I made curry and am watching Altered Carbon while checking the score every now and then.
Better Late Than Never- Super Bowl Open ThreadPost + Comments (135)
This post is in: Open Threads
I made curry and am watching Altered Carbon while checking the score every now and then.
Better Late Than Never- Super Bowl Open ThreadPost + Comments (135)
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Goddamned Traitors, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Assholes
Ooo, look, so many Very Serious People using words like “treason”, this time against Republicans, most especially the Repubs who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign! Could not be happening to a more deserving gang of revanchists and revenants…
Jeff Sessions on Nunes memo: "No department is perfect" https://t.co/yubwzI4D9j
— Axios (@axios) February 2, 2018
Atty Gen Jeff Sessions went off script at human trafficking event this morn to praise Deputy Atty Gen Rod Rosenstein, a reported target of Nunes memo. Noting Rosenstein has 27 yrs at DOJ, Sessions said Rosenstein represents "the kind of quality & leadership that we want" in DOJ.
— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) February 2, 2018
Embarrassing memo flop forces Jeff Sessions to defend the FBI against Trump’s smears https://t.co/T7VhQdVWB3 via @shareblue
— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) February 3, 2018
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There’s TALK…
We know now the FBI was actively investigating both campaigns during the 2016 election but only chose to publicly announce (repeatedly!) their investigation of Clinton while keeping the Trump campaign investigation *completely* secret the entire time.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 2, 2018
Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that no Repub has ever publicly questioned whether Russian help started long before May 2016, and whether their party’s nomination was captured by the Russians via Donald Trump?
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 4, 2018
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Anybody heard from Rudy lately?
Rudy Giuliani warns his Republican Party to “be careful” going to war with the FBI https://t.co/Rv8P0VLTUm
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) February 3, 2018
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) February 4, 2018
sounds like Rudy Giuliani doesn’t want anyone looking too hard at how he mysteriously acquired advance knowledge of the October Hillary’s emails announcement https://t.co/gVKH8zNIJ8
— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 3, 2018
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And what of James Comey, (newly) Brave Truth-Tweeter?…
Imagine going back in time to Comey Letter Day in 2016 and reporting that the Republicans would eventually claim the FBI had been against them all along
— laura olin (@lauraolin) February 1, 2018
One of the great ironies out of many in this current situation is that Comey no doubt released his letter because he assumed Clinton would win and he wanted to set a marker for FBI independence from the executive branch.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 2, 2018
The thing about the new Woke James Comey character is that this whole predicament was substantially caused by his own poor judgment and mismanagement of the FBI.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2018
Well his critical role electing Trump contributed to that predicament too. https://t.co/lsbGdk2Y6P
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 2, 2018
Russiagate Open Thread: A Dish Served ColdPost + Comments (231)
This post is in: Open Threads
Last year, the fruit of many long labors was borne for my wife, and she was awarded a Princeton fellowship to further her scholarly work. By pure coincidence, or so she claims, Paul McCartney was playing in New Jersey the same September week that she had arranged to be there. She’d seen two shows from McCartney’s 2016–17 tour with her father over the past year, and both were almost identical in content. Nonetheless, a week or two before her departure to Princeton, she confessed in an offhanded way that she had gotten tickets to see Macca a third time at one of his two Prudential Center shows in Newark.
“Oh?” I said.
Yes, she’d purchased a twenty-third row ticket, then paid a nominal $5 fee to upgrade to an eighth-row, center-stage ticket which would really put her in the thick of things.
We don’t have one of those marriages where we must obtain permission to spend our discretionary funds, so I was like, hey, if you want to blow your money on the same Paul McCartney concert all over the US, knock yourself out. That’s a level of fandom to which I can only bear witness, despite being a huge Beatles fan and general Paul partisan. She might deny it, but in addition to being a scholar of early modern women’s reading, my wife comes close to having a doctorate in Beatleology too, so encyclopedic is her store of Fab Four knowledge. She’s my go-to for Beatles info—and I’m supposedly the musician in the family. I want to say she, in her early thirties, is The Last Beatlemaniac, though time will tell.
Anyway, the day of the concert arrives, and Sarah hops on a train to Newark after toiling mightily at the Firestone Library all day. I’m at work that night receiving a steady commentary on her journey upstate and then the concert itself. She sends pictures and short videos. She’s super close! She could almost reach out and poke Paul.
During the encore, a truly amazing thing happens: he seems to make eye contact with her and does a little waltz step, referencing the sign she’s been holding up. Sign? Yes, she’s made a different sign for each of the concerts she’s attended. This one says: BALLROOM DANCE WITH A VEGETARIAN LIBRARIAN?
Wow! Acknowledged by a Beatle. Pretty good. Worth the effort. I don’t hear from her for awhile then I get some garbled, semaphoric texts that I can’t make heads or tails of.
Then at 10 p.m. Eastern time, she texts me. “You’re never going to believe it.”
Here I thought that Sarah was going to see the same concert and over when really she was working on her sign game. Third time’s the charm!
But you say you want a revolution? Well, you know, that’s a bit of a tall order. But you could contribute to the fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Sports
I wonder if he’ll top his super fun party from last year? pic.twitter.com/Vtifpna9Uu
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 3, 2018
All Mar a Lago parties have a certain veil of sadness hanging over them. You know, like a Russian novel. pic.twitter.com/VmOJTlZ8wp
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 3, 2018
From the Washington Post, “Trump is over the NFL (mostly). But the league still is feeling the fallout.”:
On a Friday evening in late September, President Trump and a group of aides gathered in the executive office of Air Force One.
A television was tuned to Fox News, which was replaying and deconstructing a clip from Trump’s rally earlier that day in Huntsville, Ala. Though he had appeared in support of Luther Strange in a primary runoff for the Senate, the footage had nothing to do with Alabama politics.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say: ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,’ ” Trump had told the crowd in a state he won in 2016 by nearly 30 points. “ ‘He is fired. He’s fired!’ ”…
… Reliving his words during the flight back to Washington, Trump pointed out to staffers that his off-the-cuff remark had been perhaps the biggest applause line of the night.
Four months later, with the NFL approaching the finish line to a turbulent season with Sunday’s Super Bowl, America’s most powerful sports league remains wounded from an ongoing culture war that started almost by accident…
For a president who thrives on conflict, the league served as just another convenient foil — and, perhaps, a particularly satisfying one given Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to buy an NFL franchise. But for the league, which had attempted for years to build a connection to the flag and patriotism as it replaced baseball as America’s pastime, his comments initiated a full-blown crisis, exposing social fault lines that had always been there — but those the league had been reluctant to confront. For months, the league has struggled to figure out how to respond to Trump amid a genuine sense that he had gotten the upper hand. In many ways, as the NFL gathers in Minneapolis this weekend for its glittery showcase, the fallout continues even as the president has mostly moved on.
“It put us in a position where we had to be political, and I don’t think it’s what any of us wanted,” said one NFL team executive, among more than a dozen league sources who requested anonymity so as not to draw Trump’s attention back to the league or any particular franchise.
“It was a terrible year.”…
In a few impromptu minutes in September, the president had — at least among his supporters — pivoted anthem protests away from race relations entirely. Now it was about respect, patriotism and the flag itself. The NFL — despite wrapping itself in the stars and stripes more than any other sports body with almost weekly salutes to service, field-length American flags and military flyovers — had lost its way…
Open Thread: Trump’s Reverse-Midas Touch, Sportsball EditionPost + Comments (69)
This post is in: Because of wow., Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Science & Technology
NASA's Curiosity rover captures an incredible panoramic view of Mars from the Gale Crater, showing dunes, buttes and ridges across the Red Planet's surface. https://t.co/JaERaCmf2s pic.twitter.com/OCO3rfbM8X
— ABC News (@ABC) February 3, 2018
I am watching a video from Mars on a computer in my hand. Just sayin' https://t.co/4c1KOmTtoo
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) February 3, 2018
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Back in the sixth grade (so, 1966 or ’67), we had to write an essay about our future and read it out loud to the class. The girl in front of me planned to marry an insurance agent and be a stay-at-home suburban mom with three kids — she even had their names picked out. (In our working-class urban Catholic neighborhood, this was aspirational.)
Since the teacher and I had been undergoing one of our periodic “Your penmanship (with a fountain pen — no ballpoints in parochial school) could be perfectly legible if only you would make the effort“ jousts, I announced that I planned to be a writer. And it would be just fine, because I’d have a robot editor to correct my spelling and read my scrawls.
Mrs. Anderson told my parents they ought to consider counseling, since I didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between probability and fantasy.
Of course, I spent my working life getting paid to use word processors, so I probably came closer to a true prediction than Diane as a stay-at-home mom…
***********
Apart from scienterrific wonderments, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Profound ProgressPost + Comments (217)
by Adam L Silverman| 180 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, Not Normal, Schadenfreude
Oops!
Page sent the letter 2 months after meeting with the FBI, who warned him that the Russians were trying to recruit him as an agent with the promises of business opportunities.
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) February 4, 2018
Take it away Time!
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.
The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.
“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.
In June 2013, the FBI interviewed Page regarding his contacts with the Russians, Page says. The FBI believed that Russian intelligence services had attempted to recruit Page as an agent with promises of business opportunities in Russia, according to the 2015 court documents.
Page told the FBI at their June 2013 meeting that the officers might better spend their time investigating the Boston Marathon bombing, which had occurred the previous April, according to a letter Page sent to Democrats on Nunes’ committee last May. Page says that thereafter the FBI began a retaliatory campaign against him. According to published reports, the FBI obtained a first FISA warrant to eavesdrop on Page’s electronic communications during 2013. And they have been paying attention to him, on and off, ever since.
Two months after his meeting with the FBI, Page sent the letter claiming to be a Kremlin adviser. In addition to his work as an energy consultant, Page has studied and written on Russian affairs, and had submitted a book for publication by the academic press. Page felt frustrated by the fact that he had revised his manuscript about Russian relations is Central Asia and it had not been reviewed again, according to the editor who has worked with Page in the past and who requested anonymity due to the confidential nature of the matter.
The letter to the manuscript reviewer is not the first example of Page touting his relationship with Russia. McClatchy reported last year that in 2008, the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan sent a cable to the U.S. State Department describing how Page had met with government officials in the country, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, about possibly working for their oil companies. The cable described how he touted his work with the Russian-run company Gazprom.
Well how about that bowl of borscht?
Stay frosty or Congressman Nunes will write a memo claiming you’ve violated Kremlin advisor Carter Page’s civil liberties.
Open thread!
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Glibertarianism, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Ryan Lyin' Weasel, Assholes
Ryan pitches cutting Medicaid benefits this year by calling it “Finding Fulfillment.”https://t.co/nX2aAZ9teA pic.twitter.com/dAaLIt3pGu
— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) February 2, 2018
But he’s very much a serious threat to those of us not in the top 0.1%…
They dropped this at height of the #NunesMemo. These so-called GOP leaders, who should be working across the aisle to strengthen these key initiatives are: 1) hoping you‘re distracted; and 2) plotting to destroy your Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security.https://t.co/b1F4gXmvx6
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 2, 2018
Good news, the Kochs can cover their Costco memberships for 14.2 million years! pic.twitter.com/UveEdxGoYl
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 3, 2018
Hey Paul! Going to need an extra nine cents! pic.twitter.com/zAtC18Rffv
— Gus Ironic Colonialist™ (@Gus_802) February 3, 2018
$1.50 a week for 52 weeks equals $78 per year, times 125 million workers that equals $9.75 billion a year.
Yet the tax cut costs $1.5 trillion — with a t — over ten years.
Where’d the money go? https://t.co/RQKEPM75GC
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 3, 2018
Paul Ryan is bragging about giving public school employees $1.50.
These 6 jaw-dropping charts show just how much rich people will gain from the GOP tax bill: https://t.co/gaQjGNfI1R pic.twitter.com/wAx0H7DX2I
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 3, 2018
Moments ago, @PRyan deleted this tweet after we told him just how out of touch he was. Show Paul Ryan what you think of his tax bill. Chip in $1.50 now to help us repeal and replace Ryan permanently this November.https://t.co/c3Fii4Q0Jn
— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) February 3, 2018
Repub Venality Open Thread: Paul Ryan Is Not A Serious Person…Post + Comments (183)