A random thought on my part. I find Matt Miller to be a well informed commentator on legal issues including Mueller matters, but every time I see him I can’t help thinking he looks like Count Chocula’s nephew.
3.
Mike in DC
The post-Trump hearings on who knew what and when and why they didn’t do anything will be LIT.
With a career spanning more than 60 years, Miller has made hundreds of on screen appearances, beginning in the 1950s with legendary director and producer Roger Corman. It was then that he starred as Walter Paisley – a character the actor would reprise throughout his career – in the cult classic “A Bucket of Blood,” before going on to land roles on projects such as “The ‘Burbs,” “Fame” and “The Terminator.”
Miller also boasts a long history of high-profile director partnerships, working with the likes of James Cameron, Ernest Dickerson, Martin Scorsese, John Sayles and, perhaps most notably, Joe Dante, who used Miller in almost every project he helmed.
Rarely a lead actor, he filled the minor and secondary character roles with aplomb.
I heart Matt Miller. He about punched Steve Schmidt in the neck today on live TV. Which is a spectacularly appropriate response to Steve Schmidt. (My list of people whose heads I would explode if I perfect my scanners technology needs another notebook.)
Awww. He was a very singular actor — lots of tiny, little iconic roles. Which is high praise for character actors. And, dang, he had a long career.
12.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jacy: on the Nicole Wallace show? I was gonna make myself wait for Jason Johnson to take Schmidt down, but when the man from Palintown started spouting Wilmerite talking points about how the Democrats put their thumb on the scale for HRC, I had to bail. I guess Wallace doesn’t love her buddy Schmidt enough to tell him he made just an abject fool of himself today.
13.
Juju
If you perfect that technology share it with me. I’ll aim it at Steve Schmidt the same time you do, and they won’t know who to pin it on. Man he was full of schmit today. I was beginning to like him, but his appearance on MSNBC today took care of that. @jacy: and I know I did it bassackward.
14.
Adam L Silverman
@Juju: Yes. I’m 1/4 North American sasquatch. 1/4 those ginormous grizzly bears from Kootznoowoo in Alaska, 1/4 Mongolian/people of the Steppes, and 1/4 European.//
Yeah, that was the one. Schmidt looked like he really wanted somebody between him and Matt Miller. I was working and I had it on in another window, so I didn’t switch over right away. The one takeaway I got from the whole thing is that Schmidt is going to separate Schulze from as much money as possible before the con is up. He really sounded like he was trying to perfect the grift, and his only real audience was his client.
Adam, John mentioned that you were going to do a rebuttal of his post about the Justice Democrats (that was yesterday I think). Is that in the works? I’m interested in your thoughts.
17.
burnspbesq
Is Chow Yun-Fat still alive? I don’t think i’ve seen him in a new film for at least 15 years/
18.
Keith P.
@PaulWartenberg: Mr. Futterman, NOOOOOO!!!! Such a great character actor.
Yeah, he seemed almost all right for a bit there, but he’s definitely a leopard who ain’t changing his spots. This Schulze thing has got me steamed.
20.
Adam L Silverman
@jacy:
1) How you doing?
2) They’re going to have to give Schmidt training if he’s going to keep doing these media hits. I get that he’s defensive and people across the political spectrum are questioning his actions, but you can’t make the faces that he made when Jason Johnson and Matthew Miller were asking him questions and making their points.
3) Wallace, his long time friend and colleague, was clearly also not buying a lot of his answers and statements. The look on her face when he dodged her focus group question and said “of course diligence was done” spoke volumes.
If you heard Henry Cuellar on NQR this afternoon, you were likely wonder WTF the Justice Democrats’ problem is. Pretty impressive take on border security and related issues.
@Adam L Silverman: does that mean a quarter of the time you run away from having your picture taken?
23.
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: I’m not. From what I can tell they’re basically a racket that both attempts to fleece the candidates that want their backing – as in they make the candidate pay them – and they seem to spend very little of their fundraising on actual candidates and a lot on salary and consulting firms, specifically one affiliated with someone at Justice Democrats.
It’s a scam. It’s on it’s third generation of leadership in under three years. There’s nothing really else to write about it.
24.
Adam L Silverman
@Juju: I always run away from having my picture taken.
25.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: Not sure why you put in the sarcasm notation. Sounded pretty realistic to me.
1) I am maintaining, thanks. :) Waiting on paperwork regarding my mortgage (which was supposed to come today but didn’t) and waiting to hear from the custody lawyer (which I didn’t either). So I am in a holding pattern, and will not panic until necessary. This is what the lorazapam is for! TaMara passed on your info — which I appreciate SO much — but I’m not going to talk to anybody until I have the paperwork in my had. Hopefully that’s tomorrow.
3) I actually think that Nicolle Wallace is one of the few that has changed. She never both sides anything. And I could tell she was getting annoyed with Schmidt today but trying to be diplomatic. I actually enjoy her a lot (but I still remember her past and hope she’s as contrite as she has said she is).
27.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: In case Stephen Miller is reading the comments. I don’t want to have to deal with ICE in the AM.
Schmidt is going to separate Schulze from as much money as possible before the con is up. He really sounded like he was trying to perfect the grift, and his only real audience was his client.
These #NeverTrumpers w/o sweet NYT/WaPo columnist gigs are finding that there’s not a real robust BothSides welfare system in place…yet. And so yeah, fleecing Schultz comes before protecting the republic.
Scum. Just join the Dems already! Some dumb Dem candidate will pay you for your marvelous insights on fundraising and messaging, Schmidt! Also, you’ll be able to live with yourself come the day after Election Day 2020.
Some people live to be contrary. They have to manufacture friction or they’re not satisfied. I suspect Schmidt is one of those. (I have learned that boring is better and there is a lot to be said for practicing contentment)
And I am off to anti-anxiety meds and bed — tomorrow (fortunately or unfortunately) is another day.
33.
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: The thing that had me pinging Cole was that Walid Shahid, who was AOC’s spokesperson for her campaign and is one of the leaders of the Justice Democrats had spent most of the previous evening hammering Kamala Harris by claiming she’d said or didn’t say things that she actually had on the video clips he was tweeting from her town hall and/or tweeting clips edited to remove all context so it looked and sounded like she said stuff she hadn’t.
What was interesting is he got dragged pretty hard and by the next night he was on Chris Hayes show with Michelle Goldberg basically having to agree that Harris had done well. He didn’t look happy about it though.
AOC is going to have to decide, and I’m pretty sure she already has, whether she’s going to be a work horse or a show pony. My guess is she’s going to be work horse, though a flashy one, which is fine. But she’s also going to have to decide if she’s going to be in the tent pissing out or she’s going to be outside the tent with her buddies not just pissing in, but trying to blow up the tent from the outside.I fully expect that by this time next year, most of the Justice Democrats will have turned on her because she’ll have somehow made some impure decision or vote or statement.
34.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: My Twitter guru Dick Nixon said something earlier this week (paraphrasing here) that “Pelosi brought AOC inside the tent some time ago, you can tell”. I think that’s mostly right, but occasionally she and/or her staff are going to fire off in some other direction. Growing pains, is all. She (AOC) seems to understand who the real enemy is.
@Adam L Silverman: I love the way AOC claps back on Twitter and the sheer joy she exudes, but I’m still in “wait and see” mode. I hope she does the right thing.
36.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: She (AOC) seems to understand who the real enemy is.
and that’s the essential question, the one so many of her (past?) associates have trouble focusing on
@AliceBlue: that’s where I am, hoping she keep her eye on the big picture– and that so many of the people she excites can bear in mind that for every AOC there is a Conor Lamb, and the path ahed is not as wide and smooth as some seem to believe
@Adam L Silverman: The other day in that thread someone posted the financial report for the Justice Dems. Their donations didn’t begin to add up to the $2.7 million (or whatever it was) that they said they had. Which means lots of small donations. I’m highly skeptical of those small donations at this point because they don’t have to be reported and it seems like an easy way for foreign money to be poured into PACs or campaigns.
If you want to move foreign money into a Campaign, you give it to a Dual Citizen “Billionaire”, who gives it to a Dark Money PAC, that then moves it into a direct PAC.
Small money donations are a big reason for the 2018 Blue Wave, it’s a funding source that counters Citizens United.
The issue isn’t so much the total, it’s that they claim to have raised $2.7 million, but only sent $60K worth of funds to candidates. Everything else was spent on other things.
@Adam L Silverman: I think it’s both. Their donations don’t add up to $2.7 million and it’s easy to hide where money comes from when you don’t have to report small donations.
They also aren’t spending the money they have on candidates. Reminds me of Sarah Palin, who finally shut down her SuperPAC when the money ran out. She spent most of her money on “postage.”
A question that becomes even more intriguing when you consider that JD doesn’t donate money to candidates but demands that candidates pay money to them.
That is one of the recent scandals surrounding Justice Democrats: apparently endorsements are bought and paid for by candidates.
All this came out when JD refused to endorse David Hildebrand, a progressive challenger of Dianne Feinstein. Instead they chose to endorse Alison Hartson, the National Director of WolfPac. Wolf Pac, a PAC that was created and run by…Cenk Uygur.
Now the interesting thing about Wolf Pac is that is has been pointed out Wolf Pac is just a money making scam, where the only money that is spend is spend on staffers’ salaries. Money that is collected from small donations by progressives.
This of course to the utter shock of many progressives who had already decided to support David Hildebrand, another and more logical candidate running for Dianne Feinstein’s seat.
The whole manner in which Justice Democrats decides who to endorse is decided in dark backrooms, much to the chagrin of progressives running for office.
So, where is the money small donors pay to JD going? Well, to big salaries for consultants for example, see:
That is just what we know publicly…how about this one? BNC PAC disbursing to itself for "Strategic Consulting" fees. Over $100,000. Did you see any of that? It's a matter of time before we get to everything. just a lot of tedious research to connect the cots, ya know. pic.twitter.com/l6eppxGcvk
The endorsement of Hartson led to angry reactions by many progressives who support David Hildebrand and the accusation Cenk Uygur is really just promoting his own people/ interests.
However, what is more interesting is how a thread on Twitter led to reactions by other candidates who describe how they didn’t receive money from JD, but were instead supposed to pay a LOT of money to JD for an endorsement:
Consulting fees from candidates to them are much more interesting.
The above tweets are from Hector Morales, who is running for Congress in Texas’ 29th Congressional District. Initially he was endorsed by Justice Democrats, and..(and this is what matters) he was supposed to pay Justice Democrats 95% (!!!) of his fundraised money.
So, unlike what Justice Democrats tells their donors, they don’t use/ spend their donors’ money to support individual candidates, but instead are demanding that those candidates pay them…
When Morales stopped paying them (a candidate cannot run a campaign when he has to pay everything to a PAC like JD) Justice Democrats dropped him from their list of endorsed candidates…
Basically what this shows is that Justice Democrats sells endorsements for a lot of money.
So to recap: Justice Democrats collects money from small donors. People that often don’t have a lot of money and to whom this money actually means something.
As one wrote in JD’s Reddit sub, when someone asked for a website with info on how JD spends their money: “That would be great. I am a monthly donor (of very modest means) to Justice Democrats, and even I don’t know the answer to that questions.”
This money is not used to support candidates, but paid to other PACs and political consultants. On top of that Justice Democrats asked (asked in that JD claims to have stopped that practise) candidates to pay them 95% of their fundraising in return for an endorsement.
More at the link.
45.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Postage is important. Gotta send Track cigarettes so he can trade them for things while he’s in prison.
MissWimsey
eh? What’d I miss?
Juju
A random thought on my part. I find Matt Miller to be a well informed commentator on legal issues including Mueller matters, but every time I see him I can’t help thinking he looks like Count Chocula’s nephew.
Mike in DC
The post-Trump hearings on who knew what and when and why they didn’t do anything will be LIT.
Adam L Silverman
@Juju: He is Count Chocula’s nephew.
Amir Khalid
My new headphone amp was DOA when I pulled it from the box. Ich hab Wut darüber.
H.E.Wolf
@MissWimsey:
Welcome back from France! :)
/Hamilton
PaulWartenberg
DICK MILLER DIED!!! https://variety.com/2019/film/news/dick-miller-dead-dies-gremlins-terminator-1203124265/
Rarely a lead actor, he filled the minor and secondary character roles with aplomb.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this post kind of predicts Cole’s upstairs
Juju
@Adam L Silverman: did you get the low down from 23 and Me?
jacy
@Juju:
I heart Matt Miller. He about punched Steve Schmidt in the neck today on live TV. Which is a spectacularly appropriate response to Steve Schmidt. (My list of people whose heads I would explode if I perfect my scanners technology needs another notebook.)
jacy
@PaulWartenberg:
Awww. He was a very singular actor — lots of tiny, little iconic roles. Which is high praise for character actors. And, dang, he had a long career.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jacy: on the Nicole Wallace show? I was gonna make myself wait for Jason Johnson to take Schmidt down, but when the man from Palintown started spouting Wilmerite talking points about how the Democrats put their thumb on the scale for HRC, I had to bail. I guess Wallace doesn’t love her buddy Schmidt enough to tell him he made just an abject fool of himself today.
Juju
If you perfect that technology share it with me. I’ll aim it at Steve Schmidt the same time you do, and they won’t know who to pin it on. Man he was full of schmit today. I was beginning to like him, but his appearance on MSNBC today took care of that. @jacy: and I know I did it bassackward.
Adam L Silverman
@Juju: Yes. I’m 1/4 North American sasquatch. 1/4 those ginormous grizzly bears from Kootznoowoo in Alaska, 1/4 Mongolian/people of the Steppes, and 1/4 European.//
jacy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, that was the one. Schmidt looked like he really wanted somebody between him and Matt Miller. I was working and I had it on in another window, so I didn’t switch over right away. The one takeaway I got from the whole thing is that Schmidt is going to separate Schulze from as much money as possible before the con is up. He really sounded like he was trying to perfect the grift, and his only real audience was his client.
AliceBlue
Adam, John mentioned that you were going to do a rebuttal of his post about the Justice Democrats (that was yesterday I think). Is that in the works? I’m interested in your thoughts.
burnspbesq
Is Chow Yun-Fat still alive? I don’t think i’ve seen him in a new film for at least 15 years/
Keith P.
@PaulWartenberg: Mr. Futterman, NOOOOOO!!!! Such a great character actor.
jacy
@Juju:
Yeah, he seemed almost all right for a bit there, but he’s definitely a leopard who ain’t changing his spots. This Schulze thing has got me steamed.
Adam L Silverman
@jacy:
1) How you doing?
2) They’re going to have to give Schmidt training if he’s going to keep doing these media hits. I get that he’s defensive and people across the political spectrum are questioning his actions, but you can’t make the faces that he made when Jason Johnson and Matthew Miller were asking him questions and making their points.
3) Wallace, his long time friend and colleague, was clearly also not buying a lot of his answers and statements. The look on her face when he dodged her focus group question and said “of course diligence was done” spoke volumes.
burnspbesq
@AliceBlue:
If you heard Henry Cuellar on NQR this afternoon, you were likely wonder WTF the Justice Democrats’ problem is. Pretty impressive take on border security and related issues.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/690102175/democratic-rep-henry-cuellar-discusses-border-security-negotiations
Juju
@Adam L Silverman: does that mean a quarter of the time you run away from having your picture taken?
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: I’m not. From what I can tell they’re basically a racket that both attempts to fleece the candidates that want their backing – as in they make the candidate pay them – and they seem to spend very little of their fundraising on actual candidates and a lot on salary and consulting firms, specifically one affiliated with someone at Justice Democrats.
It’s a scam. It’s on it’s third generation of leadership in under three years. There’s nothing really else to write about it.
Adam L Silverman
@Juju: I always run away from having my picture taken.
japa21
@Adam L Silverman: Not sure why you put in the sarcasm notation. Sounded pretty realistic to me.
jacy
@Adam L Silverman:
1) I am maintaining, thanks. :) Waiting on paperwork regarding my mortgage (which was supposed to come today but didn’t) and waiting to hear from the custody lawyer (which I didn’t either). So I am in a holding pattern, and will not panic until necessary. This is what the lorazapam is for! TaMara passed on your info — which I appreciate SO much — but I’m not going to talk to anybody until I have the paperwork in my had. Hopefully that’s tomorrow.
3) I actually think that Nicolle Wallace is one of the few that has changed. She never both sides anything. And I could tell she was getting annoyed with Schmidt today but trying to be diplomatic. I actually enjoy her a lot (but I still remember her past and hope she’s as contrite as she has said she is).
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: In case Stephen Miller is reading the comments. I don’t want to have to deal with ICE in the AM.
Jeffro
@jacy:
These #NeverTrumpers w/o sweet NYT/WaPo columnist gigs are finding that there’s not a real robust BothSides welfare system in place…yet. And so yeah, fleecing Schultz comes before protecting the republic.
Scum. Just join the Dems already! Some dumb Dem candidate will pay you for your marvelous insights on fundraising and messaging, Schmidt! Also, you’ll be able to live with yourself come the day after Election Day 2020.
Adam L Silverman
@jacy: Keeping good thoughts here.
AliceBlue
@Adam L Silverman: ‘Nuff said. Thanks!
jacy
@Jeffro:
Some people live to be contrary. They have to manufacture friction or they’re not satisfied. I suspect Schmidt is one of those. (I have learned that boring is better and there is a lot to be said for practicing contentment)
jacy
And I am off to anti-anxiety meds and bed — tomorrow (fortunately or unfortunately) is another day.
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: The thing that had me pinging Cole was that Walid Shahid, who was AOC’s spokesperson for her campaign and is one of the leaders of the Justice Democrats had spent most of the previous evening hammering Kamala Harris by claiming she’d said or didn’t say things that she actually had on the video clips he was tweeting from her town hall and/or tweeting clips edited to remove all context so it looked and sounded like she said stuff she hadn’t.
What was interesting is he got dragged pretty hard and by the next night he was on Chris Hayes show with Michelle Goldberg basically having to agree that Harris had done well. He didn’t look happy about it though.
AOC is going to have to decide, and I’m pretty sure she already has, whether she’s going to be a work horse or a show pony. My guess is she’s going to be work horse, though a flashy one, which is fine. But she’s also going to have to decide if she’s going to be in the tent pissing out or she’s going to be outside the tent with her buddies not just pissing in, but trying to blow up the tent from the outside.I fully expect that by this time next year, most of the Justice Democrats will have turned on her because she’ll have somehow made some impure decision or vote or statement.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: My Twitter guru Dick Nixon said something earlier this week (paraphrasing here) that “Pelosi brought AOC inside the tent some time ago, you can tell”. I think that’s mostly right, but occasionally she and/or her staff are going to fire off in some other direction. Growing pains, is all. She (AOC) seems to understand who the real enemy is.
AliceBlue
@Adam L Silverman: I love the way AOC claps back on Twitter and the sheer joy she exudes, but I’m still in “wait and see” mode. I hope she does the right thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and that’s the essential question, the one so many of her (past?) associates have trouble focusing on
@AliceBlue: that’s where I am, hoping she keep her eye on the big picture– and that so many of the people she excites can bear in mind that for every AOC there is a Conor Lamb, and the path ahed is not as wide and smooth as some seem to believe
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Former spokesman.
Insurgent’s have to take the help they are given. Hopefully they learn in the process of getting elected, about the “quality” of the help.
lollipopguild
@Adam L Silverman: Do you also stay away from mirrors?
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: The other day in that thread someone posted the financial report for the Justice Dems. Their donations didn’t begin to add up to the $2.7 million (or whatever it was) that they said they had. Which means lots of small donations. I’m highly skeptical of those small donations at this point because they don’t have to be reported and it seems like an easy way for foreign money to be poured into PACs or campaigns.
Jay
@Yarrow:
It’s not.
If you want to move foreign money into a Campaign, you give it to a Dual Citizen “Billionaire”, who gives it to a Dark Money PAC, that then moves it into a direct PAC.
Small money donations are a big reason for the 2018 Blue Wave, it’s a funding source that counters Citizens United.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Here’s their financials via Open Secrets:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strID=C00630665
The issue isn’t so much the total, it’s that they claim to have raised $2.7 million, but only sent $60K worth of funds to candidates. Everything else was spent on other things.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
So just a grift like a lot of the Wingnut PAC’s.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I think it’s both. Their donations don’t add up to $2.7 million and it’s easy to hide where money comes from when you don’t have to report small donations.
They also aren’t spending the money they have on candidates. Reminds me of Sarah Palin, who finally shut down her SuperPAC when the money ran out. She spent most of her money on “postage.”
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: That’s my take.
https://medium.com/@investigator_21314/are-the-justice-democrats-a-money-scam-to-defraud-progressives-63abbcf71be2
More at the link.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Postage is important. Gotta send Track cigarettes so he can trade them for things while he’s in prison.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Back in the day, in the back pages of the National Enquirer, there was an ad,
“Become a Millionaire. Send $1 and a self adressed stamped envelope to P.O. Box XXX, and I’ll tell you how! Guaranteed !
So I sent my buck and envelope off and got back, 20 days later, my envelope. Inside was a single mimeographed sheet,…….
-Take out an ad in the National Enquirer,………
How many MAGAt’s are there?
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Enough.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman:
I was born in Hawai’i. How do you think I feel?