Tuesday Morning Open Thread

by 5:06 am. It has 257 Comments.

Throwback Tuesday:

Brief enough for Donny Dollhands to… well, have someone read to him:

… The four-page document divides the narrative into three categories: the “shakedown,” “the pressure campaign” and “the cover up.”

The document first cites the rough transcript released by the White House last month of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In that call, Trump told Zelensky that he would have his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr reach out to “get to the bottom” of “a lot of talk” about the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The fact sheet then cites text messages that former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker provided to the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry that show discussion between diplomats about the Trump administration’s efforts to push for the investigation as evidence of a “pressure campaign.”…

The document from Pelosi then concludes that the intelligence community whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry details evidence of a “cover up” by White House officials to “lock down” records of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky by transferring the transcript to a separate electronic system used to handle particularly sensitive classified information…





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Late Night Open Thread Reminder: There ARE No ‘Better’ Republicans Than Trump

by 2:07 am. It has 17 Comments.

Just some who are slightly more professional in their kleptocracy:

There seems to be a shift among the Permanent GOPers to act as though the Oval Office Squatter is some kind of aberrancy that slipped past their time-tested barriers to such vulgar criminality.

Good for them, if they’re finally moving away from protecting their deplorables’ god-emperor. But the truth is, the only difference between this maladministration and the ‘usual’ Repub stint in the WH is that Trump insists, gleefully, on saying the quiet parts out loud.





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Evening Respite Thread: Words!

by 10:53 pm. It has 124 Comments.

I don’t know about you, but I sure would love a nice relaxing respite thread. So! My friend Louis was kind enough to bring this fun page to my attention this weekend:

I’m the same vintage as ‘dead-cat bounce’, ‘IP address’, ‘graphene’, ‘anime’, and ‘breakbeat’, to pick a few that I like. They aren’t all winners; ‘alternative country’ had the audacity to be first used in print* that year, too. What about y’all?

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The Doral Debacle Open Thread: “He’s in the Hospitality Business!”

by 4:19 pm. It has 64 Comments.

So Mick Mulvaney told us. And Trump certainly set out a rich buffet for his detractors…

… “He had no choice,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and longtime friend of the president’s, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “It shouldn’t have been done in the first place. And it’s a good move to get out of it and get that out of the papers and off the news.”

[And you know it just broke Christie’s heart to be called on to explain this for his old frenemy…]

The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were disapproving. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself. Those moderates are among the votes Mr. Trump would need to stick with him during an impeachment.

“I didn’t see it being a big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, one of those at Camp David. He said the group told Mr. Trump’s aides that sticking with the decision “would be a distraction.”…

“I think there was a lot of concern,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republicans’ leadership team. “I’m not sure people questioned the legality of it, but it clearly was an unforced political error.”

Mr. Cole said he did not speak to the president directly about it, but expressed relief that Mr. Trump had changed his mind, and was certain that other Republicans felt the same way. “We just didn’t need this,” he said.

By late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump had made his decision, but he waited to announce the reversal until that night in two tweets that were separated by a break he took to watch the opening of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News program…

[Because a guy needs a little ego balm when he’s facing such a hurtful choice.]

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Mulvaney said Sunday, “he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business, and he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could.”

[A show, he most certainly put on, regardless.]
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Open Thread: Happy Birthday, Kamala

by 1:42 pm. It has 109 Comments.

This was just about perfect in my eyes, as your resident cooking host.

And you guys, I walked into the house after a meeting and flipped to MSNBC to hear Soon-To-Be-Impeached-In-Chief completely meltdown. I was in the kitchen and had to go back and rewind because he said some crazy assed stuff about a conversation with Obama/N. Korea that bordered on fanfic. And he looks horrible.

Anyway, open thread.





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