
mapaghimagsik
Shameless lying in some ways is starting to become the new norm. My company does it all the time. Its how we can pay a consulting company to call us an industry leader in security when we actually have very little actually in place that works. Sure, we buy a bunch of products, but in many cases, they are boxes that are not even connected to the entire network.
Of course, the CISO is trapped. If he calls out the fact the consultants are lying, then he hired bad people, and one Lotus is not enough, damnit!
I don’t know how to get us back to a facts-based reality.
Kraux Pas
Let me check and, yes, this is a day ending in ‘y.’
Right on schedule.
PST
Many of our evangelical brethren are conditioned to believe fables. Good Plum Line today.
rikyrah
The replies ????
When I say NFTG ???
This is so sad to me. Democrats are actually proud that 17 black women in Texas, who ran on a campaign of “Black Girl Magic” were elected as judges. How is this OK? Why are accepting this? A campaign based on race is not a good thing! #WednesdayWisdomhttps://t.co/D0WMpXR6yk
— #MAGA: How Donald Trump Will Save America (@GoFundTheWall19) January 2, 2019
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Lips pursed…
More of the economics solves everything from these phuckers.
Jerzy Russian
Now there is a radical idea: have an understanding of reality before making decisions. I will try doing that for a few days to see how it works before deciding if I want to do that full time.
Kraux Pas
@rikyrah:
This is apparently the most acceptable way that WednesdayWisdom* decided (s)he can express that (s)he is ashamed that black women were elected judges. Though I suppose that the notion that underrepresented groups seeking their fair share is somehow akin to over-represented groups seeking to cement their supremacy is at the core of the low-key racist ethos.
*Should change the name to FridayFoolery
khead
Look, I like the “idea” but let’s be real and ask – “Who really gives a shit about the CRS report?”
Chyron HR
Oh, good, I guess you didn’t need the five billion dollars after all.
MattF
@mapaghimagsik: The book Bad Blood backs this up– lying is the norm, at least in Silicon Valley. ‘Entrepreneurs’ lie about products (“It’ll work, real soon now.”) and policies (“We apologize. We won’t do it again. We promise.”).
The book tells the tale of Elizabeth Holmes, who brought the Silicon Valley ‘disruption’ approach to a health care niche– lab testing of blood. Turns out that when people’s lives are at stake, bullshit doesn’t thrive. As much.
Kraux Pas
@rikyrah:
Now I never would agree to any deal that specifically harmed a group of people (say immigrants) to further some economic goal. How we treat people, particularly vulnerable people in our care, is the supreme concern.
Still, the economics help. People who live around more immigrants are more likely to support immigration. Economic policies that broadly help all workers will give immigrants more freedom to choose what communities they live in, helping to integrate society.
Economics doesn’t solve everything, but it doesn’t solve nothing either.
mapaghimagsik
@MattF: I’ll have to check that book out. Perhaps it is the Silicon Valley mentality which is killing a certain company’s ability to safely deliver negative electrons and natural gas. Honestly, resumes are the worst. At least when I say I know a programming language, I have something like hackerrank or some sample code to back it up.
Maybe jail time is the only thing that will fix my corner of the universe.
JGabriel
WaPo:
That’s a good idea, but won’t Democrats need to make a few personnel changes first? Republicans have been in control of hiring decisions for the CRS for 8 years now. Haven’t they kind of stacked the CRS leadership with GOP apparatchiks at this point?
—————
Edited to add: I suppose, with the level of control Putin’s administration has over the GOP these days, that “apparatchik” is really not a metaphor anymore.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Did you see when I posted last week about Michael Moore being on Chris Hayes and saying that he doesn’t need to find out that happened in 2016?
Lips pursed so hard.
TS (the original)
@MattF:
Thrived for over 10 years in this instance – with help from the “very important people”
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Michael Moore is not a serious person. Who has been funding all his movies, I wonder?
Betty Cracker
@khead: I don’t think Sargent is suggesting that a report will among “effectively presented truths” that go viral. The report (and the hearings) are to establish a baseline of facts that can be used to hammer the orange shit-stain for lying about (and proposing to waste billions on) the border situation.
Gravenstone
@Chyron HR: Amazing how he always manages to undercut his own ‘arguments’ on the way to his next lie. Not that internal consistency is expected, or really even possible from him.
mapaghimagsik
@Gravenstone: I think the word is “matters”. Internal consistency doesn’t matter to him or his cult.
schrodingers_cat
@Kraux Pas: Economics is important as is the environment. But attacking Ds for not being pure enough is not going to help achieve the purported goals of those on the left. The purity left spends their time most of their time attacking Ds than attacking Rs.
JGabriel
@khead:
Realists, people in government who have to / want to make reality-based decisions, historians maybe, and voters who care whether the gov’t is making well-researched reality-based decisions. Admittedly, that last group may be a minority of voters, but wouldn’t it be pleasant to discover it’s not?
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: @rikyrah: I’ve been following the debate about the Green New Deal pretty closely and it’s become, as I feared, the new litmus test about whether Dems truly care about the environment or are weak-kneed neoliberal shills more beholden to the interests of their corporate masters than the people and the earth. There is no ‘green new deal’ as such. What AOC and the Sunrise Mvmt are pushing is a proposal for a select committee to draft a proposal to address climate change. Get that–it’s a proposal for a proposal for what looks like a ‘universal basic income’ program based on modern monetary theory. Pelosi met them halfway, forming a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis but that’s not enough. They want the whole enchilada.
One of their complaints is that Dems on the existing Energy and Commerce committee and especially the chair Frank Pallone are awash in fossil fuel money, so I did some searching on Open Secrets and discovered that Pallone did not receive donations of any significance from fossil fuel companies. His biggest funders come from the healthcare industry and pharmaceuticals, which makes sense for a NJ pol. Fifth in his list of funders were electric utilities, which could be construed as a fossil fuel concern, though my sense is that utility companies realize they have tons of money to earn from the creation of a smart grid. The other Dems on the committee have strong environmental records. I could go on but what I’ve gleaned is that the demand for a committee for a green new deal (and only that kind of committee) is a power grab on the part of Justice Dems. If you want to do something for the environment, call you Congressperson and ask them to support Ted Deutch’s carbon fee bill. This is by no means the only measure we need to take but it’s a start.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: A guy wrote a book called “Stupid White Men”*. I read it, Michael Moore fits the description.
* I’ll save you the Googling…the author is one Micheal Moore.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: Green New Deal is the Medicare for All of this cycle, meaning its the new wedge issue to split Ds.
JAFD
New Year’s Greetings from New Jersey, to all of you ladies, gentlemen, and fellow Juicers,
The old laptop, whose cooling fan now sounds like a P-40 ‘coming in on a wing and a prayer’, got supplemented with new one this Xmas. So not typing this one-finger on smartphone, means more verbiage for you…
(If you’re just tuning in to my story, I had a heart attack in October. The docs say that when I was in the cardiac catheter lab – trying to insert a balloon pump to assist it – my heart stopped twice, had to shock me to restart it.)
If I may give you some avdice:
1 – See the doctor occasionally. If he tells you the high blood pressure or chlorestrol or atrial fib will cause you trouble, do something about it. Heart attacks ain’t just inconvenient, they’re PAINFUL.
2 – If you think you’re having a heart attack, call the ambulance IMMEDIATELY. Don’t dilly-dally. The doctors today do things – every day – that would have been called miracles when I was young. But when it’s your die roll, you still want every modifier in your favor. Even if ’twas a false alarm, the EMT’s won’t mind.
3 – If you work at or frequent a place with a ‘defibrillator under glass’, read the instructions. Beforehand. If you know what you’re doing, You Can Save A Life.
OK, now some less serious stuf:
I have acquired a cardiologist and a Primary Care Physician. They are both half my age, female, and extraordinarily attractive. I do what they tell me. I am a Dirty Old Man, and I want them to smile at me.
Have appointments at the Cardiac Rehabilitation Center – ‘the hospital gym’ – doing my hamster imitation on the treadmills, three times a week ’till spring.
I am taking a bunch of medicines. Some times I chant their names to Handel’s music
“Clopidogrel,
Furosemide,
Metoprolol,
Panto-oo-prazole…”
Sometimes I think of a fantasy novel, in which they are wizards of dubious alignment…
Am wearing, 24/7, a portable defibrillator. There’s a battery-pack with touchscreen and non-panic button (press if alarm goes off but you feel OK). Worn on neck strap, it’s about size and weight of old 35-mm camera, occasionally makes me feel like tourist. Is attached to bunch of sensors and electrodes, kept in place by straps around chest and over shoulders. Mayhaps has given me new empathy for the trials of brassiere-wearing Americans…
Had invitations for holiday visits to out-of-town friends. Said “With the defibrillator, the second battery (change to recharge every day), the battery charger, the transformer for the battery charger, the dozen pill bottles – I have Too Much Baggage – literally!”
Lot of food just ‘doesn’t taste as good’. Have gotten sensitive to the taste of even slightly rancid cooking oils. Shocked at amount of salt in most of stuf on my shelves.
So, to you and everyone you care about, my best wishes for a healthy, happy, peaceful and prosperous 2019.
And in time of trouble, remember what the coach said, when they showed him The Robot Quarterback…
… “This, too, shall pass.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Tomorrow! We’ve almost made it to the 116th Congress! (I imagine Bill the Cat singing “Tomorrow, tomorrow, it’s only a litterbox away”, can’t find the image. Kudos for those old enough or educated enough to know what I’m talking about.)
I don’t recall ever being so aware of the exact start date (tomorrow) and time (noon) of a new congress. I used to be just vaguely aware that it happened in January and boring news stories started issuing when the new Congress started doing things. Since we haven’t had a Congress that actually did things in years, I can’t remember what that was like. But also there has never in my life been a Congress whose to-do list was so crucial to everything that American stands for.
The Eeyores will point out, rightly so, that there is still a large Mitch McConnell-shaped intestinal blockage between us and legislation. So I don’t know exactly how or when or which bills will actually become law. But for the last week the analogy I’ve been thinking about has been first responders showing up when you’ve evacuated your house and you’re watching the flames burning through the roof. You know the fire isn’t going to go out instantly, you know they have a lot of work and danger ahead of them, you know more is going to get damaged and you don’t know how much rebuilding you’ll have to do. But it’s still better that they’re there than before they arrived.
Suzanne
@MattF:
Correction: when the lives of the Powers That Be are at stake, bullshit doesn’t thrive (as much). When poor people’s, minorities’, immigrants’, etc. lives are at stake, bullshit does just fine.
I am increasingly convinced that the anti-vax position was originally intended to threaten the lives of the economically and socially vulnerable, and that rich white people grabbed onto it instead.
Mary G
I have no doubt that Nancy will tell Twitler to go fuck himself in pretty much that language, he’ll appeal to Chuck, who’ll say karma is a bitch, dude, they will come out again to give a news conference saying they can’t deal with him because he’s a moron who doesn’t keep his word. Many deranged tweets will ensue. Nancy will be reinstated as Speaker tomorrow, she will pass the six bills the Senate already agreed to, beating Paul Ryan’s entire tenure in one day. The interesting question is what will the turtle do? My guess is that he’s going to let the shutdown go on while continuing to force through terrible judges.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: We should be color blind and only elect straight white Evangelical males because race, gender, religion and sexuality shouldn’t matter, right?
@Mary G: It’s really amazing how we’re explicitly hearing the “I’m only saying what we’re all thinking, right bro?” message from the deplorables and their pundits these days. And we heard Trump say it to Schumer, in his inimitable third-grade incoherent fashion. He truly can’t comprehend how Schumer could be on Nancy Smash’s side. He’s another WHITE GUY for Pete’s sake!
MattF
@Mary G: Reports are that McConnell has been unusually quiet. One assumes that he knows Pelosi very well.
Burnspbesq
Lawyers can be really done-deaf about how positions on legal issues play with the non-lawyer majority of the population. Latest example:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-matt-whitaker-and-letitia-james-should-both-consider-recusal
The Moar You Know
@mapaghimagsik: It is. I’m getting invoices from one of my subs that could win a Hugo award. I told them that. They don’t care. Hey, the fraud charge lands on them not me, I guess they looked at the odds and decided nobody would be going to jail for defrauding the government for the next few years. Gotta say that’s probably a good bet.
Mainstream business is just taking their cues from their superiors in the tech world, who’ve been lying to us for decades, but not anything like they have for the last 5-6 years where they’ve crossed the line into wholesale bullshit.
Mandalay
Since this a a Foreign Affairs thread, it’s worth noting that the ruthlessly ambitious Nikki Haley tweeted this yesterday:
Why on earth would someone who has left politics, is unemployed, and claims she is not running in 2020 tweet that?
Maybe because she IS running? But before she runs she might spend some time researching what her BFF thinks about women with dusky skin:
Haley is sucking up to a racist misogynist who despises her for her skin color and her gender. Nice tweet Nikki! We’ll be shoving that right back down your throat when you run.
Fair Economist
@tobie:
OMG, a fact! You must be a neoliberal plant! //sarcasm
Seriously, thanks. I forget to do this kind of stuff too often.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: I really do appreciate the urgency of tackling climate change and understand the argument that things will go on until we reach a tipping point and then it will be too late to do much of anything. What I don’t get is the insistence that weaning ourselves of fossil fuels will be painless. Sure–jobs will be created as we invest in new technologies. Obama’s green-blue alliance and HRC’s green infrastructure plan were all about that. But decarbonizing an economy based on oil and gas, plastics, petroleum-based fertilizers, cement, asphalt, etc. is going to be hard and costly and take time. I would appreciate some honesty about that.
The Midnight Lurker
Trump’s a.m. tweets decoded: You know what this situation needs? More teargas.
Burnspbesq
@JAFD:
Glad to hear you got through it.
I fucking HATE metoprolol, which I was given when i had my Unknown Event (Maybe a Minor Stroke, Maybe Not, The Data Are Inconclusive) last March. One of my goals for 2019 is to get off that shit.
Kraux Pas
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree that the left should spend less time attacking each other and go harder after the party that’s clearly determined to harm everyone else in order to help wealthy elites and what remains of the white power structure in the U.S. (i.e. most of it).
However, I don’t think we should sweep internal disagreements under the rug either. There are literally millions of stakeholders in our government and each one has his or her own priorities It may even be a good thing to highlight internal debates that help show we are trying to do right by as many people as we can and take as many considerations as possible into play. It helps promote compromise. Further, we could help diminish less edifying conflicts by doing things like not focusing on twitter fights.
Also, I think terms like “purity left” exacerbate that divide. It sets up an alternate purity standard that directly opposes the first and helps harden people into their own camps. I think a lot of these people’s hearts are in the right place but they feel marginalized or not listened to. Engaging with hardened Bernie partisans, for example, may take patience that some may not want to afford them, but it could probably leave both sides with better understanding of each other and better tools to persuade others on behalf of their issues.
Mike in NC
After January 3rd Fat Bastard’s fake version of reality is going away forever.
eclare
@Suzanne: Strangely enough, I read that my neighboring state, MS, has the highest measles vax rate in the nation.
Burnspbesq
@tobie:
Our Progressive Betters aren’t big on honesty.
Fair Economist
@JAFD: Glad you made it to 2019, even if you are still dealing with some serious problems.
Not far off with most of them – if you need them you need them, but most of them can stab you in the back. My frail elderly mother has a lot of medical problems, and a shocking portion of them were caused or exacerbated by medical treatment, including drugs.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Haley’s ambitions spook me. She’s phony, ruthless and evidently teflon-clad. Having a crush on Brazil’s new nazi-in-charge is icing on a skeevy cake.
tobie
@Fair Economist: Thanks. Twitter is turning out to be the perfect medium for fact-free accusations gobbled up by a nation suffering from ADD. I like it for it’s fast pace and clever snark and because I’m also attention-challenged, but it’s a shitty medium for discussing policy. Who has time to fact check every tweet?
Brachiator
@JAFD:
Your note is filled with humor. Great to read, after all you have been through.
I know some of what you’ve been through, though not as severe. Best wishes for the future.
Betty Cracker
@JAFD: That all sounds like good advice to me. Glad you’re on the mend!
@Mandalay: Bolsonaro also bragged about having several sons and said he got “weak” and had a daughter. Oh, and he said he’d rather his son die in a car accident than be gay. Charming fellow, no? No. I’m still trying to figure out Haley’s angle. I thought she bailed from the UN post because she was smart enough to see that association with Trump could blight her political future if he goes down in flames (please FSM). But now I wonder…
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
You do know that Bernie’s record on immigration is atrocious…coincidence for these positions? I think not.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Re: Haley, I vote for ‘My boss is an asshole, get me outta here’.
Just One More Canuck
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: http://www.platypuscomix.net/otherpeople/halfof824.html
I’m here to serve
Fair Economist
@Kraux Pas:
“Purity left” distinguishes between hard lefties who nonetheless understand compromises and “deals with Stalin” are necessary (think Noam Chomsky and Barbara Lee) and those who just want to defeat other lefties and left-leaning types, either for personal power or because they are getting paid by opponents. Traditionally the left has had a lot of the first kind of “purity pony” (the disintegration of the Communard government is a great example) but lately we seem to be getting a lot more of the latter.
It looks like troll farms have become a critical part of “catapulting the propaganda” from the disingenuous type of “purity pony”. Given that even the first type of purity pony is harmful to actually getting left goals achieved ramping up mockery of “purity ponies” is a good way to strike back at the troll farms, because those of us not in the intelligence agencies have a hard time figuring out who is a troll and who just got sucked in by the troll propaganda.
Adam L Silverman
The reason you put the meeting in the Situation Room is an asymmetric tactic by someone on the President’s staff. The Situation Room is a SCIF. Everything in there defaults to classified unless otherwise posted/noted/stated. My guess is that no one on the White House staff who has scheduled this, will change the default classification level. Especially as, I’m sure, DHS will have classified this briefing. This means that neither Pelosi nor Schumer will be able to speak about anything that occurs other than “it was productive” or “it was unproductive”. However, because the President is the original classification authority for everything in the US at the Federal level, he can say whatever he wants about what was and was not briefed, discussed, negotiated, and/or agreed to or not agreed to.
rikyrah
@tobie:
THANKS for your research.
This is the latest pony and unicorn ridiculousness.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
Amen to that, especially the “teflon” part. This article gives a concise and accurate summary of her shamelessly opportunistic positions on the Confederate Flag. And yet she somehow emerged from that cluster**** as a courageous leader?
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: What if Trump lies about it (as he certainly will)? Are they going to prosecute Pelosi/Schumer?
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I am aware of his immigration record. Yes, it is not a coincidence. To the purity left, immigrants are just another group that can be sacrificed for the greater good as they define it.@Kraux Pas: Purity left is a good description for the ones who were willing to vote for JS and delivering crucial mid western states and who still think Ds are as bad as the Rs because they don’t agree with their entire agenda, be it on climate change or health care.
Jeffro
Peeps, the Mittster’s OWN. NIECE. just came out slamming him in favor of Trumpov (and others are already trying to change the RNC rules so that no one can challenge Trumpov for the nomination in 2020)
Go long on popcorn! Go loooooooooooong! =)
Adam L Silverman
@khead: Anything and everything is dead on arrival with the GOP House and Senate caucuses. If they thought they could actually defund and get rid of CRS they would, but they know that even that is a step to far for them when they control the majorities in both chambers.
Jeffro
– Ronna (Romney) McDaniel
Go down in flames, GOP – America and the world will be soooo much better for it!
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Nikki changed her name and religion….
been chasing her WHITE card for a long time…
Lips pursed.
Kraux Pas
@Fair Economist:
I think the problem here is that tensions have been raised so high that there is a tendency in both camps to lash out at the other. And bad faith argumentation is bad faith argumentation no matter which way it’s directed. So, when encountering a suspected troll it may be helpful, before lashing out, to briefly engage. Figure out if they’re making an honest attempt to engage your argument. Don’t hold them responsible for arguments they aren’t making, even if other people who reached the same ultimate conclusion have made those arguments. And make note of their name so you know for the future.
Again, I think this should be applied both ways. But I do know which way most of the hostility here is directed.
Citizen Scientist
I hope the Dems go to today’s meeting armed with actual facts so they can quickly set the narrative/refute the lies right after. And keep a reality-based narrative in the media for the next several days (one can hope!).
MattF
@Jeffro: ‘Incoming Republican freshman senator’. Haha.
Adam L Silverman
@mapaghimagsik: Move fast and break shit is a great concept of operations when you need one or more of the US Army’s armored divisions to make a speed run in a war zone. It is a terrible strategy for long term business success.
Ladyraxterinok
@Fair Economist: The aunt of my ex was taking drugs to counter the effects of drugs she was taking to counter the effects of other drugs she was taking to counter the effects of yet more drugs. It was a never ending chain of drugs.
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: No they haven’t. CRS is under a Federal court order, related to an HR dispute and grievance that wasn’t resolved until it became a lawsuit, that all hiring is strictly walled off not just from congressional interference, but also any form of internal interference at CRS. I have a very close friend who works there as a senior analyst. He can, and occasionally does, forward postings for positions there I fit. He cannot, and on the two times I’ve decided to apply, will not, actually have a quiet word with anyone in the section I applied in, because it would create serious problems under the terms that settled the lawsuit that stemmed from a hiring action that was grieved.
Jeffro
@MattF: Indeed! I’ll be back in a minute, gotta run to the store for some more Orville Redenbacher’s…
rikyrah
BWA HA HA H AH HA HA HAHA
I LOVE THIS!
Pelosi’s daughter: My mom will “cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding” https://t.co/UFJO6eLT5L pic.twitter.com/PCHLM28Sc1
— The Hill (@thehill) January 2, 2019
khead
@Adam L Silverman:
@Betty Cracker:
@JGabriel:
I understand what y’all are saying, but y’all are missing my point a bit. Even if the CRS said that the wall would be the greatest thing since sliced bread it wouldn’t matter. The play here is for Nancy to take a long drag on her cigarette – perhaps a Kool or even a Parliament – before putting it out, exhaling, and simply saying that her offer is “Nothing. Not even the fee for the CRS study.” Which she did, it looks like. I mean, Betty already said this a week or two ago. It’s a power play. The facts are irrelevant. The CRS won’t change a thing.
Aleta
@JAFD: Thanks for this.
Adam L Silverman
@Burnspbesq: I think the issue that Rosenberg is missing is that James is elected. And she said those things as part of her campaign as context for the investigations that she is going to open. That in her professional opinion she’s seen enough openly sourced and reported evidence to justify those preliminary conclusions and opening proper investigations under NY state law into them. Had James been appointed by Governor Cuomo, then I think it would be a different story. But New York, like lots of states, elect their attorneys general in partisan elections. And within that context he’s comparing things that really aren’t comparable.
Barbara
@MattF:
My oh so cynical advice to Ms. Holmes would have been that regulatory arbitrage in health care only works for pricing and billing — because people actually do care if their laboratory test results are not much more than a bunch of random garbage, and certainly, the regulatory agency cares if you are submitting verifiably false data on your laboratory’s accuracy.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: She won’t get it. You wanna see a tight tribe? White people. Hell, we still haven’t quite really made our minds up about Italians and Greeks, because if they’re in the club then we have no excuse to not give cards out to Spanish and Portuguese as well. A troubling prospect, you will admit.
Governor Haley? A bridge too far, ma’am. Will not happen.
Amir Khalid
@Burnspbesq:
I’m on metoprolol myself, among a few other meds.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: She agreed to stay in place until here replacements is confirmed by the Senate. So she’s still the UN ambassador.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: If it is classified, then Trump can say whatever he wants about what happens as he’s the original classification authority. Pelosi and Schumer cannot as they do not have the authority to declassify information that does not originate from them/their offices.
Immanetize
@JAFD:
I am not sure about finding the first two categories here….
That was a great post. Thank you for the update, advice, and good humor in the face of adversity. And stay healthy, regardless of the Handel lyrics.
Adam L Silverman
@Citizen Scientist: Please see my comment at #52 above.
FelonyGovt
@Adam L Silverman: I guess someone finally figured out that having the meeting televised would not benefit Trump.
chopper
@Jeffro:
hahaha, oh that’s fuckin’ delicious. sure, ronna, go after your own uncle at trump’s behest. PLEASE.
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: I understand that’s the legal and regulatory situation for this specific case. But how about saying “He’s lying”. Which will certainly be true in virtually any context, and which Pelosi or Schumer could say at any time.
Immanetize
@rikyrah: She is the “Pinky” of South Carolina
Immanetize
@MattF: Junior Senator as well. I can’t believe that they missed that dig.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: You left out us Jews. We’re in the same boat as the Italians and Greeks and Spanish and Portuguese.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Very interesting. Thanks for the insights.
I also figure that Trump wants to try to emphasize the security angle, and how important it is to have a Wall to protect the country from dangerous immigrant children.
Adam L Silverman
@FelonyGovt: Who knows. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if the President invited the pool reporters into the Situation Room. Who would stop him? Mulvaney? That dude would loose an arm wrestling contest with a five year old.
Jinchi
Is Paul Ryan at today’s meeting? I mean he is still Speaker til tomorrow.
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: As you know, there’s been a long and somewhat muffled discussion about just how white Jews really are. I’d say that people with other-than-white skin colors are quite aware of the various delicate distinctions.
Brachiator
@FelonyGovt:
But there will probably be photos of Trump looking all presidential and stuff.
Immanetize
@Adam L Silverman:
Sad to tell you, Adam, I think those folks put you into another boat altogether.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: Just saying that without being able to provide context isn’t going to get them very far. The reason they were so effective, especially Pelosi, the week before the shutdown, is that they had live video from the meeting in the Oval Office to work with in their after the meeting press conference.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: I am aware. The problem with conflating religion with ethno-nationality/ethnicity.
clay
@Adam L Silverman: If Trump talks about it in public, doesn’t that automatically declassify the meeting, thereby allowing Nancy and Chuck to say whatever they want?
(I seem to recall them using this excuse when Trump blabbed intel secrets to Russians in the Oval Office.)
MCA1
@mapaghimagsik: It’s a can’t-stop-reading it book, tremendously entertaining. I just finished it last night after starting it 12/30 at the beach. Spoilers ahead, I guess.
There are a ton of parallels between the world both inside and around Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos and the current Republican Party host body of Orange Marmalade. The difference is that she seemed to have a legitimate purpose at the beginning, but was incredibly naive, had no idea how over her head she was, and wanted to change the world NOW so she overpromised and then had to start cutting corners and turning it into a spinning plates exercise. Whereas Dotard’s been a pure conman from the beginning and has never had a flash of altruism or even simpler “make the world a better place” purpose as he’s incapable of seeing beyond his titanic narcissism.
But the similarities are striking. They both don’t just lie constantly, they lie inconsistently, telling whomever it is in the room with them right now what they think that person needs/wants to hear. They both put people in positions where they feel like they’re in a compromised box, where the only options are to stay in and hope for the best, or leave at potential great personal cost and shame. And they both are incapable of admitting a mistake and always, always, always lash out and blame others, sometimes conspiratorially.
The most amazing parallel to me, though, wasn’t in the two grifters themselves, but rather in both the overlap of the prominent griftees, and the sense that we have indeed entered a completely fact free dream world. It’s like the majority of the country is in some sort of gaslit state, with zombies wandering around wondering what’s fantasy and what’s reality anymore. They intentionally listen to the exact wrong people to help them sort it out because they don’t have the mental stamina or critical thinking skills left to deal with what they don’t want to hear. They’ve been dulled into this trance by Fox News and both sides media and the entertainment over substance ethos and the internet and its amplification of nonsense and beating down of trust in expertise. This is the true Idiocracy. Combine it with the New Gilded Age ethos of money being the sole and ultimate marker of all virtue and you have both Theranos and the current GOP. We’re basically living inside several variations of The Emperor’s New Clothes at the same time, and seemingly half the population refuses to have the spell broken when someone calls out the obvious truth.
Holmes raked in George Shultz, who to the bitter end continued to back her over his own fucking grandson, because he couldn’t imagine he’d been conned, and now the last thing he’ll be known for in his otherwise amazing life is selling out his own family to a delusion. The list of her Board of Directors victims is incredible. Henry Kissinger. Bill Frist, a fucking surgeon, for godsakes, who apparently never demanded to know anything about the science behind the company despite being a Board member. Richard Kovasevich, one of the leading bankers in America, who evidently didn’t care to dissect the company’s financials and wasn’t concerned that it had no CFO for a decade. James Mattis, the current Secretary of Defense, who couldn’t be bothered to know that Holmes was puffing to investors and others about the U.S. military using its product when he himself had personally been involved in Theranos NOT putting its equipment to work for DoD. William Perry. David Boies. All older white men, it might be noted.
She also conned none other than Rupert Murdoch out of a hundred million dollars. Betsy DeVos dumped tens of millions into her poorly veiled mountain of bullshit. Several PE firms and hedge funds basically dispensed with their usual due diligence in the frenzy. All victims it’s difficult to sympathize with, but it made it a helluva lot harder to unwind when the shit hit the fan.
Adam L Silverman
@clay: It depends. If it is considered spillage, which is what the DOJ’s official opinion on this stuff is, in conjunction with their official opinion that the President’s tweets and off the cuff remarks are not actual official statements and/or statements of official policy, then no. If it is a full declassification, then maybe. Unless the original classification authority provides clear guidance that the material is declassified, then the classification rules still apply to the other participants.
schrodingers_cat
@Mandalay: Nikki Haley is a craven opportunist. Her candidacy will sink without a trace.
MCA1
@MCA1: Apologies to all for that ridiculously long post. Didn’t realize how wordy it was while writing.
One last thought, though: the whole saga puts me in mind of one of Kay’s frequent notes in comments here. We need better elites. These elites suck, they’re lazy and they all seem to suffer from Dunning-Krueger.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I’d have to say that WRT to white people who actually give a shit about this sort of thing, of which I am not one, Jews are NOT in the same boat as the others. Like the option Facebook offers, “it’s complicated”.
By way of example, you’ve got European Jews, Semitic Jews and Ethiopian Jews. Who come from three very different ethnic groups and two of them are never going to be considered “white”. So, do you deal with the religion as a whole, or the observable ethnicity of any given member?
The racists made up their minds on this question a long time ago. As a thought experiment of dubious value, I honestly don’t think you can classify Jews as members of any given race but rather as members of a religion that includes all races. Which means you have to deal with them as individuals in determining who is eligible for the much-desired “white card”. Quelle horror.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: All Jews are Semites.
Kelly
@MCA1: No apology required. The account of supposedly knowledgeable people taken in for staggering sums is amazing.
Mark Damico
I hope Pelosi comes to the meeting hungry. Because she’s gonna get to eat Trump’s lunch again.
Ruckus
@JAFD:
Good to hear that you are on the mend.
HA are not always painful, or even felt. Mine wasn’t. I’ve had one, didn’t know till docs told me. But now I’ve been worked up completely twice in three years. The meds and the docs did their jobs well.
I hope you are as lucky and everything goes according to Hoyle. My main advice would be to listen to the docs, and do as they say.
Ella in New Mexico
@JAFD: Cardiac CCU nurse here.
Holy Crap!
Cardiac catheterization with two arrests.
Being flat on your back for hours/days afterwards with an arterial line in your groin running a device that literally off-loaded your barely functioning heart.
Still currently wearing a temporary defibrillator.
You’re quite the survivor, JAFD. Congratulations!! A lot of folks wouldn’t have made it. You did. Means you’ve got some important stuff yet to do in this world.
Recovery does suck–so many changes and yes, so many losses of things you took for granted before. Its normal to feel the grief of letting go of things you once took for granted, even angry. But don’t let it interfere with getting to the healthy place. Keep up the hard work recovering and take super good care of yourself.
Oh, and no matter what people try to tell you about how terrible they are–take your meds. They’re keeping your heart from laying down a ton of additional scar tissue that could kill you. ;-)
Be Well!
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
When all one sells is bullshit, at some point the price has to drop, because there is always a limit to how much bullshit anyone needs. It’s usually far less than the amount produced but wata ya gonna do?
schrodingers_cat
This talk about who is or is not white is boring. How does having skin that burns easily makes one better than anyone else? I read the twitter accounts and blogs of many a child of immigrants and apparently most of them wanted to be white when they were in school, most outgrow that feeling, but NH never did it seems.
Miss Bianca
@MCA1: All right, I hadn’t been planning to read this book, because Mt To-Be-Read is, as always, tottering, but damme sir, damme! Now I feel like I have to! *shakes fist at clouds, goes to library catalog*.
JanieM
@MCA1: Great comment in general, very interesting background on something I haven’t paid a lot of attention to. But as to this:
I wouldn’t assume a surgeon knows or cares a lot more than anyone else (well, your average educated citizen, I suppose) about the science.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I’m failing badly at this. Which is probably a good thing.
MCA1
@JanieM: Perhaps, but I’m not letting him off the hook. Reading the full account, I was surprised to learn that U.S. doctors apparently base about 70% of their diagnoses/treatment decisions on lab results. So I assume they all, even surgeons, have at least a rudimentary understanding of blood tests, how they work, how much weight to give them, etc. There were also apparently a lot of skeptics in the medical field, and they weren’t all blood testing experts. Every neutral blood scientist out there said what Holmes was selling was complete fantasy.
If nothing else, the knowledge of how critical it is that doctors have accurate, reliable test results because lives are at stake, should have colored his Board activity. He was an MD sitting on the Board of Directors of a supposedly multi-billion dollar medical technology company, presumably being paid 6 figures a year to provide guidance and oversight to that company on behalf of its owners (including multiple rounds of outside investors) and to make sure its corporate governance is operating correctly. And he was the only member of the Board with medical expertise, without a single engineer around. That fact alone should have set off loud alarm bells. Granted, it’s not a public company, and stipulated that he didn’t spend his career as a traditional businessman so didn’t come in with a deep understanding of how companies, and boards of directors, work. But, still. The entry level people with newly minted bachelors degrees in chemistry and engineering thought the company’s technology compared to a high school science fair project. What was he doing in his capacity as a Director?
sukabi
@MCA1: Bill Frist, the kitten napper and killer, who pretended to diagnose Terry Schiavo via video tape, spent more time in the senate and shitting diapers for hookers to change than what might be called “practicing medicine”.
He was on that board precisely because if his ^ background, they needed someone who had an ‘MD’ title and didn’t mind using it to screw others.
Citizen Alan
@sukabi:
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of Diaper Dave Vitter. I don’t recall and can’t find any stories about Frist going to hookers for a diaper fetish, but Vitter definitely did.
J R in WV
@eclare:
Don’t think it is strange — MS requires a full set of vaccinations to attend school. So does WV, which also has a high vaccination rate. Why? Maybe because back when vaccinations didn’t exist, these poorer states had a terrible death rate among children, so when treatment to prevent that death toll became available, they required it ASAP? Maybe…
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
True, quoted for truth.
Plus, for someone in justice, saying that “I’m going to block an investigation into wrongdoing by the person who appointed me!” as the appointed acting AG said, in effect is markedly different from saying “I’m promising to launch formal investigations into wrongdoing by someone I distrust if I’m elected!
Declining to investigate, as a leader of prosecutors, and promising to investigate as a leader of prosecutors, are directly opposite positions, and one is unethical at its base and the other is ethical. Which is which is left for the student/observer to determine~!
ETA fix typo.
Bonnie
With all this talk about walls, I looked up the origins of Hadrian’s Wall and the Great Wall of China. What I discovered is that they are very good evidence of how walls don’t work.
jc
“We have to have to an evidence-based conversation…”
Don’t hold your breath Nancy. Trump relies on faux facts and hollow assertions based on what makes him look tough. Evidence is for losers. And his base is just simple enough to keep falling for it.