Lt. Colonel Vindman and Jennifer Williams (Pence aide and alleged “Never Trumper”) are scheduled to testify starting in a few minutes, with Vindman up first. Here’s an embedded video from C-SPAN via YouTube:
So, how will Republicans attempt to smear these witnesses? How much of the Crackpot Dome scandal (conspiracy theory that Ukraine/Soros/DNC framed Russia/Putin/Trump in 2016) will be revealed? We shall see!
Open thread!
germy
Raven
How in the fuck am I supposed to do meaningful activities with all this going on? I’m between primer coats and waiting for some caulk to dry but, damn!
stinger
I don’t understand how a person could be an aide to Pence, Trump’s running mate, and also be a never-Trumper.
I also don’t understand how a person could be an aide to Pence.
germy
@Raven:
Better to watch the hearings than watch paint dry.
Raven
@germy: With his CIB and Tropic Lightning patch!
schrodingers_cat
@Raven: What are you painting and caulking?
Marcopolo
And we’re off…
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
He looks very impressive. Intimidating, even.
TS (the original)
@stinger:
It seems trump only learned the term “never trumper” in the last few days & everyone who gives evidence at the inquiry will now be given that label. Someone on his staff must have thought this would make him feel better.
Raven
@schrodingers_cat: Just some trim that I put in when out addition was finished a couple of years ago. I’m wandering around looking for stuff to do. We’re back to the beach next week so I can’t get too serious yet.
Marcopolo
So are the folks sitting directly behind the witnesses (and thus in every camera shot of them for the next several hours) there out of choice or by chance? Not where I’d want to be if I was there to watch the hearing.
Cheryl Rofer
@stinger: She was assigned from the State Department. Another civil servant doing her job.
This also explains why Trump calls her a Never-Trumper. Part of the Deep State, doncha know.
Cheryl Rofer
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@TS (the original): The fact that no Republican, least of all Trump, understands that government employees are sworn to work for all the people and not a particular party is one more symptom of how debased a party they are.
Gin & Tonic
Let’s see if this works.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cheryl Rofer: I was going to say I can’t believe how bad Trump and his gang are, but it turns out I can.
germy
The way Nunes spits out the names of those liberal media outlets..
Puppets! Of the democrat party…
TS (the original)
Nunes is talking to the people about the evil media. This week the republicans are attacking the press. it obviously didn’t go down well last week when they attacked the witnesses.
burnspbesq
Not sure which is worse: (1) that some Republicans would suggest that Lt. Col. Vindman should be court-martialed for complying with a facially valid subpoena, or (2) that I’m not surprised they would go there.
Jay C
BTW, regarding (as Betty so eloquently puts it) “Crackpot Dome”, I read that what looks like the first installment of Barr’s long-procrastinated Big Reveal is now slated to be Big-Revealed by the DOJ’s IG to the Senate Judiciary Committee (Lindsey Graham, Chairman) on Dec. 11. However, preliminary leaks are already predicting its conclusions: I.e., that there is no “there” there, and that the G’s investigations into Russian interference in 2016 were all above-board.
I know this will likely disappoint the wingnuts who were looking forward to having Obama, Hillary, Comey, et. al. spending Christmas in jail, but there we are.
jeffreyw
@Marcopolo:
Patricia Kayden
Just muted Nunes. Can’t be bothered to listen to his propaganda today. I must commend Schiff for handling the impeachment process with such dignity and class and maintaining order when Republicans act up. This is one of the reasons why the polls are so high in favor of impeachment.
Patricia Kayden
@Jay C: Dang it! That Deep State is everywhere!
Republicans will never admit that they’re wrong about everything.
TS (the original)
John Solomon reported all this stuff that the media is now removing. The democrats made them do it. The GOP is so full of conspiracy theories they know not what they do.
Edit: They have no facts this week, they have no facts last week. So back to Biden. this all sounds like what trump has ordered Nunes to say.
hedgehog mobile
Can’t bear to listen to Nunes. Ugh.
Leto
Schiff needs to say this after Dumb Dumb Nunes finishes: “Mr. Nunes, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Baud
Shorter Nunes: The media must be lying because Trump couldn’t have committed this many crimes.
Betty Cracker
Nunes name-checks NYT reporter Ken Vogel, who blew a once in a generation scoop about the POTUS bribing and extorting an ally to participate in a Biden corruption snipe hunt. I wonder if Vogel will end up at Fox someday…
@Leto: That would have been the perfect retort!
JWR
@Patricia Kayden: You’re not kidding about Nunes! I know that if it were me up there, I’d have already knocked myself out from all the face planting. (Either that, or from snickering to death.)
Eunicecycle
@Patricia Kayden: I just clicked on the live feed and saw him blathering. Said “Nope!” And closed that window right up. It used to be just Rump made me hit mute or change the channel; now it’s most Republicans.
Leto
@TS (the original): They’re back to unhinged conspiracy theories, and that’s the only thing they’re operating off of. It should be jarring witnessing half of our political body being unable to distinguish fact from fiction, but here we are.
Booger
So, Frances McDormand as Willams in the movie?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Or Trump’s next press secretary.
Tony Jay
Open Thread?
Some patriotic champion of freedom (or ratfucking Russian keyboard-warrior) just hacked and released Aaron Banks’ twitter account. Banks being the Leave UK millionaire who acted as middleman funneling Russian money to the pro-Brexit campaign in 2016.
That should make this evening’s Leadership Debate between Johnson and Corbyn a bit spicy. I wouldn’t be surprised if, a) Labour technofolk are scraping through every released tweet and DM to form a dossier of incriminating dirt, and b) Johnson pulls out (for once) and runs away. I’ve only seen a couple of messages, but it can’t be a good look for Johnson to have to defend why his fellow Brexiteer and current Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was thanking Banks for forcing Nigel Farage to stand down the bulk of his Brexit Party candidates, as agreed, while Banks was referring to Labour voters in the North of the UK as ‘Northern monkeys’.
Is the story anywhere on the Guardian or the BBC front pages?
Nope.
Betty Cracker
@Booger: Streep as Yovanovitch, obviously. John Hodgman as Vindman?
SiubhanDuinne
@Booger: Or Julianne Moore.
Jersey Tomato
@Jay C: Wow, really? Because Lindsay Graham was practically touching himself when he was threatening Democrats with the release of this report a few months ago. He was talking about it the same way Trump used to talk about his investigators in Hawaii, who were finding unbelievable things out about Obama and his birth certificate.
Leto
@Baud:
@Betty Cracker: Half the people Nunes name checked are in jail for lying/obstructing justice. But sure, all of those reports were “Not true”.
@Cheryl Rofer: Continuing to show that there is no bottom. There never will be a bottom.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Whoa.
Amir Khalid
@jeffreyw:
Even the best of us can be tempted.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
I know.
Obviously I’m waiting to see if this is a false-flag event, but if it’s not….
Happens every time I write up a Brexit Election Update, real life bigfoots the studs right through it. 8-)
Cacti
@Amir Khalid: I guess that depends on what you mean by best.
Leto
@Tony Jay: Insanity. It sucks that you guys are having even less transparency into your own Russian meddling of the Brexit vote.
@Betty Cracker: Good call on Hodgeman as Vindman!
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay: Hot damn. Transatlantic shitshow.
Gin & Tonic
Anybody know what happened with On The Road? We had one yesterday, but not today.
Zinsky
Devin Nuneś opening statement was a complete joke and embarrassment! What a fool! His five minute tirade about the whistleblower was completely delusional and beside the point. You could see several people in the audience rolling their eyes. How can these Republican reptiles look in the mirror? What horrible, delusional people they are!
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Roads? Where were going we don’t need roads.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Ken Vogel is upholding the finest journalistic standards of a NYT which employed Walter Duranty and Judith Miller.
hueyplong
We do these a-holes a favor when we speculate about kompromat as the motivation for their behavior.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
That would be really embarrassing for BoJo, if he were a normal person; but he seems to have a well-below-average capacity for embarrassment.
Did you see the first Womens Super League derby at Anfield? Liverpool live-streamed it on YouTube. It was a real pity to lose a tight match 0-1 becauae our keeper fumbled the ball into the net.
TS (the original)
All the people testifying are turning their lives upside down. They will forever be called partisan by republicans and regardless of their work history, will be buried in a corner if trump cannot fire them.
The only other people I feel for in this disaster are the people of Ukraine. If trump survives this he will ensure they get no more support from the US while he is in power.
mrmoshpotato
@Zinsky:
Good morning. Today is a day that ends in -y. :)
Cacti
Dean abandons Sal in Mexico, they meet up again briefly in New York, then part ways.
Glad I could help. ;-)
mrmoshpotato
@hueyplong: You think they’re motivated by a love of looking stupid?
JPL
They are classifying phone calls so Williams can only testify what she heard in a classified setting.
TS (the original)
@JPL: “They” would be the vice president.
Tony Jay
@Leto:
For now. The embargo on the Russia Report can’t last, not with the Russian funding of the Tory Party out in the open.
I hope.
Leto
@TS (the original): things I’ve learned: that the VP is now a classifying authority. It always helps prove your case of innocence when you undertake a massive cover-up
Edit: @Tony Jay: I hope too. What do you think the reaction will be from the UK public if/when they learn the scale of the Russian interference/ Tory/UKIP Russian assistance?
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s ‘Hot Damn and the Transatlantic Shitshow’, Mister. Only the greatest skiffle-jazz band ever to come out of Bury St Edmunds.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
Alain is still moving from 2 houses into their new house, so is a tad busy. I expect On the Road will be hit or miss for a little while, even though the software appears to be ready to support it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: There is stuff going on behind the scenes, with a bit of confusion from the changeover. On The Road will be back.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
If there’s anything with Johnson’s name in there, he’ll run away and the Media will let him get away with it.
If there’s nothing with Johnson’s name on it…. that’s pretty suspicious.
I missed that game, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately. It’s been so long since I saw a Liverpool team lose a game (especially to a team in blue) I don’t think I could have survived the rupture in reality.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay: Hehe, my mistake.
Tony Jay
@Leto:
That’s hard to say. In a vaguely just world it would be devastating. In the world we live in, with the Media united in poo-pooing it as “old news and over-hyped” it might not have any effect at all.
OTOH the Tories certainly think it would hurt them, so I chose to be positive.
JWR
Would that be because she knows that what she has to say will make “The Big Guy” look really f*cking guilty?
Tony Jay
Right, I’ve got to get back to work and shit. Anyone mind if I dump an enormous load of Brexit related venting here or shall I wait for an Open Thread on dancing cats?
Marcopolo
So no Republican stunts today? I’d say perhaps they learned their lesson from what happened in reaction to last Friday but I take issue with the idea that R’s can learn from experience. It assumes facts not in evidence.
Leto
@Tony Jay: I’ll be positive with you.
Mo' Salad (ocassional unlurker --bd)
@Amir Khalid: Was her name Lori Karius?
japa21
@Marcopolo: They are looking forward to Vogel’s testimony which they think is totally exonerating of Trump. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
TS (the original)
@Marcopolo:
Today they are talking to the people of America and asking them to read and believe all and any conspiracy theories about the Bidens and Ukraine. They are also attacking the media in an attempt to have the deplorables refuse to believe what they hear and see.
Marcopolo
@japa21:Wait, Vogel? Think you mean Volker. Though Ken Vogel testifying would be something.
Anyone else find the woman sitting behind Vindman looks a little like Christina Ricci?
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: OK, it’s just that when one landed yesterday but not today, I had to ask.
Personally, I’m delighted the submission form now works correctly (the previous one choked on the ampersand in my nym.)
Gin & Tonic
@japa21: You might be confusing Volker and Vogel.
Amir Khalid
@japa21:
What amazes me about the Trumpistas is how they can look at evidence/testimony and believe it exculpates Lieber Führer where the rest of the world sees him caught dead to rights.
MattF
Just bear in mind that Nunes is suing (for $400 million!) two Twitter accounts:
p.a.
I’m afeared long term, just winning elections won’t be enough to erase this rethug idiocy. Mass sterilization is unethical. Maybe hoping Murdoch spawn have Road to Damascus experiences and dismantle/realign the ‘news’ division is the only foreseeable solution.
Tony Jay
++++++++BREXIT ELECTION UPDATE+++++++++
“ONAN, LOOK AT MY LIFE…”
It’s not every day that a headline speech due to be given by a British Prime Minister has to be rewritten because all anyone wants to talk about is the reference to wanking.
Hello again and welcome to Brexit Britain, the land where things like that are just part of the grand adventure now. Instead of boring old normality we get to feast from a plate piled high with endless possibilities for shame and humiliation and to enjoy being the kind of once-civilised state where Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson assigning masturbatory motives to those opposing his Brexit strategy is enough to send our ever so professional journalistic class into spasms of pseudo-intellectual contortion. If this 70’s sit-com version of a Prime Minister said it, or planned to say it, or is even reported to have planned to say it, then it simply must be treated seriously; duly reverential thoughts must be had, chins stroked, preferably with the stem of a slowly smouldering pipe, eyes must narrow in deepest thought. There must be nodding, and the juice of a massive, massive ponder must be splashed all over the nation’s front pages, proving once again that Johnson isn’t just a wanker, he’s a wanker’s wanker. Though in his defence, when it comes to pulling the cord on the one-man parachute we’re sniggeringly informed by ‘political journalists’ that Johnson is on the record as telling a cornered member of the prey-gender that his manly musk is so effective as a coital lubricant that he hasn’t actually had to accompany a five-fingered friend to the down-below dancefloor for nigh on twenty years.
So, there’s that then.
Truth to tell it’s really hard to write up a precis of what’s going on in UK Election 2019 because the deluge never stops flowing. Like a young Bane desperately treading water through the night as the tide rises in his cell, we’re kept far too busy just trying to stay alive to pay attention to all the leeches battening onto our flesh. You’ll all be familiar with this from the Reign of El Tango Traitorio, but Holy Geese Balls, Batman, it is draining as all hell to try and keep up. Thank God for homemade amphetamines, that’s what I say, and for crushed nosefuls of this frisky little black-pill business I bought on the Interwebs from a guy calling himself Lando Caljizzian. He used a picture of an Ewok in a basque as his Image, so obviously caveat emptor and shit, but needs must when the Devil takes the wheel. Heart beating like a hummingbird’s wing and loose guts flopping like Prince Andrew on a billionaire’s waterbed (allegedly), in I go.
This is a war between truth and lie. On the one hand, we have Government by the Tories, a palpably awful descent into grey stagnation and the division of our society into wolves and lambs. On the other, we have the possibility for genuine progressive change of a kind not seen in this country since the postwar creation of the National Health Service and the opening up of the education system to allow kids from the lower tiers to stand up tall and look the sons and daughters of centuried privilege right in the eye. If it was a straight-out battle for souls, I’d be hearing the backing track by Aerosmith kick in right now, but, of course, it’s not that easy. Those Above have crafted this particular national pastime with great care and attention to detail over a very long time and the advantages of class aren’t just evident, they’re built into the very fabric of the contest. This playing field slopes only one way, and to say the referees are prone to bias is like saying Meatloaf is prone to a slight huskiness around the chin.
Nevertheless, we persist.
There are quite a few major issues bouncing around the ether this Election season. The biggest of the big is, obviously, Brexit and its destructive trail of acidic slime. Johnson would be happy just to make everything about that and pound away with three or four appallingly huge lies to get the Leave minority to give him a Parliamentary majority. Labour aren’t prepared to do that, however, and would quite like to talk about maybe carrying out some improvements to the run-down shambles of a country Johnson and Co want to inflict their No Deal Brexit on, if that’s okay with everybody (cut away to BBC chief political editor Laura Kuenssberg shaking her head and smirking as she closes her laptop, but it’s too late, we’ve already seen that her screensaver is a still of her looking flushed and wide-eyed as Johnson brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear and leans in for an intimate moment…) and even if it’s not.
The future of the National Health Service has (unsurprisingly) emerged as a major issue in this Election, with Labour accusing the Tories of planning to privatise and sell it off to American ‘Healthcare providers’ as part of any post-Brexit Free Trade Deal with the Trump White House, while the Tories (who can’t actually deny this with any credibility) fall back on accusing Labour of being Marxist Revolutionaries who want to clog up every single hospital bed with leprous foreigners then force our virginial daughters to give them all naked bed-baths. It hasn’t really helped the Tory argument that the NHS is ‘safe in their hands’ that pneumonia cases among disadvantaged children are reported to have shot up by more than 50% over the last decade, while Accident & Emergency waiting times are the worst since records began, but being Tories and legally emancipated from the moral codes of other sapient vertebrates, they just blame all that nonsense on thieving foreigners and the last Labour Government, so problem solved, yah?
As you might imagine, Labour have been hitting the Tories hard over their deliberate mismanagement and underfunding of the NHS, tying it in to the hard-line and exclusionary immigration policies that have seen something like 40,000 vacancies in the organisation go unfilled as the insufficiently Anglo-Saxon get the Tory message loud and clear. This was backed up yesterday when 9 out of 10 NHS managers (often drafted in from the private sphere to bring their ‘can-do spirit’ and ‘synergistic improvamentalist convergence techniques’ to the field of getting people who are dying to think again) released a warning that staff shortages would inevitably lead to patient deaths. Johnson’s response to all this whiffle-waffle seems to be to keep going on friendly TV and radio to lie about his ‘plans’ to build 40 new hospitals, even though it’s been pointed out exhaustively, often to his face, that the actual policy is to promise to upgrade 6 hospitals and provide some funds for the future upgrading of another few dozen, which is, like, not the same thing, man. He doesn’t care, he just keeps on lying, apparently assuming that the Media will get bored correcting him and just let him have ‘the win’ for outstanding persistence.
He might be right. When an internal Party memo was leaked earlier this month revealing that Tory Party candidates were forbidden to sign up for any pledges on tackling climate change or protecting the NHS from privatisation and/or being used as a sacrificial cow in pursuit of trade deals, you’d have thought that any self-respecting Media class would hound them on it relentlessly. And you would be right, it’s just that we don’t actually have one of those and are stuck with the Tory-backing, Labour-hating shit-parade we’ve got. To this bunch the actual facts of any particular matter are pretty much irrelevant. The only metric of importance is how the optics play with the acknowledged experts in the esoteric field of optics at play – namely themselves – and in all cases they can assure us that by some unexplained quirk of fate totally independent of the tone and thrust of Media coverage, it just doesn’t appear – to them – that Labour’s nerdy reliance on facts and figures are succeeding in making Johnson cry, so he’s obviously the winner because keeping dry eyes projects strength, and voters just love them some strength.
These fucking people. They’ll be the death of us all.
On a related note, you may have heard that Britain has its own version of the Russia Report knocking around waiting for its chance to audition for the role of ‘December’s Surprise Turning-Point’? It’s true, we do. Produced by the House of Commons Intelligence Committee and signed off on by the Intelligence Services it apparently details the size, scale and many, many avenues through which Russia has influenced and manipulated our voting systems and wider political scene since the 2016 EU Referendum. Despite the fact that it’s ready for release and undeniably relevant Johnson has personally held it back for a variety of bullshit reasons that no one takes seriously.
Chief-Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sinak MP, a former Hedge Fund Management twerp graduated, like his boss the Chancellor of the Exchequer (who was a banker at Chase Manhattan and Deutche Bank before entering politics) from fox to fox on henhouse duty, was sent out sans conscience or big-boy pants to claim that the Russia Report simply couldn’t be released until the dangerous national secrets in there had been redacted. But that was done weeks if not months ago, sez everybody. No, it wasn’t, sez Rishi. Yes, it was, sez everyone, the Committee that wrote it and the Intelligence Services that vet it say it was. No, No, you don’t understand, sez Rishi, it hasn’t been redacted for sensitive political information that could lead people to believe that the Tory Party is a wholly owned and entirely corrupt sock-puppet for London based Russian oligarchs and their Big Daddy Vladdy back in old Kremlin-town. Say what, sez everyone? Oh shit, sez Rishi, and buries his face in his soft, perfumed hands. He might as well have declared they couldn’t publish it because Johnson’s pen had run out, it would have had more verisimilitude to it.
Various anonymous sources have given us the general outline of some of the issues raised by the Report, and from them we can see why Johnson is so very reluctant to have his Trumpian ‘relationship’ with powerful Russian interests placed before the public. Oligarch ‘donations’ to the Torieshave totalled at least £3.5 million since 2010, with at least £500,000 in the past year alone, much of that aimed directly at getting their boy ‘Boris’ into Number 10 and keeping him there. Tory attempts to damage Labour by promoting the myth that Corbyn ‘sided with Russia’ over the Salisbury poisonings (carried out by two FSB officers who just happened to be visiting the world famous cathedral there with a bottle of nerve agent, honest) would gain much less purchase if the public were also made aware that the Tory Party has not only refused Labour’s calls to expel many of the regime-backed Russian oligarchs currently distorting London’s property, organised crime and full-body tattoo markets, but is actually reliant for its continued existence on funding from these same shady melonfarmers. Would Leavers be so proud to tout their continued support for whatever metamorphic version of Brexit they’re informed they retroactively voted for back in 2016 if the scale and success of Russo/American disinformation in the Referendum was spelt out in James Bondian black-and-white? And wouldn’t it be nice if we had some inkling about why the current Prime Minister and then foreign secretary met Russian billionaire and former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev (owner of the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers here in the UK) in Italy back in April 2018, only a month after the Salisbury attacks and two whole days after a NATO summit where Russia’s aggression was the main topic of conversation? Maybe his Security detail could give us a clue in a closed hearing and …what’s that? He left his security team behind to fly out to meet Lebedev? Well, I’m sure there can’t be any national security implications about that kind of behaviour. It’s not as though Johnson is denying the very idea of Russian meddling in British electi…oh…. he is? Wow. Just paint him orange and mock his privates, the transformation is complete.
For some reason that’s literally on the tip of my tongue (Cough! Bias! Cough!) the British Media seem strangely reluctant to press Johnson and the Tories on this minor matter of potential treason and blatant international fuckery. I know it doesn’t even begin to rise to the level of national security threat inherent in Corbyn’s persistent failure to whoop-whoop when another senior terror leader escapes his day of reckoning in court through suicide by Special Forces, but maybe just the odd mention every now and again might help the public to understand the seriousness of the danger this poses to our democratic systems. They could, I don’t know, frame it in a way that people can understand by comparing it to a similar situation elsewhere in the world where a right-wing buffoon is also frantic to bury embarrassing evidence of financial subservience to a cut-throat foreign dictator with a long and well-documented hatred of western democracy. Nothing occurs to me right now but they’re the professional journalists, so surely they could have a root around the article bin and find some kind of comparison that would fit. s/
Seriously though, it’s blatant and terribly destructive. Former Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne (so very much not a Far-Left radical) has caused a recent stir by savaging the BBC and the print media not just for going easy on the Tories, but actively colluding to get their talking points out there without a flicker of adverse scrutiny. This piece published yesterday in the Guardian is absolutely brutal and contains the following devastating quote.
“A big reason for Johnson’s easy ride is partisanship from the parts of the media determined to get him elected. I have talked to senior BBC executives, and they tell me they personally think it’s wrong to expose lies told by a British prime minister because it undermines trust in British politics. Is that a reason for giving Johnson free rein to make any false claim he wants?”
This is what we’re up against. The national broadcaster with a foundational duty to educate and inform the population refuses to let its viewers know that the Prime Minister is lying because then they might not vote for him. What is there to say to that other than I really hope one of the first reforms made by a Labour Government is to fire every single one of them and then scrap the Cameron-era changes which gave the Government the power to appoint the BBC’s top directors. We cannot survive as a democracy without an independent BBC, and what we’ve got now is quickly morphing into a pale imitation of Fox News lining up alongside the openly pro-Tory Press to keep the electorate buried in shit until their boy is safely reinstalled.
(Slow breathing. Visualise puppies juggling custard-tarts. Unclench. This too will pass)
Back to the campaign.
The big-bang last week was Labour’s announcement of a plan to nationalise the infrastructure that underpins Britain’s woeful ‘Openreach’ Broadband system and provide it free at the point of use to the population just like any of the other underperforming utilities they want to return to public ownership. Labour costed the scheme at £20 billion over 10 years, to which the corporate executive running the privatised British Telecom responded with a bizarre stream of consciousness harangue that started estimating the cost at £40 billion and quickly multiplied it to a projected ONE HUNDRED BILLION POUNDS (cue little pinkie raised to the corner of the mouth and something about sharks with fricken lasers on their heads) and ended with the tearful executive grabbing journalists by the lapels and sobbing into their chests while local schoolchildren linked hands around him and crooned a lament for lost glory in the original Sindarin. Poor wee thing, faced with the prospect of maybe losing his job in an environment where senior corporate execs can barely count the zeroes on their bank balances, how is he supposed to support a wife, three kids, four mistresses and a seductive alpaca called Keith without the regular five figure bonuses pouring in? Who gives a shit if the jobs of every BT worker effected will be ringfenced and transferred over to the new nationalised utility? Will nobody think of the real victims in all this?
Johnson does, of course. Standing in yet another mostly empty warehouse surrounded by a tight circle of Party officials and a handful of bored workers (a la Theresa May’s awful campaigning strategy back in 2017) he lambasted Labour’s scheme as Crackpot Communism and Corbyn himself as a Marxist. Quite why Britain can’t have the same kind of 21st century infrastructure as other rich countries without conservatives dismissing the very idea as tantamount to building a gulag archipelago is a bit of a mystery that the Media is loath to delve into. One thing is clear, though. Should the idea prove to be a vote-winner for Labour it’s a cast-iron certainty that a commitment to partner with the very best private companies in order to establish a BRILLIANT and FANTASTIC Broadband network for a mere £19.9 billion pounds will appear in the Tory Election manifesto when it comes out next month, and not a single political journalist will bat an eyelid at the hypocrisy.
Despite the best efforts of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Criminal Unit for Minimising Boris’ Affairs and Graft, the Arcuri scandal continues to bubble away nicely in a manner sure to appeal to viewers of awful daytime television. Recall if you will that Johnson, back when he was doing a woeful job as Mayor of London, met an American ‘entrepreneur’ by the name of Jennifer Arcuri from whom he took frequent “technology lessons” at her flat (presumably something along the lines of “Insert Plug A into Socket B”) and in return funneled a LOT of public money in the form of investment grants into her start-ups (at which point Socket D likely became available) followed by taking her with him on more publicly funded foreign trips (where I’m sure we’ll learn at some point the topic of Socket E was broached over a third bottle of bubbly). You see it’s a criminal offence for the Mayor to hand over public money in return for sex, even if he really, really wants it, and the London Authority has the power to hold its own investigations and bring criminal sanctions against the slovenly shitheel. Arcuri was all over the TV yesterday moaning about how mistreated and betrayed by her ‘special friend’ she feels, but without spilling the full goods in order to protect her repeat appearance fee. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she dangled the idea of a tell-all interview with the deepest-pocketed network close to the Election date, tearfully announcing her willingness to take bids from all interested parties. It would surprise me a tiny bit more if she turned out to be his illegitimate daughter, since they do look alike and are both greedy little chancers, and it’s not like Johnson is entirely sure on how many unbranded sprogs he’s avoided responsibility for anyway. Seriously, he’s not sure how many illegitimate kids he’s got. If he were a tracksuit wearing scallywag from a rough estate somewhere Oop North he’d be paraded on daytime television as an example of the feckless poor who are singlehandedly responsible for the collapse of our social, moral and cultural standards, but as he’s a well-connected Etonian conservative in expensive if ill-fitting suits….. this is a personal matter of interest only to the prurient and scandal-seeking, and no reflection whatsoever on his fitness to lead the country.
One thing that could swing the election towards the Forces of Darkness and Lonely Death is the recent collapse into civil-war of the foreign-backed anarchist collective known as the Brexit Party. After bursting onto the scene covered in grave-mould and Made in the U.S.S.A. stickers back before the European Elections, Nigel Farage’s national con-trick was supposed to be fielding candidates in every single constituency and challenging Johnson’s Tories for the Leave vote, which would have been easy for them to do given Johnson’s humiliating failure to provide any of the wonderful Brexity victories he swore to win before being chosen as Tory leader. In the event, Farage’s bosses must have looked at some of the Tory Party’s internal polling and applied the nut-compress to everyone’s least favourite Pepe the Frog impersonator, because without informing any of his candidates (all of whom paid cold, hard cash for the right to spew racist nonsense while wearing the BXP colours, and many of whom are even madder now than they were before being picked as representative of their tribe) Farage went in front of the cameras and announced that Brexit itself was in such danger from a potential Corbyn Government (Ed – but I thought he was a secret Brexiteer? Was that not true?) that he was making the decision to unilaterally withdraw the BXP candidates from all 317 seats the Tories won in the last Election, though not from the other 300 or so where Opposition parties held the seat and the BXP had sufficient one-eyed albino mutants ranting about “White blood and harlots to the Fire!” on hand to staff a campaign.
Journalistic explosions in a thousand pants rocked the political world! Surely this was the Election in the bag for the Tories? If the electorate was split 45%-55% against Brexit as the polling seemed to suggest then as long as the Remain majority was (mostly) split between Labour, the Scottish Nationalists and Jo Swinson’s Liberal-Democrats (no, really, that’s what they’re called, check their Campaign Bus) then Johnson could win a smashing majority by attracting about 40% of the vote for whom Brexit was more important than anything else. Professional pollsters were soon on the case poo-pooing this theory (but you’d expect that, as more Medals of Valour have been won in defence of the Horserace Narrative than in any other field of human conflict) but I have to admit, I felt a cold hard lump in my stomach when I heard the news and it wasn’t all down to that package I smuggled through customs on my way back from Davos. If enough Labour voters in tight constituencies could be deluded enough to think ‘Brexit Now-Labour Later’ was anything other than a recipe for a Hard-Right Tory supremacy… this Election could go very badly indeed for the Good Guys. These people had, after all, been stupid enough to vote Leave in the first place.
But then a funny thing happened. After doing the Tories such a solid Farage turned around and accused them of offering positions, promotions and even peerages to BXP candidates in Tory/Labour marginals to get them to step down, seemingly under the belief that a Labour voter who would vote BXP = A Labour voter ripe to switch to Johnson’s Tories. That may or may not be an accurate assessment (I don’t think so, but the BBC are going all out to popularise the idea with their constant gammon-safaris to Labour-held Leave constituencies looking for supposed Labour stalwarts who love them some ‘Boris for Brexit’ butter on their xenophobic victimitude toast) but that aside, this is yet another accusation of actual criminal conduct tossed at the Tories. It certainly seems to be true, and the Police are investigating. We’ll see what comes of it and how it affects the Election.
There’s always more I could blather on about, given that this is a National Election with lots of moving parts, but this is getting long and I know how some of you hate that. I’ll just conclude with a few bullet points.
Johnson is a shit campaigner. He’s worse at it than Theresa May, and I never thought I’d have cause to use that phrase outside of a very disappointing orgy situation. Corbyn isn’t, and that comes out very clearly in their public events. The slovenly fuck already looks tired and quite often either drunk or recovering from being drunk, with nothing exciting or inspirational to sell the country on why they should vote Tory other than “Jeremy Corbyn is a Communist who will give all of your stuff to fuzzy-wuzzies and poofs”. If that’s enough to get people’s juices bubbling for a Tory majority there’s nothing to be done about it, but if it’s not…..
The polling places Labour somewhere between 10% and 14% behind the Tories on average, with ‘Jo Swinson: featuring some Liberal-Democrats’ creeping along on about half of Labour’s percentage and falling. I’m not alone in having real doubts about the choice of polls they average and the methodology behind their weighing, but let’s just say that the current polls are virtually identical to the ones around the same time in 2017, and with a couple of notable exceptions they were well out. Everything tends to change when the manifestos appear and the vast majority of non-politically invested people start paying attention to who is promising what and what it means for them. Let’s see what’s happening in a week or so before we start strapping pipe-bombs to ourselves and planning for the Food Riots.
Speaking of ‘Jo Swinson: featuring some Liberal-Democrats’, it’s becoming clearer by the day that all they offer is warmed over Tory Austerity policies (a promise of annual budget surpluses = more cuts to services and budgets) and a determination that, whatever happens at the polling booth and whatever it might mean for Brexit, Labour must – not – be allowed to form a Government. When you’ve got one of the ex-Tories (Sam Gyimah) now being promoted as a marquee Lib-Dem candidate genuinely trying to shift the blame for the Grenfell Tower Fire from the Tory-run council to his Labour opponent (who was a part of the Labour minority on that local council) you’ve got a problem. When you’ve got another ex-Tory (Dr Phillip Lee) turned Lib-Dem candidate taking time out from being a nasty homophobe to announce that if ‘Jo Swinson: featuring some Liberal-Democrats’ somehow don’t manage a 1000% swing in the polls, they’ll discuss post-election alliances with anyone – except – the Labour Party, you’ve got a problem. And when your Leader’s response to genuine Liberal-Democratic candidates for MP unilaterally standing down in order to improve Labour’s chances of holding onto the seat and keeping out a pro-Brexit Tory candidate is to force the constituency to run an unwanted and unvetted candidate (as they have in Canterbury and up by Buxton) you have a problem.
In short, Yellow Tories can fuck right off. The last thing the country needs is a raft of British Jill Stein’s deliberately splitting the Remain vote to let the Tories in, but it looks like that’s what we’re going to get.
What else? Labour’s manifesto drops on Thursday, while the Tories are holding theirs back until just two weeks before polling day, probably because Flobalob hasn’t been arsed to write one yet, is hoping to crib chunks from everyone else’s, and would rather the electorate had as little time as possible to investigate what’s in it and conclude that, as ever, it’s about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Typical Tory bollocks and proof, as if any more was needed, that you can take the entitled solipsistic gobshite out of Eton, but you’ll never take Eton out of the entitled solipsistic gobshite.
Tonight there’s the first Leadership debate between Johnson and Corbyn on the ITV Channel. Swinson and the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon lost their court battle to force ITV to invite them on the grounds that Swinson is not a candidate for PM (oooooh, fucking burn with the heat of a thousand million suns, that has got to sting like buggery) and Sturgeon leads a regional Party that doesn’t field candidates outside of Scotland, so isn’t a candidate for PM either. Chances of Johnson spending the entire debate using only the words “Venezuela, Communist, Anti-semite and Brexit” are roughly 50%, chances of the moderator letting him get away with it and the Media declaring him the clear winner, a cast-iron 92%, give or take an error factor of 8%.
Royal News – Prince Andrew abuses young girls and is clearly in a lot of trouble for it. Good.
Other news – Aaron Banks’ twitter account has been hacked and lots of private messages discussing Brexit, the Leave Campaign and this election have been released to journalists. That could be very interesting indeed, Mirror Universe Podesta-level interesting, in fact, only with fewer recipes and more mentions of Steve Bannon shilling for Cambridge Analytica.
I’ve been Tony Jay and I approve this message.
donnah
I can’t watch the testimony when the Republicans are talking. Nunes sounds like he just suffered a stroke and Gym Jordan sounds like he’s ready to suffer a stroke. They continue to embarrass themselves in the eyes of others while believing that they’re relevant.
I’ll check in when the witnesses are talking.
Spanky
@ Tony Jay: Jesus Christ! Can you boil that down to about 50 words?
Elizabelle
@TS (the original):
I hope The Hill leaves up the original language, in addition to making it clear which statements are not factual/cannot be confirmed/were pulled straight out of Solomon’s or Nunes’s ass.
Future generations (and us, too) might want to follow how those outlandish conspiracy theories developed.
Whitewashing is not as useful as having to let stand the “journalism” that your outlet disseminated.
JPL
Desperate much??
https://twitter.com/abbydphillip
Spanky
@Elizabelle: Speaking of John Solomon and The Hill, CNN.com has a very interesting article up:
Curious that they’d publish that sort of thing, eh?
J R in WV
@MattF:
I’m pretty sure there’s legal protection for satire and humor when opposing a politician. Especially when much of the content is obviously not intended to be truthful statements. The rest is opinion rather than statements of objective truth, which is also protected speech, anyone is allowed to share their opinion of public persons like the Congressman.
I don’t think Nunes has a leg to stand on in his court cases, although they may be intended to be SLAPP suits rather than actual productive suits intended to make money for Nunes.
Ninedragonspot
In Beijing at the moment, so no real opportunity to watch CNN – but I can read Balloon Juice Jackals’ entertaining commentary until I fall asleep.
(Achingly beautiful “Legend of White Snake” by the Guangdong Cantonese Opera Troupe tonight – it’s been a long time since I’ve been moved by a treatment of this subject, but the movement and singing were by turns entrancingly graceful and heartbreaking.)
Spanky
@JPL: And I’ll bet the “W” was removed from all the keyboards, too!
Jay C
@Jersey Tomato:
I think the original plan had been for Barr’s “Russia Probe Report(s)” was that they would be released in time to derail/deflect/distract attention from the ongoing impeachment inquiries (back when they were still pending) – that Congressional GOPers would be able to wave them around as “proof” that the “real” election meddlers were Ukrainians and Democrats (guest-starring George Soros, undoubtedly) or the FBI, or whatever…
Horrific RW fever-swamp CT garbage, of course: but as we’ve seen (still) today from Devin Nunes (R – Cow), that seems to
make little difference to Congressional Republicans..
However, I think Barr got overtaken by events, and whatever “revelations” the DoJ reports are likely to show are either
1) Yesterday’s news.
2) Yesterday’s shaky conspiracy-theory nuttery.
3) Going to look like an increasingly-desperate attempt to change the subject
4) Odd combination of whitewash and smear.
5) Some combination or all of the above.
Oh, and 6) Likely, like most everything else they come up with, to make Trump and the Admin look even more criminal/imbecilic/both…
Tony Jay
@Spanky:
Well probably, but 23 would be ‘Fucking’ and the rest would be synonyms for “unlikable people” so why bother?
Marcopolo
@JPL: Y’know this kind of bullshite works when you pull it right after the election (like Bush’s folks claiming all the Ws were pulled off keyboards etc…—which was later debunked btw). But waiting 3 years…wtf. Time stamped pics or it didn’t happen.
West of the Rockies
@JPL:
And conservatives insisted Clinton had removed all the W keys from the keyboards just before leaving. They lie about every mother#*%ing thing on the planet.
chopper
@Ninedragonspot:
my favorite part is the aria “here i go again”
dmsilev
@JPL: Friend of mine was a White House intern at the beginning of the Clinton administration, and she told me that the outgoing Bush staffers left lots of gremlins behind. Prankish stuff, like background software on the computers that would pop up “Bush rules!” messages at random intervals, etc. Juvenile, but not particularly dangerous, especially since that was around the time that Windows was replacing DOS and therefore all of the computers were getting replaced anyway.
Adam L Silverman
@stinger: She’s a career foreign service officer detailed to the Vice President as his Deputy National Security Advisor. The Vice President and his Chief of Staff would have vetted several packets sent across from State before filling the position.
Spanky
@Tony Jay: Point taken!
JWR
I wish Adam Schiff would make a point of order or something to tell Devin Nunes and, more importantly the audience at large that everything devin just said is a wacky conspiracy theory.
rikyrah
<a href=”https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/11/19/trumps-enablers-launch-an-attack-on-reporter-natasha-bertrand/”>Trump’s Enablers Launch an Attack on Reporter Natasha Bertrand</a>
by Nancy LeTourneau
November 19, 2019
Anyone who has attempted to follow the lawless machinations of the current president knows what a valuable resource Natasha Bertrand has been—starting with her days as a reporter at The Atlantic and through her current position at Politico. That’s why it didn’t really surprise me to see one of Trump’s chief enablers go after her on Twitter recently.
Do not trust this so-called “reporter.” She’s an IC embed, a stenographer for Brennan & Comey. Their surrogates are spoon-feeding her the “national security” stories she’s now “reporting” @ POLITICO. She’s a political-intel operative posing as a journalisthttps://t.co/KHcFNHGiAC
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) November 15, 2019
……………………………….
But perhaps Sperry had a heads-up on a story that broke on Monday. Politico is being sued by a White House aide due to reporting by Bertrand. That was the banner story at Fox News by Howard Kurtz.
<blockquote>The impeachment inquiry against President Trump has triggered a wave of charges, countercharges, court battles, subpoenas and legal threats.
Now it has produced its first libel suit.
Kash Patel, the National Security Council’s senior counterterrorism director, is seeking more than $25 million in damages in the suit filed in Virginia. We have reached out to Politico for comment.
The lawsuit also names Natasha Bertrand, a Politico reporter and MSNBC contributor, as well as Politico owner Robert Allbritton. The allegations, which center on what the president was told about the situation in Ukraine, go to the heart of the case for impeachment.</blockquote>
………………………
That last line is a bit of overkill, because Patel’s story is simply a sideshow. He was a long time staffer for Representative Devin Nunes prior to joining the White House in February of this year. Last month, Bertrand reported that, according to Fiona Hill’s deposition, Patel “was so involved in the issue that at one point Trump thought he was in charge of Ukraine policy for the National Security Council.”
wvng
It saddens me that I feel the need to mute the republicans in these hearings, because it shouldn’t be that way. If they would engage on the actual issues being considered it would be different. But they won’t It’s all conspiracy theories and stunts.
gene108
Republicans turned Ollie North into the greatest, most patriotic Marine to ever serve, because his secretary shredded documents and he didn’t give up Reagan.
That’s what they expect from career people in all branches of government. Anything else means you are a traitor
Kelly
7:45 on the left coast my first cup of coffee in hand and there is already no way I’ll catch up on today’s newz
JWR
@wvng: I actually do follow the theories the Rs are pushing because I have dear family members with whom I occasionally have some pretty edgy disagreements, so when that happens it’s good to be up on all the latest RW arguments.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Bwhahahajah so that’s why they’re all Trump trash criminals that even suck at criming – Obummer’s Post-It note hex!
Adam L Silverman
@Tony Jay: I’m amazed someone hasn’t leaked it yet.
randy khan
@JPL:
And all of the T keys were removed from the keyboards, too, I bet.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
I have heard that Obama’s staff turned the lights off the night before, and it took several days before the new staff could turn them back on, also, too. Horrible way to treat the incoming staff!!! So tragic!
Gin & Tonic
Can’t watch, but people tell me the R’s are bringing up Alexandra Chalupa a lot. There’s a woman who’s getting dragged through the shit for no good reason.
JPL
@J R in WV: haha If Grishom were in charge that would be true.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Channeling Emperor Joseph from Amadeus, there are too many words.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: :( and such a delicious last name.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, but the time I got to where he’d posted it as a comment, as I’m behind a bit this AM, I recognize my comment was kind of pointless. So I deleted the offer.
lamh36
SMH…the state of our country thanks to hateful MAGA folks! That’s why I can’t abide ANY of these damn Chump supporters.
https://twitter.com/benpershing/status/1196740476352770049?s=21
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato: That’s original. Been working on that line for a while?
OldDave
All Die. O the Embarrassment.
lamh36
Now see what I heard was “come at me correct bitch or not at all”!!
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1196817476316811265?s=21
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic:
Obligatory!
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: I too like my comments dripping with sarcasm.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Dammit. Chalupas for brunch! On a Tuesday!
Ella in New Mexico
@Cheryl Rofer: Jesus. Do people out there have any understanding of just how damning this one thing really is?
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: Actions were taken, decisions were made, no one was spared.
Tony Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Carole Cadwalladr is reported to have been sent a big stash, but it seems people are understandably reluctant to spray them all over in case this is some sort of reverse double-pike backflip ratfuck to replicate the Bush National Guard trick on a grander scale.
Then again, Banks’ Renfield Andy Wigmore is threatening anyone who has downloaded what he calls banks’ hacked twitter account with great and furious vengeance, so chances are…..
I particularly like the tweet exchange between banks and Foreign Secretary Raab negotiating a January No-Deal crash out of the EU in return for Farage standing down his BXP militias. That’s just delightful to know about.
Ella in New Mexico
Nah, no way Lindsey’s gonna let THAT ride, not on HIS watch.
No, they’ll find some way to make it fit the narrative.
Marcopolo
As I listen to the Republican counsel ask what appear to me to be a series of scattershot questions that neither seem to elicit notable information or develop any kind of narrative thread I’ve been wondering if he is just this bad or am I missing something?
According to the Hoarsewhisperer on twitter his ultimate goal is to bore any viewers to the point they stop watching which would be a win for the R’s. Makes about as much sense an anything else.
BretH
“…refresh your recollection?”
Vinmann: Yes, I suppose that is the term now.
Military-grade shade.
Baud
@Ella in New Mexico:
There needs to be an investigation into the investigation…
ETA: of the investigation!
mrmoshpotato
@Ella in New Mexico: Damning or just straight fucked up? “The President’s* ammosexual nutjob supporters might harm a Lt. Col. and his family.”
Tony Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Whoops! Sorry, took your reference to be about something else.
Yes, I’m also a bit surprised that no one has leaked the Report. Hopefully someone is waiting for a more opportune time, but maybe it’s just that everyone with access wants a Tory victory.
Kay
@wvng:
The senate trial will be better – they’ll feel they actually have to say something – to save face if for no other reason- and quite a few of them are vulnerable, politically. Recall that the D wave in ’18 knocked out some rational Republicans from the House, so it’s even lower quality than it might have been. We’re approaching “Trump dregs” in the R House. The bottom half, certainly.
Ksmiami
@lamh36: I pretty much think we need to wall off the Magas or deport them as they are a clear and present danger to us all
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Now I don’t have to wait for Season 10 of The Crown to explain all of this to me in 2026. Thank you!
Cheryl Rofer
Straight arrow like you, Adam.
It should be noted that Castor’s line of questioning here is basically the “dual-loyalty” smear so common in antisemitism.
TaMara (HFG)
@lamh36:
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
Hot damn!!
Looks like things are gonna get even more interesting across the pond.
different-church-lady
@Tony Jay: You’re asking if we should put the filter to a stress test?
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: Note for those who might be unaware, that Ukraine does not permit dual citizenship and does not allow non-citizens in its government, so any Ukrainian-Americans or Ukrainian-Canadians who want to take on a position in government have to renounce their other citizenship first (as, for example, Natalie Jaresko did when becoming Minister of Finance.) I’d imagine this would be a real sticking point for Vindman. I also suspect GOP counsel might be unaware of this.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, but watch it anyway. Taylor Swift plays Jared Kushner and seriously nails the part. Emmy-worthy.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
PLEASE FRONT PAGE THIS REPLY.
TonyJay,
Thanks so much.
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
If it turns out to be a real leak…. hell yeah.
If not, it was a wonderful few hours. 8-)
Tony Jay
@different-church-lady:
Well, WaterGirl did ask for feedback, didn’t she?
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
Always happy to vent. 8-)
At great length.
Adam L Silverman
@Tony Jay: I find it hard to believe that the professionals at Special Branch would be putting their ideologies above their well deserved reputation as the world’s best counterintelligence unit.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: LTC Vindman is the real deal.
Thanks.
Tony Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
You know, I do like the way you phrase these dollops of calming ice-cream.
Perhaps the leaking of Banks’ Twitter account is linked. A shot across the bows, as it were. Yes, they let him off criminal charges last month, but what if they did that because they already had everything and wanted to see if an off-the-hook Banks would continue being stupid?
This is how they show him they had him, and everyone else he had electronic communications with. So if they didn’t want their secret communications to come out, maybe they should make a show of good will and release the God damned report!
It is possible (probable) I’m reading too much into it, of course.
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks! IIRC, Toomas Henrik Ilves had to renounce his American citizenship to become President of Estonia.
Certainly makes sense to insist on a single citizenship for high-up members of the government, and the various countries have different requirements for dual citizenship for others. I didn’t know what Ukraine’s is. TIL!
VeniceRiley
@Tony Jay: I’ll be moving to Hundon down the road from Bury St. Edmunds in 6 months or so. Looking forward to seeing the shitshow band live. Meanwhile, I only believe you and Carol Cadwalladr.
Adam L Silverman
@Tony Jay: Thanks. Special Branch has a well deserved reputation. I can’t imagine they’re amused by what they’ve discovered and uncovered in their counterintelligence work. Unfortunately it is the nature of that work that it is to be compartmented and stay out of the public eye. While prosecutions do occasionally occur as a result of their work, it is not the central purpose of it.
As for the Banks’ twitter leaks, I have no idea.
CarolDuhart2
@Gin & Tonic: i would also suspect that even in a nation that allowed for dual citizenship, a position like Vindeman was offered would require a formal renunciation of the American one. Also, such an offer cannot be seriously entertained. Neither side would have trusted him if he did so. There are such things as double agents you know.
An annoying question Nunes keeps raising is about unauthorized computer access. What’s that about, anyway? More likely fishing for an accusation of espionage or perjury (lying under oath here).
Jeffro
@lamh36: It’s already trending on Twitter…of course
Zinsky
That soliloquy by the asshole from Texas was more about the word search capabilities of LexisNexis, not any relevant line of questioning for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump in 2019. Complete waste of time…
Tony Jay
@VeniceRiley:
Oh the band hasn’t been around since the late 60s I’m afraid. Booze, drugs and the relentless pursuit of free-love with groupies of all genders did what it always does, but, tragically, the members all up and died anyway!
So sorry you have to move to Britain now. Hopefully we’ll have things sorted and on the up again by your arrival date.
And while Ms Cadwalledr is a rock solid journo-source, trusting me to know my arse from my elbow is a rookie mistake. 8-)
Gin & Tonic
@CarolDuhart2: I am not watching or listening to the hearings and have no idea what Nunes is on about; I value my sanity enough that I’m not going to try to analyze what might be on his “mind.”
dexwood
Turner of Ohio needs a slap in the face with a large, ripe carp. Repeatedly.
Tony Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m conflicted over the Report. Yes, I want it released and for it to be chockerblock full of incriminating stuff, but on the other hand it’s probably so redacted and blacked-out it’s likely more useful right now as a McGuffin of sorts.
We can but wait and see.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic:
@CarolDuhart2:
The only state that doesn’t, as far as I know, is Israel. The past Israeli ambassador to the US and the current one are actually Americans who were granted Israeli citizenship when the Israelis (read Bibi) recruited them. In the case of the current Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, before he went to work for Bibi as his senior advisor and now his ambassador to the US, he was a Republican political operative in/from south Florida.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Ukraine conspiracy a la John Solomon. Nunes’ counsel is on that LTC Vindman is actually a traitor to his oath and uniform. That said, I had some stuff to do this AM and am about an hour behind so far.
Adam L Silverman
@Tony Jay: That is certainly a potential likelihood regarding redactions. But if the Tory Party, as well as the Brexiters regardless of party, and the UKIP and Brexit Party and Brexit groups were compromised by the Russians, then that information needs to come out before the election with enough specificity that those individuals compromised will either be voted out of office or not voted in if standing for election for the first time.
VeniceRiley
@Tony Jay: The things I do for love. Giving up sunny SoCal to live in cold and rainy England! Would appreciate if you all sorted the politics there by then. I have no idea what will happen to the immigration regimes; but, we are getting married come hell or high water! Even if that high water looks to be literal.
JWR
Who the F*ck is this dumbass telling vidman that wearing his uniform and asking to be called by his military grade in this hearing is silly? Jeebus! What an A-H*le.
Tony Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Couldn’t agree more. Say about two weeks before the Election, when people are paying the most interest but a lot are still willing to be convinced.
Ideally I wouldn’t start the new Labour Administration off with rafts of treason-trials but if that’s where the evidence leads…..
Bard the Grim
@Tony Jay: Thank you, sir. I’ve bookmarked your intelligence report to read tonight with a large glass of tequila, sitting in a comfy chair in front of the fire, cat upon my lap. A well-turned phrase is a joy forever.
Tony Jay
@VeniceRiley:
By the Sacred Banana of Split! I salute your determination even as I gape at your horrendously bad geographic and geopolitical luck.
We’ll just have to win this election for you. Nothing else for it. I simply can’t have a Juicer getting married under a Tory Government, it seems somehow rude and unwelcoming of us.
Tony Jay
@Bard the Grim:
You’re very welcome. 8-)
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
was a fair result. Our women have been decidedly better than yours so far this season.
joel hanes
Holy Jesus, how I wish the nation could pie filter Devin Nunes and Gym Jordan.
burnspbesq
@Mo’ Salad (ocassional unlurker –bd):
Well played. Well played indeed. But no, this week’s edition of Hapless Liverpool Goalkeeper starred AnkePreuss.
Wolvesvalley
@burnspbesq: Testing reply; please ignore
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StringOnAStick
@Tony Jay: I love your work here; it lets me join in intelligently when my British patients start to rant.
Tony Jay
@StringOnAStick:
“Bloody hell, These Yanks might know what they’re talking about, but have you noticed how much they swear? ”
I can only apologise.
Wolvesvalley
@Wolvesvalley: Another test of the reply function, this time on Android phone with Chrome.
Testing edit.
Wolvesvalley
@Wolvesvalley: Yet another test of the reply box on Android phone.
Frances perkins
Thank you so much Tony Jay from a British expat in the US.
Tony Jay
@Frances perkins:
Its my pleasure, glad you enjoy my venting.
stinger
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for the explanation. (I was away from my computer all day, so only seeing your reply now.)
Wolvesvalley
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Wolvesvalley
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