January 6 committee has 'firsthand' knowledge of Trump's behavior during the riot from multiple sources @jamiegangel reports pic.twitter.com/YJQrRurFhh
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 4, 2022
When Russiagate was raging and @IcarusNetflix dropped in 2017, I remember watching it and thinking: the only way we'll really ever know what the Russians did in 2016 is if someone defects and tells us. I wonder if this is that moment.https://t.co/7bcxyPALI2
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 3, 2022
Vladislav Klyushin Traveled Freely in Europe, Until He Didn't Travel in Europe Freelyhttps://t.co/K7ETSWEQ25
DOJ **has** documents proving GRU was behind the hack. What it is not known to have are details abt how Manafort or Hillary's stolen data were used.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 3, 2022
… [I]t’s possible that the US waited to arrest him until they were done with their investigation, but these past interactions with western spooks suggest something else was behind the timing of his arrest. Similarly, the explanation offered by the Swiss lawyer — that the US only learned of Klyushin’s trip to Switzerland by an auspiciously timed hack of his phone — makes no sense, given the access to travel records the US would routinely have even without having someone targeted under Section 702, as Klyushin easily could have been.
The story leaves big questions about whether Klyushin wanted to be turned over or not. In addition to the open question about whether Klyushin told Russian authorities about the recruitment attempts, Bloomberg describes that Klyushin’s Swiss lawyer mailed his appeal of the extradition to the European Court of Human Rights rather than faxing it, with the result that the appeal arrived only after he had already been transferred to US custody.
But it’s hard to believe that Klyushin wanted to be extradited when he was arrested last March. That’s because his family returned to Russia at the end of their 10-day luxury vacation, which they wouldn’t have done if Klyushin had been planning to defect to the US (if one can start using the term again). So if Klyushin came to decide he wanted to be extradited over the nine months while he was held in Switzerland, he may have only come to that conclusion upon receiving more details about the charges against him, possibly including details that might expose him to the ire of the Kremlin…
There may be a better explanation for the timing than an auspicious hack, though. As described, Klyushin’s trip to Switzerland was likely his first trip to a US extradition partner after Merrick Garland was sworn in as Attorney General on March 11, 2021, eight days before FBI obtained the arrest warrant for Klyushin.
And while the US has documentary evidence that GRU did the hack, what they hadn’t yet obtained when DOJ obtained the indictment against Yermakov and other GRU officers in 2018 was something far more important: what Russia did with two sets of data — the campaign strategy and polling information turned over from Paul Manafort and the analytics stolen from Hillary through the entire month of September. There’s certainly reason to believe DOJ knows more now than they did in 2018. Last April (so shortly after the arrest warrant for Kluyshin), Treasury stated as fact that the information Konstantin Kilimnik obtained from Manafort did get shared with Russian intelligence, even while asserting that Kilimnik was himself a spook. But how that information was shared and what happened with it has not been made public.
And those are the kinds of questions you might not raise aggressively until after Trump was gone.
At some point early on, Klyushin knew he’d be dead meat if he went back to Russia. Now, which innocent American bystander will Putin kidnap in retaliation and to try to set up an exchange? https://t.co/jkMbaqCSB0
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) January 3, 2022
NotMax
“Wow, I didn’t expect the sand of these Florida beaches to be such a dazzling white.”
“Look again. That’s not sand. It’s snow.”
;)
Chris Johnson
Aw yeah. I am absolutely convinced Putin’s Russia has pulled off an unthinkably huge and all-encompassing cyber-war against the US on a shocking number of fronts, from blanketing the world with little troll army moles to seizing control of the mainstream media.
I see that shit everywhere and get really, really touchy about it.
It’s all coming to light.
SFAW
Wake me when something is actually done to make The Traitorous Former Guy, or any of his direct (or near-direct) minions, suffers any consequences for any of this.
Yeah, yeah, I know “Garland is taking his time, building an airtight case, etc. etc.” And I guess I’m cranky this AM. But I’ve seen too many of these quasi-smoking-gun news blasts to give a shit.
Maybe I’ll feel better after coffee.
germy
“Governance by tantrum” (from the Tapper clip above)
So McCarthy could have had “his republicans” inside the committee, “gumming up the works” (Tapper quote). Even if they couldn’t gum, he’d at least know what was going on.
Instead, he perspires. I wonder if he’s been scolded by the others about this.
lowtechcyclist
@SFAW:
I’m with you. We’ve been down this ‘tick tock, motherfuckers’ road so many times, with so little to show for it.
Maybe 2022 is the year when that all changes. We can hope. But I’m not getting excited until I see some major indictments.
NotMax
No intention of wasting time with it, just a general notation that whilst scrolling through Prime video offerings there’s now a listing for a Chinese movie titled (ready for this? ) Trump vs. the Illuminati.
Geminid
New York’s first independent redistricting commission deadlocked, and sent competing Republican and Democratic maps to the state legislature yesterday. The Democratic majority in Albany will now decide on new districts, and may alter the Senate map, which as it stands would place several Democratic incumbents in the same district. From Politico New York Playook.
oldgold
“A federal judge in Texas on Monday ruled against the Biden administration’s vaccine requirement for members of the military….‘The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”‘
This is, of course, absolute nonsense and worse. It comes from the GOP’s go to activist jurist, Reed O’Connor.
For instance: NYT-“The state’s Republican attorney general appears to strategically file key lawsuits in Judge O’Connor’s jurisdiction, the Northern District of Texas, so that he will hear them. And on Friday, the judge handed Republicans another victory by striking down the Affordable Care Act, the signature health law of the ObamaAdministration.”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Mueller was hamstrung. Maybe with new evidence it will justify an independent investigator with an expansive mandate.
Geminid
@Geminid: Politico’s state playbooks are an interesting resource. They have them for states including New York, Florida, California, Massachusetts, and IIllinois.The articles are sometimes featured on Politico’s main site. Today Politico Massachusetts Playbook reportedthat Massachuetts Attorney General Maura Healey is outraising other Democratic candidates for Governor, although she has yet to announce. And the Illinois Playbook reports that veteran Congressman Bobby Rush (IL-1) is retiring, but only from Congress:
Rush intends to devote more time to his role as pastor of the Beloved Community Church of God in Christ, in the Woodlawn Community of the South Side of Chicago.
raven
@NotMax: You don’t think Florida has white sand beaches huh? Lil Bit would disagree.
Leto
@oldgold: read that last night and was going to post it.
(WaPo) Judge grants relief to Navy SEALs who refused coronavirus vaccine, sued Biden administration
As oldgold pointed out, the judge in the case is Reed O’Connor. A brief highlight from his wiki page:
There’s a reason that the military basically doesn’t grant religious exemptions. It’s too open to abuse. A member can claim their religion for whatever they don’t want to do. Also the line about “aborted fetal cells” is a dead give away to the extreme right. I think it was last year, after yet another SEAL scandal, that the Navy essentially replaced the top level SEAL command. The new commander stated that, in essence, an institutional rot had settled over the entire organization due to the past 20 years of continued warfare, as well as the special operations community taking on Hollywood level status. It seems the rot is even deeper than they realize.
germy
You go girl!
John S.
@oldgold:
What incredible jurisprudence!
Its hard to imagine that a document written at a time when vaccines didn’t exist, there was no concept of a global pandemic and no standing military in the US didn’t contemplate COVID-19, vaccines and the military.
trnc
@oldgold: Safe to say the 5th Court of Appeals is not Biden friendly?
Baud
@oldgold:
Yeah, nothing that judge writes is worth the paper that it’s printed on.
germy
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kelly-ernby-orange-county-california-deputy-da-dies-abruptly-after-falling-ill-with-covid-at-age-46
(She campaigned on plans to enhance border security, enact “tough love” policies for homeless people, etc.)
SFAW
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Mueller hamstrung himself, too.
SFAW
@germy:
Thoughts and prayers, asshole.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: My Canadian aunt and uncle had the opposite exchange the first time they went to Florida. My aunt got up, looked out the window at the sand, and told my uncle that it had snowed overnight.
topclimber
@John S.:
Yet Gen. Washington ordered smallpox vax for his troops routinely during Revolutionary War.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@topclimber: Washington was a commie.
Geminid
@Leto: David Ignatius had a good column on the SEALS in the December 24, 2021 edition of the Washington Post. A new commander, H. Wyman Howard III,
The article gives some good background and analysis of how the organization got to this point.
Ken
Heretic. Next he’ll be claiming the branches of the US military aren’t in competition with one another.
oldgold
@SFAW: Bingo!
The Dims got played by the GOP on the appointment of St. Mueller of Assisi. Whatever he had been, he wasn’t anymore.
debbie
@Baud:
I didn’t realize you could pick your judge. The district/circuit, but not a specific person. Is this a TX thing?
coin operated
@Leto:
I think we found the problem…
@Geminid:
That’s a really good article and it appears they’ve found the right people to fix it.
Edited for pronoun enhancement…
Geminid
@Ken: In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam had a funny, maybe apocryphal story about two Navy Admirals walking away from a Congressional hearing. The senior admiral tells the junior: “How many times do I have to tell you, the Soviets are the adversary. The Air Force is the enemy!”
SFAW
@oldgold:
I don’t think they necessarily got “played,” but Mueller clearly was less an Elliot Spitzer (as an AG) type, and more of a Warren Christopher (vis-a-vis Florida 2000) type
ETA: Dems, not Dims. [I assumed you edited it, or did I misread it as “Dems” the first time?]
topclimber
@oldgold:
If you say so. Had nothing to do with Trump’s AG not allowing indictments of a sitting president. Or TFG pardoning Manafort so that he had no incentive to cooperate in bringing down other conspirators.
I do enjoy reading alternate histories, however.
Tony Jay
Heading back home after three days (and three different shows) in London. Spent waaaaaaaaaay too much money eating out, but that’s what petty larceny was invented for.
I can report that London is chockerblock full to the brim with unmasked numpties, American accents and cafes selling things with avocado in them. Also, when you’re the only European faces in a Korean restaurant you just know the food is going to be spot on.
Unfortunately the armed men outside Downing St prevented me from delivering my five-knuckle telegram to the bloated bully in residence, but they promised to consider passing on the sentiment in verbal form if I pulled my trousers back up.
Some days it’s enough just to know that bad people are having a bad day.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: MUELLER DID HIS JOB AND ANYONE WHO READ HIS REPORT WOULD KNOW IT. Barr quashed it, but he gets much less venom than Mueller and Garland.
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: What BS.
oldgold
@debbie: You go out into the sticks and it is easy to Judge shop.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: RIGHT
Gin & Tonic
@John S.: George Washington ordered mandatory inoculation of his troops in 1777.
ETA: I are slow.
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Barr gets plenty of venom, but Mueller did only part of his job. Had he pushed things/issues (such as pushing back on the “we’re not going to talk to you under oath” BS), he might have lost that/those battle(s), but at least he would have tried. As opposed to the shoulder-shrug-“hey-what-are-ya-gonna-do?” path he took too many times.
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: Have you read his report? In any sane country, it would have meant the end of the presidency.
Kay
@germy:
Sinema aside, the Holmes case really made clear the value of the much-derided “career bureaucrats”
It was career people in HHS and Medicare and Medicaid services and the military who stopped her. People no one ever heard of were the heroes of that story. When George Schultz’s grandson (who worked there) wanted to stop her he didn’t turn to Stanford (his university) or the investors. He emailed a career bureaucrat in NY.
catclub
@zhena gogolia: was his full report ever released?
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Spare me. His unwillingness to get in the face of the various antagonists served what purpose, exactly? His willingness to allow Barr to control the narrative — I don’t consider Mueller’s “well, no, that’s not really what I said” after Barr’s BS pronouncement(s) to be much pushback — is only one instance.
Yes, I know the media have been willing accomplices, but Mueller is allegedly smart enough to know about controlling narratives, and getting out there first, instead of reacting to the BS claims of others.
Leto
@Geminid: I’d read that, but this is a deeper issue that’s going to take a longer period of time to correct. It’s another issue that’s directly correlated to the amount of right wing disinformation that’s spewed into our society. Special Operations personnel are already pretty conservative, but once you start running into issues like this (refusal to obey orders) it’s indicative of larger structural issues within the community. The corrective actions on this will need to be implemented and continued through several heads of command. They will all have to agree this is an issue, and considering my own experience with commanders, I give it maybe 2 (this one and the next) before it’ll be put on the back burner to die. I also say that because officers rotate so frequently and the enlisted side stays in place for long durations.
zhena gogolia
@catclub: There are some redactions, but the huge, two-volume report, full of damning evidence, was publicly available. I bought a copy from WaPo.
catclub
@Kay: Holmes played the VC system like a pro – nobody on her board was from blood testing companies – what SHOULD this have told everyone else?
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: MUELLER WAS NOT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
In our system, it was up to the AG to act on the report. Mueller could have set his hair on fire on national TV and it would have made no difference. Have you read the report?
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
In a (politically) sane country, there were any number of things outside of the Mueller report to cause impeachment and conviction. So?
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: I repeat, Mueller did his job. Have you read the report?
oldgold
@SFAW: “Mueller clearly was less an Elliot Spitzer (as an AG) type, and more of a Warren Christopher (vis-a-vis Florida 2000) type”
I don’t think the problem was his manner. It was he was that he was well into his dotage.
Lordy, did you see his Senate testimony? He couldn’t have found his ass using both hands.
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Really? I was unaware of that.
There are/were various ways for him to get ahead of Barr’s BS, but he chose to be the good little institutionalist a few too many times.
zhena gogolia
F all you people
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
Not recently.
ETA: But that’s pretty much immaterial. Had he been less of an institutionalist, and more of a red-meat prosecutor (in terms of apparent temperament), I expect we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@zhena gogolia: Yes, Mueller did his job. However, they put some really strict limits on his mandate and what he could investigate. Without Barr and without those limits, the investigation could be more productive.
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
You forgot to include “anti-Dem/anti-Biden Eeyores.”
Kay
@catclub:
But it’s like every scam though. The relationships and associations between and among the people she hired lent it credibility to the next round of suckers. They’re not relying on blood scientists or data- they’re relying on “this fellow rich/powerful person who went to the same schools I went to backs it”.
I was amused because I can’t stand the DeVos’ and IMO their financial manager- the woman who makes their investments- is bad at her job. She didn’t do jack shit due diligence. She was really defensive at the trial and she should be – she sucks. Good. I hope she loses them billions. She’s probably a relative.
Roger Moore
@John S.:
As people have repeatedly pointed out, George Washington required every soldier to be inoculated* against small pox. Admittedly, that was before the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but it certainly shows the Founding Fathers’ attitude toward requiring the military to be protected against contagious diseases.
*Inoculated is the correct word. This was before Jenner developed the small pox vaccine. People still recognized that a mild case of small pox protected against a worse one later, so they deliberately infected people in a way that was supposed to produce a mild case.
Kay
@catclub:
I have dealt with lots of people losing money to scams over the years in the law practice and there’s shame and ego attached to it. A lot of them don’t report it all. There’s a constant too- they all tell me how incredibly charasmatic and persuasive the scammer was, with the implication being only a master could have tricked them. I’m not sure about that. They’re hard to navigate because it’s kind of complex emotionally. It’s not at all rational. But honestly? The driver a lot of times is greed and a desire to get an edge on other people. That doesn’t mean they should be scammed but I think it would be worthwhile for them to examine how it happened, if only so they’ll have a clear view of their role.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Chris Johnson: Not just Russia.
There was an incident at a former employer that shut down the internal network for nearly a year. There were a few sketchy details we knew, but security and law enforcement put a huge clamp on information.
It almost certainly involved a foreign power and software that had been downloaded from the internet, and there was evidence that a Trojan Horse had been operating for months.
Miss Bianca
@Chris Johnson: Boy, I *hope* it’s actually “coming to light”. I’m pretty cynical about the MSM waking up and actually doing its job on that front.
On the other hand, the MSM *do* seem to be taking the Jan. 6 riots seriously now, only a year out from the actual event, so maybe there’s some hope after all.
Baud
@debbie: I think that district is divided up into smaller divisions. O’Connor is in the Forth Worth division, with three other judges. So if you file there, you get a 25% chance of getting him.
Not sure if something else is going on as well.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: I sometimes wish that Mueller had released his report in two parts. My Atlanta friend read the report closely, and he was impressed by the breadth and specificity of reporting on Russian assistance to the Trump campaign, primarily through social media. Standing alone, that part of the report would have been important news. But because Mueller could not close the circle to prove collusion, the headlines basically were “Mueller fails to nail Trump!”
Mueller needed to break Roger Stone to close the circle. Trump is a career criminal, and he learned long ago to work through trusted henchmen. Stone attracted little notice when he left Trump’s campaign in early Summer 2016. Stone became the cutout, and Trump could trust him not to squeal.
The prospect of a pardon helped Stone then. I wonder what his calculations are now. Prosecutors may well develop evidence that Stone was in conspiracy with January 6 criminals. The circumstantial evidence is plain as day. Stone is a freak and may try to tough it out. But he may deal and I would not be shocked if he did, assuming prosecutors can get the goods on him.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Have you gotten to the part in Midnight in Washington where Rep. Schiff talks about Mueller? Sad.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Nobody should have put serious money into a venture like that without being advised by experts in the field, who were as close to unanimous in saying it wouldn’t work as one could reasonably expect them to be about anything. That it got funding anyway is a sign the VC who put money in it either weren’t talking to relevant experts or were ignoring them. It’s a huge indictment of the whole VC industry. They get rich and stay rich not by being smart but by monopolizing access to startups.
germy
@Miss Bianca:
Lots of footage.
The MSM loves stuff with lots of footage.
This works to our advantage, fortunately.
germy
@Roger Moore:
But she was blonde! And she spoke in a low monotone! And wore a black turtle neck
oldgold
@WaterGirl:
Sad for Mueller and his legacy and tragic for the country going forward.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: As is the Home of the Orange Apron, our vaccine mandate goes into effect today. No morning shift for me today(1pm-10pm), but I’m up anyway.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@lowtechcyclist: Barring legal consequences, I like the idea of going public with what has been learned and having political consequences. 40% of this country has completely disconnected with reality, but if we can get a majority to be angry and scared about how close to a coup we are, we can head off the inevitable next one.
There will be a next one. In either 2022 or 2024.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Mueller, hell. I’m thinking all the way back to Scooter Libby. And Obama’s “look forward, not back” letting the Bushies off the hook for torture and other war crimes.
I figured at the time that would be just a public posture, while work would go on behind the scenes until indictments were produced for crimes that couldn’t be looked away from. I was wrong, and I’m still pissed about it.
oldgold
In his new book and an interview this week, Schiff (D-Calif.) revealed he would not have wanted Mueller to testify if he knew how “painful” it was going to be, saying Congress had to stick to shorter questions for the beleaguered special counsel.
“I did understand immediately why his staff had been so protective and why they were so reluctant to have him testify,” he told NPR. “And I immediately told our members, ‘We need to cut down our questions. We can’t ask for narrative answers. We need to be very precise in what we ask. We need to have the page reference of the report ready.’”
Roger Moore
@Kay:
There’s an old saying that you can’t scam an honest person. I don’t think that’s literally true- there are plenty of scams that work fine on honest people- but the key thing is that an honest person won’t scam themselves. Dishonest people do.
The classic scam works by convincing the victim that they’re the smart one who’s going to get ahead by cheating someone else, either the perpetrator or the perpetrator’s secret confidant. Once they’ve committed to cheating someone else, they’re implicated themselves, which makes them reluctant to admit how they’ve been cheated. That makes it relatively low risk for the perpetrator, at least assuming they’ve picked a victim who isn’t going to get revenge themselves.
You obviously can’t get an honest person to commit themselves that way. They won’t jump at the bait of easy money by cheating someone. Of course you can still cheat them by taking advantage of their willingness to help others, but they won’t become complicit in the scam.
Leto
@Roger Moore: I see it as a further indictment of the Silicon Valley dipshits who simply followed Fuckerberg’s mantra of “move fast, break things”.
danielx
@Kay:
This reminds me of…the name won’t quite come to me, but I’ve heard the guy is starting some kind of media company with an ex-congressman as CEO, now what WAS his name?
sab
@John S.: Vaccines existed then. George Washington mandated them during the Revolution so his troops wouldn’t alll die of smallpox
ETA: topclimber beat me to it.
Geminid
@Leto: You are right that changing the SEALs will require sustained attention from Navy brass, and a change in the culture of the NCOs. The new commander did cut operational strengh by a third, though, and if he was selective that may be a start in getting the NCO culture right.
Ironically, Richard Marcinko died of a heart attack about a week ago, age 80 years. Marcinko founded Seal Team 6 in the 1980s, and later did time in a federal prison due to an acquisitions kickback scheme. Marcinko’s autobiography and his novels got wide circulation, and did a lot to promote the culture that got the SEALs into this mess.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
“No, Scheisskopf. Dreedle’s on our side, and Dreedle is the enemy.” – Gen. P.P. Peckem in Catch-22
Another Scott
@SFAW: Rosenstein and Barr handcuffed Mueller from the beginning.
See the August 2 Scope memo.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
This is the problem with all of trump’s crimes (and Bush’s): There is a solid chunk of the country who don’t wear MAGA hats and even voted D in 2018 and 2020, but they’re ready to pull the lever for trumpism if it means cheap gas.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: No. I’m struggling to get through it. It’s too depressing and I have enough to depress me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
last night on his show, Chris Hayes played clips of Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell waxing angrily about trump and the insurrection. Barely a month later, McCarthy had brought trump a fresh bag of hand-picked starbursts at Mar-A-Lago, Graham was declaring trump the future of teh Republican Party, and McConnell was getting people like Roy Blount and Rob Portman to filibuster an investigation by the Senate.
There’s a long history of DC Republicans thinking trump had finally gone too far, from the Access Hollywood tape to firing Comey to Helsinki to the revelations about the trump tower meeting. Every time, the American people have collectively told Republicans how much trump, and thus Republicans, can get away with.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There’s probably a heavy overlap between those people and the people who are pissed at the anti-vax, anti-mask crowd for keeping the pandemic alive and virulent.
It wouldn’t hurt if the Dems were to share that anger, and show it.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
Yeah, the VC people obviously got themselves into this. To me the big thing is that it gives the lie to the VC claims about how smart they are and how their massive wealth is justified by their important role in figuring out which companies deserve funding. What’s really happened is that they’ve managed to find and take over a profitable business, and their money comes from monopolizing it.
That said, it looks like a lot of Theranos’s money came from outside the traditional Silicon Valley VC scene. They got investment from Betsy DeVos and Rupert Murdoch, not Kleiner Perkins. I wonder how much of their scamming success came by offering people from outside that traditional VC world access to what they thought was a big VC win.
danielx
@John S.:
Troops are regularly required to be vaccinated against all the usual things – polio (still endemic in some parts of the world), influenza, measles-mumps-rubella, hepatitis A, chickenpox, plus others depending on where one is stationed. Typhoid fever, anthrax, yellow fever…then there are the medications against malaria and the like.
sab
@SFAW:Have you read the report.
So someone bucks his party, does his patriotic duty and investigates, then stops at the limits of his authority then hands it off to the bodies that are supposed to take it from there and they do nothing.
So everyone blames him and calls him a dotard. Great object lesson for the next people faced with doing an unpleasant, difficult job for their country. Just turn it down. It’s a lot of work and the only thanks you will get is a damaged reputation.
He wasn’t an independent counsel. Since Ken Starr we don’t have those any more. He worked for DOJ under Barr. He went as far as he could.
Leto
@danielx: my vaccination record is roughly 4 pages long, with vaccinations against shit that I hope to never, ever encounter. The number of vaccinations I had to get before my deployment to Iraq… my arms still hurt and that was a decade ago!
@Roger Moore: agree with all of that. Regarding the second point, seems like the usual conservative marks were finally brought in.
Edit: remembering my first assignment, and the vaccinations I received to “bring me up to speed”. There was one that was ice cold, injected into my right buttocks, and it felt like a ball bearing for the next few days. Even though my supervisor warned me about it, still didn’t help.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
if trump got away with Russia because Mueller was a dotard, how do you explain that he also got away with Ukraine, which was a less complicated case, with compelling (to me) witnesses, and Adam Schiff’s righteous closing argument, and Willard Romney voting to convict and remove. A third of the country shrugged and moved on.
I don’t get it. I never will. But I don’t blame elected Democrats for it. I don’t even blame the media.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
Maybe I’m not reading it properly — certainly a possibility — but that memo seems kinda targeted re: information about four-plus specific individuals, as opposed to a general set of Go/No-Go areas of investigation.
SFAW
@sab:
I don’t believe I have ever called him a dotard, neither here nor “at home.” I have said or indicated that I think he allowed Team Trump to set the narrative with their lies, and his pushback (so to speak) was a day late and a dollar short.
And there are ways to get information to the public via non-official channels, as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What was true about trump and trumpism (and corruption and racism and sexual assault and stupidity and general bullshit) in the summer and fall of 2016 is true today: Everybody who cares, knows, and a lot of people who know just don’t care.
I don’t know how Democrats are supposed to break through that apathy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
seeking refuge in comedy and schadenfreude, this is the third item I’ve seen in recent weeks that suggests to me that Melanie is looking to shore up her personal finances….
Mike in Pasadena
Perhaps Mueller’s investigators knew most of what is coming out now but Billy Barr’s redactions worked to conceal it.
The Moar You Know
@danielx: Civilian employees too. When I went to Africa in 2011 courtesy of Uncle Sam, they gave me a page and a half long listing of all the vaccinations and drugs I’d have to take.
There were SEALS where I went. They all had their shots.
This is performative tribal bullshit, no more, no less. Every goddamn vaccine for everything has some sort of fetal tissue in its development line.
This country is in a far worse place than it was in 2016, and I would bet money that Trump (or at least the GOP) found a way to very cleverly throw this last election. If he were in office right now, 2022 and 2024 would be Armageddon for the Republican party. Instead, it’s shaping up to be Armageddon for the Dems.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think she’s getting ready to leave him.
TFG will soon be single and ready to mingle.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I wonder who will give the churl a whirl.
Mike in NC
It’s a couple of years old, but I’m enjoying “The Plot To Betray America” by Malcolm Nance. Yet another tale about the Fat Rotten Orange Turd that Putin spent a billion dollars to put in the White House.
Kay
It’s really been something to see- and for some reason it was ignored and we got handwringing commentary on inflation and a weird, moralistic narrative on how people “don’t want to work”.
I genuinely believe they are put out that employees have some leverage. They’re mad. It upends what they think should be the natural order.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When you’ve felt around all the couch cushions, twice….
Another Scott
@SFAW: Right. Assuming that the redacted portion is some other non-TFG individual, Mueller wasn’t able to actually investigate what TFG’s inner circle, or Pence, or the RNC, or anyone else around him in the Executive was doing about Putin’s interference in the 2016 election. Even without the infamous OLC memo (saying a president cannot be indicted), Mueller wasn’t able to go after TFG or Putin’s contacts because Rosenstein (and Barr) blocked him.
At least that’s my reading.
Cheers,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Surely there was some sign before this that you were scrolling too far. (For those unfamiliar with Prime, after the first few scrolls one starts to see sudden drops in quality.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Remember the Black Monday Crash of 1987? Seems so quaint now, but I think it was Mike Royko who said that when the markets crashed in ’29, reporters called their editors, and in ’87 they called their brokers. Tim Russert was big on “We all have money in the stock market these days…” and he wasn’t alone and that attitude endures. The upper-middle-classification of the political media is a big factor in political/economic coverage.
Suzanne
@Geminid: The Queen is single. So is Kim Kardashian.
opiejeanne
@Kay: The local pizza joint (Mod Pizza) closed before 7 two nights ago due to staffing issues. It could be because of Covid or people looking for a better job, or a combination; most of the staff is very young, HS age or slightly older. Yesterday we passed a McDonalds that was closed at 4:30pm. I’m going to guess the reason was lack of staff.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ken: she famously renegotiated her pre-nup in 2017, and I’m sure she made sure Barron was taken care of at the same time. I mean, how much could she get for a hat? Then I remember: MAGAts are nutty cultists and medieval kings when into debt to buy relics. And trump cashed that 37 cent (or however much it was) check from Spy magazine.
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: I thought his final statement was delivered like a hostage speech, especially the part about indicting a President being “unconstitutional,” as that’s not considered settled and Mueller clearly knows this. As a former Marine officer he’d have had the basic level of SERE training at least.
Ken
Both have better options than TFG. Including each other.
(And by Rule 34, there is a site devoted to QEII/Kardashian slash porn.)
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
IMHO any issue that doesn’t cause a schism between the white working class and the GOP is viewed as a failure of Democratic leadership and not worth dwelling on.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
I perform the ritual from time to time mostly for amusement’s sake. Once in a great while, however, a nugget does show up the further one goes.
Chief Oshkosh
ETA: post deleted. No loss to anyone.
WaterGirl
@oldgold: Nodding in agreement.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: Like The Clash sang, “You can’t cheat an honest man.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chief Oshkosh: Heh. FWIW, I think you’re right. I don’t know if Andrew Weissman was a Democrat pre-trump, but he has never (to my knowledge) denied the stories that he and several of Mueller’s deputies thought the investigation could and should have been much more aggressive.
That said, I think we on the left are way too emotionally invested in the idea of criminal prosecutions, from Bush to trump. Prosectuions, much less indictments, are not convictions, and even convictions can be appealed. Compulsory: IANAL.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree. It’s just funny to watch because there’s a huge group of people who feel pretty good about it– the formerly not-valued workforce, let’s call them :)
One of the things that was really brutal was “just in time” scheduling. It went on for two decades. They would call hourly people in or make them stay – just absolute chaos for families- they can’t plan anything, not even income, because it fluctuates. Now they just walk off if they don’t get a decent, orderly schedule.
You should see some of the schedules they were subjected to. It’s the schedule of a lunatic. They have to color code them they’re so complicated. No one should be at all surprised their families collapsed in lower income areas. It’s not the schedule of a normal human being.
I just think it’s been shocking for media- they don’t handle change well. None of the old narratives apply. I think they only have one tool – comparison ” THIS is like THAT” and when “this” is not like… anything they’re just frantic.
So teachers aren’t at all like air traffic controllers but they’ll just jam it in and compare them.
Gravenstone
@NotMax: Please tell me the Illuminati win!
Gravenstone
How many of these chucklefucks are tattooed? Because not a one of ’em popped out of momma sporting ink, so hey – modification of their bodies!
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
My mother in law got tricked on a financial scheme and it took her so long to tell us it was difficult to investigate and prosecute, but investigate and prosecute they did and they got a (federal) conviction.
I was pleased they caught them but she’s still the same so I assume it will happen again.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Le sigh. I agree with all the comments you’ve made about voter apathy, though it’s extremely depressing to acknowledge it. Given the perilous juncture we’re at as a nation, the necessity for urgent action to save democracy, and the unlikelihood that sufficient action is forthcoming, I’m pretty sure we’ll complete our slide into Orbán-style “soft” autocracy in this decade.
I think it’ll all be technically legal and mostly bloodless. There will still be elections, and Democrats — certain types of Democrats, anyway — will even be allowed to win seats plus local and state elections.
But a smarter autocrat than Trump will come along (my money is on DeSantis) and leverage the outdated US Constitution and its rural overrepresentation to essentially lock in one-party rule. It will probably work not because the majority wants that but because too many people just don’t give a shit.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good question.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: My mom was a people person. She liked restaurants where the staff remembered her, never mind the menu. A contractor could up-sell her on just about anything by complimenting her decorating. She went into Major Bank Branch alone one day to do one of those things the teller tells you require a “banker”. The nicest young man helped her and they were chatting and he offered to do a free review of her assets and investments, and she thought that was just the most generous thing! He was so pleasant! and had pictures of his adorable children on his desk– my mom loved babies. She got home and told my dad and he– the opposite she had attracted, and vice-versa, some sixty years earlier– told her they didn’t need to transfer their money from Vanguard to Major Bank at higher management fees because of Charming Young Man.
I can imagine lots of scenarios where my mom would have signed everything over to some version of Madoff who showed her pictures of their toddler and listened to her own stories about her grandchildren .
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Here’s my hours this week:
Sat: 7am-11:30am
Sun: 6am-3pm
Mon: 5am-2pm
Tue: 1pm-10pm
Wed: 1:30pm-10pm
Thr: 1:30pm-10pm
Subject to change, of course
ETA: One change that was made on Dec 30, was to change 5am to 7am on the first.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I’m not giving up. I put my faith in good candidates (I really like Val Demmings) and smart campaigns and I think the trumpers might even trump themselves into letting the House slip away.
I have come to fear De Santis. He’s definitely smarter than he looked when he was running those buffoonish Mini-Trump ads in his first campaign. I used to fear Hawley, but I think he’s a bit too… polished for the trump base.
sdhays
This is batshit insane bullshit. If he were in office right now, the GQP would be using all of the levers of power, from the federal to state governments, to enact their permanent Confederate majority. In 2020, we were literally looking at losing the republic.
Winning didn’t fix everything, and there are still challenges ahead. But we’re “still in the game”. Losing for a generation for people to realize how horrible Republican rule is (I refuse to call it “governance”) is a stupid plan.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think there’s worse than apathy involved. There are people who approve of the broad strokes of what Trump did- he “hurt the right people”- and decided they were willing to tolerate whatever else he did to get that policy win. To paraphrase, when the Republicans had to choose between democracy and victory, they chose victory. Once someone has made that decision, it’s really hard to go back.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s nuts, and far too common, and there otta be a law…
My favorite uncle worked 3rd shift for Whirlpool for decades and loved it. He probably would have taken his 3-pounder cannon to the place if they were shifting his hours around like that all the time.
:-/
I hope that you get sensible hours sometime soon.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
When there are a lot more openings than workers, I think it’s fair to start talking about a labor shortage. Oh well. Somehow when we have a labor surplus, it’s fine for the employers to take advantage, but when there’s a labor shortage we need to move heaven and earth to fix it.
You know what would fix it? A combination of better salaries and working conditions to lure people back into the job market and automation to replace jobs that can’t be filled. Employers can do both those things if they really want to. It’s just that not enough of them really want to. They’d rather complain and hope for policy help than try to solve the problem themselves.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
I read it slightly differently: that Rosenstein was discussing some of the persons of interest, not necessarily the entire set of individuals. Sort of like when you see a phrase “including” with the words “but not limited to” omitted (since the “but not limited to” is implied).
Maybe I’ll have to re-read it, but I gotta get ready for work, so that re-read will happen later.
SFAW
@sdhays:
But Saint Ralph the Pure told me that GWB winning in 2000 would be a good thing, because he would make things so bad that the backlash would usher a whole generation of liberalism.
Yeah, I know, it doesn’t directly address your point, but it was similar enough, and I couldn’t resist the shot as Ralph Fucking Nader
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Did I mention the time I arrived at work at 1pm and found out they’d changed my hours to start at 9am and I didn’t get the notification?
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think the big thing is that the media only knows how to talk to the business owners these days. They’ve lost whatever contacts they might have had with the workers, so they’ve been seeing and telling the story entirely from the employers’ POV. Even worse, they don’t seem to understand what they’re missing. The idea of talking to workers to figure out why they’re behaving the way they are is unthinkable to many of the reporters.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
Or circumcised? That said, there is an actual Biblical command for Jewish people to get circumcised (though the Christians decided not to require it) and one not to get tattooed.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: You can’t pick your judge. But if you file in the district where he is a judge, you have a one in five or six chance of getting him. Better odds than filing someplace else.
Soprano2
@Kay: My husband dealt with a some grifters and con artists when he had his printing business. He says that seeing anything printed with gold ink is an automatic “tell” for a con artist because they all use it – they think it conveys wealth. He asked one of them once how he was so successful at parting doctors from their money. He said they’d rather do literally anything with their money than pay taxes. This was back in the 1970’s!
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not giving up either, but I’m not optimistic. It’s hard to reverse a backslide in a democracy when the autocrat wannabes have significant structural advantages, even with a knowledgeable and committed pro-democracy electorate. Which we don’t have.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: I got told I was sexist for saying something like that on Twitter.
Soprano2
I hate agreeing with this, but in a lot of ways I think it’s true. I think there are many apolitical people who, if they were told bringing back Republicans and Trump would make gas $1.50/gal again and make all the prices in the store go back down to where they were pre-Covid, would obligingly vote for Republicans. They don’t care about the details of governance – they care about their pocketbooks and their ability to live a normal life.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think the whole grift was based more on copying the way Steve Jobs did things than it was on Holmes being a woman. Yeah, being a blonde woman might have helped some, but I don’t think it helped more than the general reluctance to take women seriously hurt. A man could have pulled more or less the same con without appreciably more difficulty.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Soprano2: “Only I can fix this.”
I tend to agree that folk on both sides want quick and easy solutions, and are frustrated at the slow pace our government takes
Gravenstone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Drifting schedules week over week are rough enough. Moving from first to second shift within the confines of a single week just sucks. My condolences.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I was thinking that it was because you insist on calling Lorraine University “Lawrence University.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gravenstone: I feel like I have jet lag right now(I was up at about 6:30am), by 10pm my ass will be dragging. OTOH, I’ve had worse. I was scheduled to end work one night(morning) at 12am and be back at 9am. It ended up being leaving at 1:45am and being back at 11am.
Gravenstone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I once knew a guy who worked at the local nuke plant. He swung from first to second to third shifts on a weekly basis. How he managed that, I’ll never know.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Look, sport. I did take French courses there, but it ain’t in France.
Ghost of Joe Liebling*s Dog
@Roger Moore:
Wouldn’t you think they could visit a diner somewhere? “A bridge too far,” sadly.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Maybe its time to start looking elsewhere.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’ve been offered full time with set hours, so this should end soon.
@Gravenstone: When you’re younger it’s easier to do, I’ll be 62 in a few weeks, it ain’t easy at my age. A lot of the younger folk going to college, working part time and being able to set their hours work for them.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Deflect if you must, but the truth is out there. [As Cokie might say.]