"I think he's badly wounded right now…I'm suddenly very worried about 2020."
New w/ ?@ChrisMegerian? + ?@Noahbierman? on a stunned Trump, tweeting and grasping for a battle plan against Pelosi >>https://t.co/mjdRPc7glg
— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) September 27, 2019
Is it a problem that the president can't talk or think? I consider this classic question here: https://t.co/5Tx1w6mo5h
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) September 27, 2019
Professional experience listening to brain-sodden jock-sniffers bellow on AM radio seems to have given Dave Roth a strange key to the Oval Office Occupant:
… Trump cannot ever keep his story straight because he never fully knew what it was in the first place. He knows it is about him, and the things that keep happening to him, but beyond that he never knows, and will never know; he is conspiring and scheming constantly, but so ineffectually and in such a state of flummoxed confusion and utterly abject ignorance that the endgame is never anything but unclear. Trump is always trying to get over, to win and keep winning, but also he doesn’t know what the rules are, or what the game even is, and also someone—it’s not important who, it would be unfair to point fingers—has eaten the racecar, the thimble, all of the little plastic hotels, and a third of the cards in Community Chest. It can be difficult to prove that any of Trump’s many howlingly overt acts of malfeasance are intentional because everything he does—from the first grasping moments to his last seething ones, all through his endless expanses of executive time—feels like and fundamentally is an accident.
When the White House released a redacted summary of a phone call that Trump had with Ukraine’s newly elected prime minister—this, oddly, was part of a confusing attempt to short-circuit a scandal that began with the White House’s attempt to bury a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s attempt to cultivate foreign parties’ help in his 2020 campaign—the world got to see the master in action…
Trump’s ignorance isn’t a defense, but it is again a decent explanation. Because he is constitutionally incapable of being less ignorant—because his mind is gone and because he won’t read or listen and can’t effectively digest even the smoothest juche gruel that his television gives him—he winds up thinking things that literally no one else thinks. And because Trump is constitutionally incapable of changing his mind, on any topic, he gets stuck on stuff like this and then repeats it and repeats it and repeats it; the job of the cable channel he likes is to tell him he’s right, so quite literally hears this stuff more and more. He doesn’t express himself well enough to convince anyone else of whatever it is that he believes—it’s seldom clear what he’s even trying to argue beyond that everyone is being mean to him for no reason and actually someone else did what he did—but he’s already convinced himself of it, which means that he will never be unconvinced.
The more worrying part of all this is that there is fundamentally nothing to know about most of what he talks about. Every rank thought-chunk that clears his blowhole is either some legacy beef or bigotry or something Trump learns from his television shows, which feed him attenuated suspicions, a list of ominous what-abouts that hint at some sort of outcome but stop well short of it, and a bunch of leading questions that, by design, cannot be answered. All of this is supposed to shore up a worldview and generate specific political outcomes, but mostly it aims to create a mood—a coiled and claustrophobic sense of being under siege, by someone—more than it does to answer any of the questions it hints at. It doesn’t really add up to anything, but also it can’t; the game is to accumulate.…It is clear that Trump feels that he’s being done wrong, but even he can’t seem to figure out why; he fumes and threatens and digresses from his digressions, but he doesn’t know how to stop anything happening around and to him, let alone fix it. The people tasked with speaking for him can’t do much better, because there is no coherent story to tell. Rudy Giuliani, the increasingly deranged reactionary icon whom some insider types blame for winding Trump up on this matter and who was supposed to make this investigation-of-whatever happen, makes a perfect advocate for Trump in this case not just because the two share the same strengths—getting divorced and getting white people in Staten Island excited, not necessarily in that order—but because both seem somehow to have synchronized their respective mental decay…
The LATimes story linked at the top is also good, if you’re into schadenfreude:
…“I think he’s badly wounded right now,” said a Trump campaign advisor who is in frequent contact with the president, one of several aides who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions. “I’m suddenly very worried about 2020.”
A senior White House advisor, Kellyanne Conway, said Trump didn’t need the kind of “war room” that President Clinton deployed while battling impeachment two decades ago.
“He’s the most battle-tested person I’ve ever met,” she said. “Why do we need an impeachment war room when the other people should have the burden of showing why they’re impeaching the president?”…
Trump has struggled to regain his footing after being blindsided by the swiftness of the scandal only months after he survived a grueling special counsel investigation into whether his campaign had improperly colluded with Russia during the 2016 election…
“I thought we had won,” Trump, sounding incredulous, said at a news conference Wednesday. “I thought it was dead.”
Aides say Trump is increasingly aware that he faces a more serious challenge now, and arguably a more formidable adversary, in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who is leading the impeachment fight…
Ty Cobb, the former White House lawyer who led the president’s legal response to the Russia investigation for nearly a year, said Trump will get good legal advice even though several key attorneys moved on after the Russia investigation ended.
“They’ve got some very good lawyers,” Cobb said. The question, he added, is whether Trump “will listen and the extent to which he will be helpful or harmful to his cause.”…
“At this point, [Trump] could be caught walking out of a Federal Reserve bank with two giant sacks of money in his hands and no Republican would vote to impeach him for grand larceny,” said a senior Senate GOP aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Our voters want two things from their congressmen: [dumping] on the media and blindly defending the president,” the aide added. “That’s what being a Republican has come to.”
cain
He’s not fit to be president or even possibly a dog owner. The man needs to be impeached and Pence as well as the entire dark earth scooby gang
trollhattan
KAC must be the most 1/whatever is really happening person I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve met some doozies. How does bottle-tested sound Kellyanne, does that work for you at all?
Kiddo ran her third ever XC race today and finished top-30 out of 240 varsity girls. She’s chuffed, which almost makes up for our predawn drive.
cain
And jesus christ, Republican party doesn’t stand for anything does it? You’d think if you asked these people why they are conservative there would be some high minded principles. I dont think that is true anymore.
Also what the fuck is Conway smoking these days? She grows more addled by the day. Isn’t she tired of defending the Tang Torquemada?
cain
I’m glad people recognize that Pelosi is going to eat him and then spit him up. Barr is probably shitting breaks because this is not going to go down like the Kavanaugh thing. Blood is in the water. He’lll have to manage the president, scared shitless republicans, and the goat he fucks at home.
cain
@trollhattan:
Congrats!
Matt McIrvin
@cain: Like Cleek said back in the day, whatever makes liberals angry today, that’s the essence of conservatism.
trollhattan
@cain:
Thanks! I’m now allowing her to get my exercise for me, so win-win. :-)
QUINERLY
I’ll leave this here too.
Worth the read:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/collusion-after-fact
QUINERLY
I’m waiting for Trump to turn on Moscow Mitch. Apparently, he’s turning on Mulvaney.
Van Buren
Its yet another perfect day around here and I spent it hiking in Harriman State Park only to find, when I finally emerged from the woods, that the shitshow continues unabated. Makes me want to find a cave to stay in for the next 13 months.
sukabi
@cain: if it isn’t some grand play for post drumpf relevance and riding the gravy train into the sunset KAC may have to worry about George having her retired to a padded room some place quiet. Those 2 couldn’t be on two more different pages wrt drumpf if they tried.
dmsilev
@QUINERLY: But if Mulvaney goes, who will become Lord High Everything Else? Jared?
Bill Arnold
@Van Buren:
Rip Van Winkle managed to do it up north a bit in the Catskills. He slept longer though; given global heating I think I’d sleep a year at a time, check things out before going back to sleep.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: The difference between W and T is that if W was your neighbor you could have trusted him to water your plants and feed your cat while your away. You would probably try to move if T was your neighbor.
MattF
It’s notable that nothing Trump has said is actually exculpatory— in particular, yelling “I’m innocent and everyone else is guilty” at the top of your lungs or typing it in ALL CAPS doesn’t actually make it true or provide any evidence that it is true.
QUINERLY
@dmsilev: tried and true?
“he went to Jared.”
Frankensteinbeck
And with those words, every lawyer in the country starts laughing or screaming.
@Matt McIrvin:
Even that does have a foundation, though, and it all comes down to bigotry. They’re fucking pissed that they’re sometimes losing to minorities, and that minorities are only getting more and more equal. It doesn’t matter if they still have 90%, they no longer have 100% and they see 50% on the horizon. So they’ve had enough. Minorities and everyone who stands with them have to be wrong, all the time. Must be denied in every way. No compromise. Facts and survival are irrelevant. Trump is the current champion of white bigots, and as such he must be defended from liberals to the death, unless that requires getting out of their chair.
dmsilev
@QUINERLY: I really really hope that happens. The comedic value of watching Jared try to run the White House even as Pelosi’s sharks circle around and start to close in really speaks for itself.
Aleta
This headline. Republicans show signs of discomfort in defense of Trump
(at The Hill)
As though he’s just a little something they ate last night or a mild virus.
Repercussions of enabling criminals begin to dawn on Republicans still in denial maybe.
Rommie
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve always held there’s a bit of fear about minorities as part of the bigotry – fear of retribution. Because they hold, and get told, a fantasy that THEY would have fought oppression to the last child, so of course Those People will be looking for their heads if ever they hold the power. All of them, automatically, will be looking for payback and only payback.
Leto
No, motherfucker. That was just the opening salvo. Plus, LATimes:
He didn’t survive, it’s still ongoing, and Barr still has not released the redacted portions of the investigation to the proper House oversight committees. (Edit: the oversight committees still haven’t received the Grand Jury testimony either. That’s still tied up in the courts.) Seriously LATimes???
@trollhattan: Congrats to the kiddo!
Adam L Silverman
He’s on the Bibi political campaign program: reelection or prison.
JaySinWA
https://www.lawfareblog.com/collusion-after-fact Benjamin Wittes
Jay
Your Trump Voter:
QUINERLY
@dmsilev: I guess you read the reports that “sources” in the WH think of Pelosi as an “assassin.”
JPL
@Jay: sad
NotMax
@Van Buren
Land o’ Goshen.
;)
SiubhanDuinne
@QUINERLY:
Delicious! I would rub my hands together in glee if one of them weren’t all swathed in splits and gauze.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: This is something special given that she’s one of the biggest ”anonymous senior administration official” source of some of the most damaging leaks to the President and her colleagues.
Frankensteinbeck
@Rommie:
Oh, yes, absolutely. They talk about it, often openly. Look at anti-suffragette literature. The harder racists talk about race war constantly, because the moment minorities have political power they’re convinced they’ll enslave whites. All the paranoid theories about Obama read like confessions of how blacks have been treated historically. They’re sure that the gay agenda is leading to heterosexuality being declared illegal. And on and on and on.
QUINERLY
@SiubhanDuinne: Mitch did advise to release the transcript.
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
1. Thanks for using Pooh-Bah’s proper title.
2. I think I saw recently that Trump is also souring on Jared. Good, good….
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: So that’s why she is still married..hmmm
Aleta
Jared turning on Trump as Trump starts leaking about Jared would cheer me up.
cynthia ackerman
I’ll give even money on what happens next.
Could be skate free, or caught like a skate.
JPL
@Aleta: I wish they would just eat their own. enough already
Adam L Silverman
@JaySinWA: And that guy just opened national security counterintelligence files on a whole bunch of senior White House officials and the Attorney General.
Leto
@SiubhanDuinne: Again, the scene from “Downfall” with Hitler just raging in the bunker, accusing everyone of disloyalty/incompetence… good, good…
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nice to see all of jared’s sucking up being a waste.
I mean it was just because he’s not good at anything but still, when they turn on each other, far more incriminating evidence will come out.
Litlebritdifrnt
Going through my mothers things I found this:
A man and his dog were walking along a road. When it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. They came to a marble gate. He saw a man, and called out to him. Where are we? This is Heaven sir. Would you happen to have some water Yes come in we have water. Can my dog come too? No we don’t allow pets. The man walked away and continued walking until he came upon a farm gate with a man standing by. He asked do you have any water? The man said yes, and there is a bowl for the dog. What do you call this place? ‘This is heaven” the man said, “But the man down the road said that was heaven”. “Oh you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates, nope that’s hell.” “Doesn,t it make you mad that they are using your name like that” “No we,re just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.”
lgerard
There is something I do not understand here
The whistleblower’s complaint makes it clear that there is a word-for-word transcription of the call in existence.
But that is certainly not what was released. Where is it?
I also have to laugh at the idea that this complaint should be ignored because “it is hearsay”
The whistleblower is not the actual witness who will be called to testify, it is the “more then a half dozen” people who provided the information to him/her.
The whistleblower is no more then a concerned citizen who is following the oft repeated law enforcement dictum
See something, say something
SiubhanDuinne
@cain:
@sukabi:
For a long, long time, I was firmly convinced that George and Kellyanne were doing some kind of he-said-she-said performance art as political Bickersons — a latter-day Carville and Matalin routine. But I now believe that George, at least, is genuinely horrified by what Trump says and does every day. Not sure what motivates KAC — I don’t trust her as far as I can spit; I think she’s a vulgar grifter, an opportunist, and cynical as shit. Odd situation.
TS (the original)
@Jay: They all see trump survive after saying/doing similar and get a false sense of security that they can do the same.
JaySinWA
@Adam L Silverman: I am not sure what that means exactly. Could you expand that a bit for someone ignorant of what that would mean?
JPL
@cynthia ackerman: This is what Paul Krugman tweeted
I don’t think he’s kidding.
JanieM
@Aleta:
LOL.
Adam L Silverman
@lgerard: It’s in the NSC Directorate if Intelligence code word access only server. With the other ones they buried there.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
“DEFER, DEFER . . .”
dmsilev
@QUINERLY: I treasure the mental image of Trump looking under every couch and inside every closet, convinced that Pelosi or Schiff or whoever might be hiding there spying on him.
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: Thank you for sharing that, because it is so true.
zhena gogolia
@Leto:
“Das war ein Befehl!”
SiubhanDuinne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Oh, that brought a tear. And since it meant enough to your mum to keep it, it’s very easy to see where you got your own love of animals.
How are you doing today? And how’s your stepfather bearing up? Have been thinking about you.
zhena gogolia
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Ooh, that’s good.
Adam L Silverman
@JaySinWA: It means that senior counterintelligence official has either just added all the likely suspects involved in this to the ongoing counterintelligence investigation or he’s started a new one.
zhena gogolia
@lgerard:
When Schiff came out after reading the whistleblower’s letter, he said something like, “This gives us a lot of good information on whom to interview.” He didn’t say it was the gospel truth — it’s kind of like the Steele report. It has to be verified. (And a lot of the Steele report has been.)
Jay
RAVEN
@lgerard: You want to read what THEY are saying?
Now that we have seen the whistleblower complaint filed by a CIA officer against President Trump, there should be little doubt that it is a fraud and represents an abuse of the whistleblower process. I know genuine whistleblowers (e.g., Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, etc.) and have been one myself. I am familiar with the kind of information one must possess (or should possess) in order to initiate a complaint. This complaint does not even meet the stupid standard. It is a trumped up complaint.
This CIA officer who filed the complaint has no direct evidence or knowledge. He heard things from other people. He was not party to the phone conversation and did not have access to the transcript. Instead, he cited public media as “corroboration” for his allegations, including reports by John Solomon.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
“Merely corroborative detail to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
Mary G
@Litlebritdifrnt: That’s beautiful and so true. The “Christians” who expect to be raptured without their pets are horrifying.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: Even MAGA Habs and Peter Baker? His own newspaper has done more to put T where he is. Do they get special treatment?
rikyrah
Ashley Reynolds (@Ashley_Reynolds) Tweeted:
Kamala Harris baited Rudy Giuliani’s dumb ass into reading State Department text messages off on an IPad and the very next day, the person involved in those texts (Kurt Volker) resigned lol. https://twitter.com/Ashley_Reynolds/status/1177719706205261824?s=17
Felanius Kootea
@cain: The Republican Party stands for accumulating power by any means necessary and owning the libs. Nothing more. This impeachment battle is the first time in a long time the Republicans get to question whether those two things are enough of a reason for being.
schrodingers_cat
@RAVEN: Did he also add that the President is a paragon of virtue who never lies and has never lied in his life?
MisterForkbeard
@lgerard:
I’ve been confused by this. It’s not clear whether the transcript we were given was what was hidden in the ‘secret’ server or not. I haven’t actually seen it stated definitively one way or the other.
raven
@schrodingers_cat: Click on it if you want to read the whole thing and the 80+ replies. I do see a little crack by the blog owner.
lgerard
@Adam L Silverman:
Every time I hear someone refer to what trump released as a “transcript” I start banging on the table like Khrushchev
Frankensteinbeck
@RAVEN:
Fortunately, the president REPEATEDLY CONFESSED, including in a tidy written version of the conversation that includes him responding to Ukraine’s request for aid by requesting help smearing his political opponents. So I guess it’s moot how much evidence the whistleblower has, huh?
Leto
But Skeletor told us that Trumpov didn’t need a war room, that he was the most battle tested mouth breather EVAH! Why isn’t he leading the charge, telling everyone what to do? I do crack myself up at times.
Jay
Raven
@Frankensteinbeck: Do you think I wrote that?
lgerard
@RAVEN:
Who is going to be the first to describe him as a “coffee boy”?
Frankensteinbeck
@Raven:
No. I am merely offering the simple, direct counterargument.
Raven
@Frankensteinbeck: Got it.
Citizen Alan
@Rommie:
I’m still shocked 11 years later at a conversation I had in 2008 with the actual fucking public defender for the town I was living in who told me that he was literally afraid of Barack Obama because he could not imagine any black man gaining rhe power of the presidency and not using it to take revenge on white people for past discrimination.
The Dangerman
@JPL:
Don’t get me too excited.
Nope. That isn’t the downside scenario. The downside scenario would have me scraping any anti-Trump bumper sticker off my car (if I had one, which I don’t). Trumpers are unhinged and nothing will be out of bounds for them.
ETA: Have car. Not bumper sticker on car.
rikyrah
Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) Tweeted:
A million thinkpieces on how Dems are too elitist to win back the white working class. Trump calls Dem base “savages” and nobody writes a piece about how Republicans are repelling minority support https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/1177995342668816384?s=17
JPL
@Leto: Wut. Is there a special strategy for dealing with trump? I feel like I’m living in a bad remake of a fifties film.
Jay
@MisterForkbeard:
What was released was a memo, containing possibly 11 minutes of a 30 minute conversation, possibly written from the notes a Trumpist took, during the call, in which the Ukraine President, sounds amazingly like Dolt 45.
The transcript of the conversation, was compiled in another room, by “Professionals”, word for word as the conversation happened, in accordance to the Presidential Records Act.
This transcript, was then deliberately upclassified by the Trumpists, and filed away on a NSC server, to try to make the transcript unreachable by anyone in the House, Senate or the IC/DOJ/FBI,
As they have been doing with all such phone calls since the leaks of the Australia call.
JPL
@The Dangerman: they can spot us though because we are the ones in a grocery store talking to neighbors with a smile on our face
Ladyraxterinok
@Adam L Silverman: Did you see they’re dumping paper ballots in Schiff’s district?? No paper recount check.
Doesn’t sound good.
Spent lots of $$$. IIRC similar to machine GA has had so much trouble with.
Millard Filmore
@QUINERLY: I have to wonder if he read the transcript first.
Jay
JaySinWA
@lgerard: This is beginning to sound a bit like the clip vrs magazine argument. Read-out Transcript. Yes they are different, but even a transcript is an approximation, and this was a bit more than a read-out and less than a complete transcript.
rikyrah
Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) Tweeted:
I’m a big believer that crowd size is meaningless. But crowd demographics is something that journalists & pundits notice as well. If Elizabeth Warren continues to have near all white crowds, even at HBCUs, there’s a narrative there. Even if she won nom, question of Black turnout https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/1178071624228249603?s=17
Chetan Murthy
@Ladyraxterinok:
Adam Schiff’s district? But that’s in CA. Aren’t these things decided at the state level? I can’t believe CA is dumping paper ballots …. we’d have heard about it, no?
ETA: Holy cow, you’re right: https://www.democraticunderground.org/100212517380
Quinerly
Rudy is now babbling about John Kerry. One of his latest Tweets:
“Dems want to investigate how I brought to light an alleged long term pattern of Obama Cabinet members-Biden,Clinton,Kerry-engaged in pay-for-play scheme. Their close relatives making millions for selling their offices. Isn’t this more important to investigate than how I found it?”
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) Tweeted:
Hillary Clinton didn’t have these kinds of demographic questions in the primary, and pretty much everyone believes a Democratic nominee will need to do better than her at turning out Black voters in the general. Pretty skeptical that Warren can do that. https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/1178071886502268941?s=17
patrick II
Some have speculated why the Trump White House released the “transcript” so quickly, if at all. Two reasons, I think.
1. Trump doesn’t think it is that bad. He has no sense of right or wrong anyway, but additionally he has said before he would accept foreign dirt on his opponents, and Rudy has been publicly up to finding foreign dirt on Biden for awhile. It has gotten some kickback, but not enough to worry him up until now.
2. The whistle blower’s complaint was about upgrading security classification of phone calls, not just a single phone call. There are worse than this one. But the complaint did refer to this Biden transcript in detail. I think they were hoping releasing this one would cause enough ruckus, from which they would recover (see 1 above), that it would distract from the whistle blower’s broader complaint. It didn’t.
Ken
@QUINERLY:
So possibly there are people in the White House who think the best way out of this is to assassinate Trump and try to pin it on Pelosi? I hope someone warns Trump to watch his back.
Quinerly
6 Trump Tweets in less than an hr. Was golf with Lyndsey today or is it tomorrow?
Jay
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s?__twitter_impression=true
Quinerly
@Millard Filmore: I don’t think he did. Everything I am reading leans towards McConnell telling him he had to release it. Plus, check out Trump’s last 4-6 Tweets in the last hour or so.
Ken
@schrodingers_cat: They are in the same position as the Cthulhu cultists: Their reward for bringing about the return of Great Cthulhu will be to be the last ones eaten.
Kraux Pas
@Chetan Murthy: I think that’s usually decided at the county level.
lgerard
@Quinerly:
Today. Tomorrow Lindsey has to go on the shows to fluff trump
Ruckus
@Ladyraxterinok:
Don’t know how they could do that, CA uses paper ballots for all state elections.
They are having in LA county a big drive to make voting easier for everyone, but the ballots are still optically read paper ballots, same as I’ve been doing in this state since 1970.
The Dangerman
@Quinerly:
Probably both.
To distract Trump from tweeting, we might need an emergency visit from Ivanka to see Daddy.
Quinerly
@The Dangerman: I think golf is tomorrow. Page 6 had the piece about Lyndsey on the plane to SC yesterday.
rikyrah
They are talking about the Governor’s race in Louisiana
Steve Phillips (@StevePtweets) Tweeted:
One day we’re going to have an honest conversation in this country about why the majority of white voters *always* vote against Dems and why 39% of white support for D’s is “a lot.” https://t.co/N2ws6uG5bG https://twitter.com/StevePtweets/status/1178028583765176320?s=17
Patricia Kayden
Not normal.
https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/1178083226142806022
This is another reason why Trump must be impeached. Going after your political opponent in this manner is harassment pure and simple.
trollhattan
@Ladyraxterinok: @Ruckus:
Take a look at the Voters Choice Act. Sac County was one of five to implement it last November. More should be coming on line by 2020. It was quite convenient.
Jay
debbie
I’d bet Trump has never had to deal with a woman who stood up to him.
rikyrah
Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) Tweeted:
I do wonder what GOP Sens and rightwing hacks tell kids and grandkids: During the Trump years? Oh I defended the guy who betrayed America. https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1178080751415259137?s=17
debbie
@patrick II:
On your #1, Trump believes, as president, he can do whatever he wants. That foreign aid was his to bargain, even bribe, with. It’s his staff who thought it was so wrong, they had to lock it away.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Read carefully. They are still creating a paper ballot, it just no longer has to be marked by hand. For someone like me, with tremors, that will be much easier. And if you vote by mail it’s still a hand marked paper ballot.
Now as for not having precincts or voting centers, how does that change your actual voting? It where you go to vote, nothing more, nothing less.
In LA county there are over 11 million people and a lot of them voters. At some point you have to make it easier for the voters and the counters. I am a permeant vote by mail voter and I can drop off my ballot into a ballot box at any of the voting centers, post offices, libraries, city centers…… My ballot will be the same as it has been for decades, card marked in ink.
I don’t see the issue here.
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
She’s putting on a great show then, while backstabbing the fuck out of the President. She’s also kinda petty and I’m sure some of that leaking is to damage some of her fellow staffers.
Quinerly
@Patricia Kayden: I like the comment “This will succeed at getting more gov’t employees to leak information damaging to Trump and the GOP. People won’t like living in fear and the best route to calm is to get rid of this horrible administration and the GOP. They really do not understand human psychology.”
JMG
There is zero evidence that Warren (or Bernie, to be fair) wouls draw significantly fewer African American votes than did Clinton. For slightly obvious reasons, neither would ever match Obama there. Biden wouldn’t either.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Like I said later, making it even easier to vote and leaving a paper trail.
The majority of the state I believe now votes by mail and that leaves a paper trail, unless each voter gets mailed a machine of some sort.
James Simonds
@Citizen Alan: They actually believe this happened, despite evidence to the contrary (ie, reality). Obama was and is condemned as a tyrant and the most racist president to exist. Yes, they actually believe SO HARD blacks are going to oppress them the fact it didn’t happen is irrelevant.
Doubt this is news to anyone here, but worth noting. I lived in a FOX household, I heard this on a daily basis.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and a significant portion of left twitter still whines that she didn’t move faster, as in before she had the votes and the evidence that seems to be moving at least some of the public, he typed with crossed fingers
cain
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Reminds me of https://dogwithblog.in/yudhisthiras-dog-tale-from-mahabharat/ – it’s the story from the Mahabharata – after the final war, the Pandava princes decided to retire and were going to go to heaven in their physical forms. The trip there is pretty grueling and one by one each of the princes and the wife died. During that trip a dog was following them the entire way. When the only prince left was the eldest, Indra the King of the Gods showed up ready to take him to Heaven, but Yudhisthira refused to leave the dog behind, and risked not going to heaven. Turns out the whole thing was a test as the dog turned into Yama, the God of Death, and he ended going to heaven.
While there he had some other WTFs, but that’s another story. :-)
Jay
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
Good. Keep expanding till we find everyone caught up in this web of intrigue.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know if it’s a winning strategy in Texas, but I love this, and I suspect it hits “Big John” Cornyn square in the nuts, and makes me want to send her money
debbie
@cain:
NPR interviewed Christopher Ruddy, the head of Newsmax, a notable RWNJ:
I was so shocked, I stopped yelling at the radio.
patrick II
@JMG:
While you can speculate about any individual Democratic presidential nominee’s attractiveness to black voters, it is pretty clear that there is, particularly among black women, serious antipathy towards Trump, and the Democrat will do very well with that political group even if their favorite is not the nominee.
Much the same with me. I’ll vote for any Democrat next year.
cain
@Felanius Kootea:
They will learn nothing from this. Instead, they’ll figure out what went wrong and correct. Just like they did after Nixon got impeached.. Everyone from that fucking administration has ended up in subsequent administrations and cause trouble. Luckily for Trump, it’s still the same shitheels from those previous administrations except for that Stephen.
TS (the original)
@rikyrah:
And Hillary Clinton was endlessly attacked by the press for calling the trump base deplorables.
TS (the original)
@Jay:
And what the political media have always hated – 99.9% of the time the Obama whitehouse did not leak – another reason why they elected trump
Aleta
Wash Post tonight
debbie
@Aleta:
So his campaign strategy in 2020 will be to run against Hillary all over again? //
Ladyraxterinok
@Chetan Murthy: That’s where I saw it and totally freaked out.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Even here, which is a pretty darned incrementalist liberal blog, there as been a great deal of complaining as if all she had to do was ‘whip the votes’ and she would have had them.
mrmoshpotato
@TS (the original):
She was being nice to all of the Trump trash.
Jay
MomSense
@debbie: Hahahahaha!!
Ladyraxterinok
@Ruckus: Appreciate all the comments. The 1st report I saw sounded really bad. But also didn’t sound like CA!!
Thanks to every one
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: D voters are invisible to NYT and other prestige media outlets.
Jay
Sister Golden Bear
Some relevant Saturday night music for my fellow jackals:
The Honey Drippers – Impeach The President
The Golux
@Van Buren: My son lives within a few minutes of Harriman State Park. Seven Lakes Drive (through the heart of the park) is splendid.
dww44
@TS (the original): This. Brown suits, dijon mustard, baskets of deplorables. Democrats are such evil and mean politicians, no?
Jay
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck:
I thought that was on the back of my Soros check?
Maestro
@lgerard: Yes. Republicans are counting on only making sense to the highly Uneducated.
They promote the idea, if you don’t understand something, the OTHER PERSON must be an idiot, and the old slide of hand, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I am the Great and Powerful Oz!”
Luciamia
@SiubhanDuinne: that was also a Twilight Zone episode!
Ladyraxterinok
@Jay: @Jay: These people are EVIL!
Jay
catclub
@James Simonds:
unelected czars are totally different from unelected acting Cabinet members.
Jay
The little children lead,………
feebog
@Ruckus:
Adding to your comments, moving from precincts to voting centers means you vote from anywhere in the city. Previously, you had to vote in your precinct. Otherwise, you had to cast a provisional ballot. Given how spread out LA is, and how many people have to commute many miles to work, this should have a positive impact on voter turnout.
Ken
@Jay: I’m sure that Barr’s absolutist views of Presidential executive power will be jettisoned the moment a Democratic President requires him to turn over all records of his term as AG. Similarly, his views of the President’s foreign policy powers stop, conveniently enough, at exactly the point where Barr is at risk of impeachment and prison.
Aleta
@debbie: Seems like it could have been planned this summer to look like news coming out that supports the fake stories Giuliani etc. were trying to set up. “R G
says Ukraine colluded with H C, the DNC and an FBI agent” (from faux news)
Another Scott
@Aleta: Why am I not surprised?
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
Wrong linky:
catclub
@lgerard:
indeed. also, transcriptions of other phone calls that are too explosive to leave out of the code-word TS safe.
jl
Just heard on the news that the Trumpster are starting a multi-million dollar ad campaign for 2020 election, all about the great Biden crime spree, graft and money laundering operation. And above, I see that they are illegally harassing government employees to get email dirt on HRC.
Some here have worried about false flags and clever gambits by the Trumpsters and how whatever they do is some trap that the Democrats will fall into.
I think makes no difference. The lid was blown off the plot to extort some fake smear against Biden, makes no difference. The Trumpsters are going ahead with the Biden smear anyway. I heard interviews with two ex-Ukrainian justice department officials (some credit to CBS for doing that on national broadcast) saying that there is nothing at all on either Biden. Makes no difference, Trumpsters go ahead.
Trumpsters are going to big lie, smear on obviously false evidence or no evidence. Democrats need to learn how to respond strongly, loudly, quickly and clearly to BS lies and smears. And not get lost in BS tactical head games about some nonexistent eleventy dimensional chess on the other side. They are thugs and they’ll act like thugs. They have one and only one tectic: lie. Need to get used to that.
Jay
@Ken:
He ran away to Italy, maybe he will stay there.
Aleta
@Aleta: Also: This is despicable harassment by the state at high levels, against people who once worked for T’s political opponent. Harming people for no reason but to create a story as means to an another end.
debbie
@Aleta:
Oh, right. I forgot about those naked pictures of Trump that Nunes spoke of.
Jay
oatler.
Can’t the diametrically opposed halves of the human race get it over with and slaughter each other? Not you, Luxembourg; you’re cool.
Jay
@Aleta:
There’s a huge amount of liability there,
There had better be a housecleaning unlike in 2008, with people held accountable for everything from Concentration Camps to,……..
Or the next ReThug Admin is going to deep six democracy in the USA for good.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
Some explanations from BradBlog: https://bradblog.com/?p=12505
the actual contract: https://www.lavote.net/docs/rrcc/board-correspondence/06122018.pdf
The plan is apparently NOT to produce a printed paper ballot that can be read by the voter, but rather a QR code. This introduces two computer systems, each of which can be corrupted. And the first (the tablet that the voter uses to produce the QR code) has no paper trail. Of course, there’s the issue that when these things are used, voters don’t look at the output of the first stage anyway. And that the company involved has apparently been involved in election theft in Venezuela. And other issues.
This is really, really, really awful. I’ll be contacting my state senator about this on Monday.
Jay
@jl:
D’s need to get their offense on point.
Every ReThug in the upcoming elections have equal and opposite days where a short clip from their “ad” can be juxtaposed with a shor clip of them saying exactly the opposite.
I posted in one of my posts a nice link of Rethugs saying the opposite during the Clinton Impeachment,
There’s lots of people out there running the numbers on the Rethugs, for free.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne:
It was never performance art and I completely disagree that George is horrified. They are working both sides of the Republican/conservative world. If the Trumpian world wins then Kellyanne is well positioned to carry them forward. If it’s Not Trump, then George will be the “voice of conscience” for their family and be in good standing with that group. It’s all about money and power. Always has been.
Chetan Murthy
@feebog:
There was no reason why this had to be hitched to a complete voting system redesign. They could have, for instance, had:
(1) voter entitlement system checks that voter is entitled
(2) pollworker scans barcode on preprinted paper ballot (each one has a different barcode — this is currently the case today, IIRC, but in any case, it’s not hard to arrange)
(3) entitlement system from #1 prints out first-page with voter entitlement data, and a tear-off strip with QR code of that data, and also reproduces the barcode of the ballot from #2.
(4) voter fills out ballot, hands back all pages
(5) pollworker separates tear-off segment of each page, gives to voter (this is how it works today)
Notice that the first page contains the entitlement info, and also the ballot serial number. The voter has the tear-off bit from that first page, proving that they were entitled. They also have the tear-off from each subsequent page (as today) identifying which ballot pages they marked.
No, this doesn’t solve the problem for people who can’t mark a paper ballot. But destroying democracy for all, in order to allow some subset to use devices to mark their ballots, isn’t progress.
JanieM
From the OP:
I confess — not for the first time — that I can’t keep up with BJ posts, much less comment threads, so maybe this has been mentioned before and I missed it.
From a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed reprinted in my local paper:
[my bold]
The very next day?!?!?
Whom the gods would destroy… — I don’t believe in the gods, or God either, but in this case I’lll make an exception.
Jay
Miss Bianca
@debbie:
LOL!
Ruckus
@feebog:
Yep
One thing is that CA wants your vote, every last one of them. And that’s obvious, from the vote by mail system to the voting centers open for 11 days before the election and those machines for those who have an issue with a pen or just want to do it different, it creates a paper ballot. Yes it’s machine readable but if you look it’s also human readable.
Jay
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
Unless the part that is machine-readable, is also the part that is human-readable, there is no way of verifying that what the voter intended, is what got marked, except to go thru ballot-by-ballot and reverify the match between the human-readable and machine-readable parts. If that is feasible to do for millions of ballots, than that is what should have been done to originally tabulate them.
That’s the beauty of the current ballot scheme: what the human marks, is what the machine tabulates. With no other representations of the voter’s intention.
Citizen Alan
@mrmoshpotato:
I’ve said that many times since then. “Deplorables” is a respectable 4-syllable word. She could have saved time and breath if she’d just called them “a bucket of shit.”
Jay
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
I knew we were in trouble in 2009 when I saw a TV interview with a proto-Teabagger who was incensed at the idea of “czars” because she thought it was something communists did.
brantl
@Ruckus: The problem with that, is if you don’t check how the machine made your intended marks. In a long ballot, people won’t .
Jay
Aleta
(Same Post story as quoted above)
Giuliani etc. also want the press to write about security violations ‘on both sides’ to lessen the gravity of what the T admin. has done.
LongHairedWeirdo
One thing I find interesting. Everyone knows that this is a BS accusation; even the DOJ itself immediately rendered an opinion that he wasn’t seeking “a thing of value” for his re-election campaign, right?
Okay, so, basically, we’re all *okay* with the President of the United States saying “hey, please open a baseless investigation into my political opponent.” See, the President, asking a foreign actor to please point the power of their law enforcement agencies at a political foe, that’s okay, the question is, did he actually *bribe* him to do it, and did it violate campaign finance laws, and would it be accepting a gift.
Like, “it’s *okay* to try to get criminal charges lodged against people you don’t like; just, you know, not if it violates campaign finance law, or is an excruciatingly explicit quid pro quo. And it’s okay if you’re doing that, in your office as POTFUSA, too, just so long as, you know, it’s not a campaign finance violation or an excruciatingly explicit quid pro quo.
As long as Very Serious People pretend that up is down, we’ll have journalists standing on their heads and saying “some people think it’s normal.”
Jay
@LongHairedWeirdo:
FEC says it’s a Campaign Finance Violation.
Another Scott
@Aleta: From the WP story:
Both-siderizing this is outrageous. It’s clear what Donnie’s people are trying to do – find excuses to punish their perceived (Former!) political opponents. This has absolutely nothing to do with actions by Obama’s administration. It’s Donnie and his minions trying to play despot.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
japa21
@Jay: Actually the FEC cannot make a ruling because they cannot get a quorum as positions have not been filled. I believe one of the commissioners did say that, however, it doesn’t mean anything in the real world.
Aleta
@Jay: So true
Cheney and GWB crashed so many things in the fall of 2007 it seemed they intended to force Obama to spend his first term digging out and shoring up. I expect the same in 2020.
hotshoe
When I’ve been away from news media and internet for a whole day, I go to Balloon Juice first.
I know if the world is ending, y’all will let me know.
Otherwise, carry on.
Now I’ll go the Guardian and catch up on any other news. :)
Jay
@japa21:
Unless the FEC files, ( which they can), the position that it is an Election Finance Violation, is mute, other than as a point of law.
That the Chairs of the FEC are empty, simply means that an FEC filing, is weakened.
Just because all your “Generals” are dead, doesn’t mean the war stops.
Amir Khalid
@Citizen Alan:
Ahem. Have you counted the syllables in “a bucket of shit”?
Ksmiami
@cain: good I hope he strokes out under pressure
Ksmiami
@Citizen Alan: garbage people works for me
Zinsky
“I think he’s badly wounded right now…”
Oh, boo-fucking hoo. We are supposed to feel pity for a 73 year old who has never done an honest day’s work in his life and was gifted millions of dollars as a child? The bigoted creep treats other human beings like garbage, loses the presidential election by three million votes and only got the presidency by suppressing minority votes, using Russian hackers and downright cheating to get elected and now wants us to feel all warm and loving towards him because a strong woman just kicked him in the balls and handed him his fat sorry ass? Sorry, Donnie! I, for one, wouldn’t piss in your ass if your guts were on fire and I suspect there are 250-300 million American who feel the same way!
Mary G
@Jay: @japa21: The FEC was still operating a bit, until this week, per WaPo:
She published the whole thing in 57 tweets, starting here:
They are all scum, so glad we have resisters still.
Matt McIrvin
You know, yesterday I was thinking Trump might actually be wounded, but nah, I still think he’s gonna skate and probably come out ahead. Look at his job-approval number on 538, that’s all you need to know. No real movement from polls over the past few days. In the early stages of this story he was actually gaining a little. That means his base still loves him as much as always, maybe more, and even a lot of marginal types are just getting hardened against Democrats by all this.
At some point, the Republican pundits and politicians are going to notice that, and they’ll flip from worried to Kavanaugh-defense mode. HOW DARE YOU HAVE THE GALL like Lindsey Graham. The impeachment trial will probably happen, they’ll vote on a party line, Trump will crow about his total exoneration, and that will be that. Once everyone in the government with a beef against Trump realizes that he is not going down and will still have power to hurt them, most of them will clam up again.
It isn’t 1973 any more. We are a more intractably polarized nation.
Sebastian
@Leto:
What I find hilarious is that Mulvaney has become the guy for everything because he is one of the few Senate appointed guys left. So he gets to fix the shit everywhere and there is only so much he can do.
I’ll pop another beer and enjoy the continued downfall of the House Trump.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Let’s see what happens. It’s still early, and these things take time…
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Richard Guhl
@rikyrah:
Once upon a time Jennifer Rubin was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who gave Mitt Romney regular tongue baths in her column during the 2012 election.
Now she’s calling for the destruction of the GOP.
StringOnAStick
Well now we know why Rudy said he should be the hero, not the whistleblower. I thought his on TV meltdown was weirder than usual; he was pissed that the memo story hit the media before their planned for attack on State department employees via retroactive classification, so he saw all that planning get blown up and couldn’t keep it together. That is what they were planning on running up the flag pole for the next distraction.
Jay
cain
Fucking CNN, apparently the brave women leaders to lead impeachment are all white women:
Not the Maxine Walters, and not the gang of four non-blondes. Go fuck yourself, CNN.
StringOnAStick
@cain: Fuck. I dispaired of our ever getting past race and especially race combined with misogyny.
TS (the original)
@Jay: When only citizens are counted then only citizens are human – the great American way
joel hanes
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll be contacting my state senator about this on Monday
Me too. And the California Secretary of State.
Chetan Murthy
@joel hanes:
Oh, right. Good point! I’ll do that too.
JR
@Matt McIrvin: You’re reading into polling noise. Expand the list of polls and see for yourself.
Mandalay
@Matt McIrvin:
That assumes no criminal charges will arise from whatever gets unearthed. I suspect once some of the lower level White House officials confer with their very expensive lawyers they will start squealing like frightened piglets. Apart from Trump, it’s starting to look like a gazillion of his entourage are potentially in deep do-do.
Also, Republicans in Congress will stop being loyal to Trump as soon as their loyalty impacts their ability to get re-elected.
I try to avoid using rose-tinted spectacles, but I can’t see how Trump emerges from this ahead.
cain
@Mandalay:
Not just that, but lose the Senate and possibly lose out on power for a decade. (provided our leadership is saavy enough not to think that anything is over by a longshot – you still have to keep your democracy against these assholes)
Vhh
@Rommie: They are afraid of the ghost of Nat Turner.
RedDirtGirl
@schrodingers_cat: But to be honest, we know that he would leave it for Laura to do, right?
Jacel
@TS (the original): Always remember that Hillary referred to a portion of the Trump supporters “deplorables”. She had two baskets. What she had to say to her team about the Trump supporters in the second basket was very sympathetic and undismissive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jacel: also, as I recall she was specifically talking about people at his rallies, the people wearing “Fuck your feelings” and “Trump that bitch” shirts, among others
TS (the original)
@Jacel: She shouldn’t have bothered – the media only reported the first basket.
artem1s
@Matt McIrvin:
Koch Teabaggers only cared about spin and propaganda. Now they have an army of drooling zombies who eat and shit nothing but Faux News all day long. They are brain dead and the GOP has lost the power to turn them on a dime to the next faux outrage. The Koch SS don’t scare them anymore or at least don’t scare them as much as all the faux boogie men planted in their psychic closets. Even better, any attempt by the propos to turn their attention to the next target of scare mongering is seen as a conspiracy to cover up the current hate fixation. There will be people railing about Clinton selling uranium to the Russians 30 years from now – at the other drooling idiot in the next bed in the old folks home wailing about the caravan people invading Texas. R-obespierre may have finally turned the dial up on the mob a little too high.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who seems to be more adept at – or at least more insistent on – borrowing trouble than you are. I wouldn’t call it a gift, exactly.
Citizen Alan
@Amir Khalid:
To clarify, her original quote was “basket of deplorables.”
artem1s
@Matt McIrvin:
true, but there are many more groups than there were in 73 too. lots of disaffected groups that voted for Dump are wising up to the fact that he’s never going to fix their pet issue. Just like they did with W and then Obama. The folks in this administration are there for only two reasons. they are true believers or they are in it for some personal gain. the ones that saw being linked to Dump was hurting their reputation started leaving ages ago. the ones who are in it for profit are starting to leave now. and the ones who have been blinded by isolating themselves in the echo chamber are starting to notice that the power brokers and the money brokers have left the room. Pretty much what you have left are a bunch of low level staffers who have no idea how Washington works and are waking up to the fact that they are going to be out of a job and unemployable in about a year, no matter what. And now, they may also be looking at jail time.
the GOP power brokers who are still trying to run the table are in it for themselves. their is no future for Donnie in the Party past November 2020 and they all know it. They are in full CYA mode now. Yes, they will try to deflect any investigation if it comes too near the men behind the curtain. but they are pretty likely going to let Donnie go under in the hope that the Dem jubilation will mean the investigations will then stop. they are probably thinking they can weather a Pence WH and possibly keep the Senate that way. But it’s highly unlikely they will keep the WH and the Senate if they continue to back Dump simply because the Dumbass isn’t going to help the Party down ticket. He is only going to hurt it and probably worse than he did in 2018. GOP leadership only cares about keeping the Senate, their seats or positions, and the campaign money flowing. protecting Dump doesn’t help the Party on any of those fronts.
No it’s not 1973. They hate this guy far more than they hated Nixon.
ssdd
@cain:
It’s also an episode of The Twilight Zone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(The_Twilight_Zone)