Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Word salad with all caps

This is how realignments happen…

Not all heroes wear capes.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Lighten up, Francis.

What fresh hell is this?

Also, too.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The Math Demands It!

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

Wetsuit optional.

It’s a tarp!

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

Verified, but limited!

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

This blog will pay for itself.

Good luck with your asparagus.

Women: They Get Shit Done

I personally stopped the public option…

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All the President’s Henchmen

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Maddow on AM Joy yesterday:

Me too, Rachel. The Trumps and their mobbed-up flunkies are an extreme danger to the republic and must be defeated. But GOP establishment figures like Barr, who’ve proved willing to go to any lengths to keep the con going, are a more insidious menace.

Some connected and elected Democrats vouched for Barr when Trump nominated him. They figured a long-term DC player could be trusted to protect institutions instead of subverting them on behalf of the demented conman. It was a bad bet.

The hot tub salesman who filled the AG job on an acting basis was an unqualified numpty, but at least he was impeded in his corruption by lack of familiarity with the job. Not so Mr. Barr. Consider a small sample of Barr’s inappropriate actions since his confirmation:

  • Lied about the contents of the Mueller report before its release
  • Held a press conference just prior to the Mueller report release to lie about it some more
  • Buried the whistleblower report and unlawfully failed to transmit the complaint to the FEC
  • Dismissed IG investigations that cleared Trump’s perceived enemies and reopened investigations
  • Undermined relationships with allies to investigate “deep state” conspiracy theories
  • Obstructed investigations into corrupt attempts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census

Parnas is a shady character with his own agenda, so it makes sense to treat his unverified claims about Barr or anyone else with skepticism. But as Maddow points out, Trump did mention Barr as well as Giuliani during the phone call with Zelensky to advance the extortion scheme.

Speaker Pelosi gets it. She called Barr a “rogue attorney general” and one of “the president’s henchmen” the other day at a press conference (clip included in another post). She’s right:

Does anybody think that the rogue attorney general is going to support–appoint a special prosecutor? No, because he’s implicated in all of this. This is an example of all of the president’s henchmen, and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.

Pelosi’s remarks about Barr didn’t get the attention they deserved because of the media circus around Trump’s impeachment. But it was reassuring (for me, at least) that she chose to make them.

Because only a portion of one half of one branch of government is currently acting as guardians of the Constitution the entire government swore to uphold, it’s a heavy lift to ask the House Dems to investigate the attorney general too. But no one else is going to shoulder that load. It’s up to the Speaker.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: But Rod Rosenstein Had Only the *Best* Intentions!

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There is nobody within the Trump orbit who isn’t compromised. Another ‘with only the best intentions’ criminal steps forward in this week’s Friday night doc dump, per Politico:

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized the release to the media of text messages between two highly placed FBI employees who exchanged criticism of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Justice Department has revealed in a new court filing.

Rosenstein also said in the court filing submitted shortly before midnight Friday that he made the decision to share the messages with the press in part to protect FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page from the drip effect of incremental releases of the texts by lawmakers or others…

Strzok and Page filed separate lawsuits against the Justice Department last year, alleging that the release of their text messages violated the Privacy Act — an almost half-century-old statute that safeguards information federal agencies hold about private individuals.

Despite the litigation, until Friday it remained unclear just who at Justice gave the final OK to give about 375 Strzok-Page texts to journalists — including a POLITICO reporter — on the evening of December 12, 2017.

In a formal declaration submitted as part of the government’s defense to Strzok’s suit, Rosenstein owned up to being the one who made the call. He said he did so in part because the texts’ public release by members of Congress was inevitable in connection with testimony he was set to give to the House Judiciary Committee the following day…

Rosenstein, who stepped down from his position as Justice’s No. 2 official last May, said in his new submission that his aides initially suggested he might want to delay sending the texts to Congress until after his House testimony. But the veteran prosecutor said he concluded it would be “inappropriate” to hold them back, even briefly, for that reason…

While Rosenstein said the disclosure to the media was aimed at putting the messages in context, Strzok and Page have noted that the set of fewer than 400 texts sent to the Hill and shared with reporters that night was just a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of messages the pair exchanged on work topics as well as personal matters…

Rosenstein’s statement does not indicate whether he consulted with Page, Strzok or their attorneys to seek their views on the planned release, but he had them informed that night that the disclosure was forthcoming. The former DOJ No. 2 official said he did have one of his top aides confirm with Justice’s top privacy official that the disclosure would not run afoul of the Privacy Act…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his senior role on the Trump-Russia probe after learning of the texts in the summer of 2017. Page, who worked on the earlier stages of the investigation, had already moved on to another assignment.

The FBI fired Strzok in 2018, while Page ultimately resigned from the agency.

In a statement published last month by the Daily Beast, Rosenstein argued the Justice Department was not responsible for the criticism Page has endured. However, without getting into detail or directly challenging Trump, the former DOJ official said some of the attacks on her had gone too far…

Sure, I gave a known character assassin a powerful metaphorical gun, along with the names & addresses of a couple of tempting victims. But you can’t blame me for the fact that he killed them! I only did it to protect them!

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Some Of Our Government Still Works For Us

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The National Archives has an exhibit on suffrage and women’s protests. A big photo of the Women’s March greets visitors. But some things are missing. Criticism of Trump is blurred out. References to women’s anatomy (OMG vagina!) are blurred out.

Let’s hear from the reporter.

Historians and museum curators have been unanimous in saying that the National Archives should not be in the business of altering documents. Most of us can recognize that, just from that sentence.

The National Archives listened!

Kudos to the National Archives!

And open thread!

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Petty

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Rolling back school lunch changes that Michelle Obama advocated so kids can eat more pizza and fries, and doing it on her birthday, is so on-brand for the MAGA hats in charge. Fuck them.

That said, by a simple twist of fate, I happen to know quite a bit about what schools purchase to feed children. While I agree that the programs Mrs. Obama advocated were a step in the right direction, schools can’t fix families, and the eating habits established in families accompany kids to school. School dietary departments are caught between the rock of what kids will eat, and the hard place of their genuine interest in feeding kids a healthy meal.

Luckily, the invisible hand of the free market stepped into the breach, as it so often does. Chicken nuggets were re-formulated to have whole grain breading, and new lines of whole grain frozen pizzas and other bread items became popular. Whole grain granola bars and other cereal bars, which are nutritionally a baby step from a candy bar, also were pretty widely purchased.

It struck me as the quintessentially American response to the realities of nutrition – pick a few slightly more healthy choices, market the shit out of those slightly more healthy products, and damn the calories. Type II diabetes at 20, here we come.

While you can’t force good food down kids’ throats, the focus on providing more fruits and vegetables probably put more good choices in front of kids, so the smarter ones who are going to buck their upbringing at least could pick out a healthy meal at school. Since those slightly rebellious kids were probably more likely to become Democrats, the program obviously had to be curtailed. Since Michelle Obama is a black woman, even more obviously, the program had to be curtailed on her birthday. QED in a red hat.

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ICYMI Open Thread: The Impeachment Images

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(It’s not so much fun when they’ve got your boy in the spotlight, huh, Chief Justice?)


(Gonna be a loooong weekend for the Oval Office Occupant’s handlers… )


Prediction: The Repubs are not gonna worry about saying anything stupid. Quite the contrary.

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Friday Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Pray for the LSU Team Members

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Even the three big dumb white dudes bro’ing each other are gonna end up with nightmares, remembering this.


I am reminded of a friend who referred to ‘That childhood moment in the car when you realize Daddy cares more about his booze than he does about your safety… ‘

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Rule of Law: In Hospice, Not Dead Yet

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Chris Collins, former Congressman from NY-27, first Member of Congress to endorse Trump, and former resident of Buffalo, NY, will soon be a residing in a prison in Pensacola, FL for 26 months. Collins was sentenced this afternoon for insider trading.

I followed Collins’ sentencing via a reporter in the courtroom on Twitter. The excuse making by his lawyer was pathetic. For example, he complained that the government revealed the address of Collins’ wife, but a few minutes later, a weeping Collins revealed all the names of his grandchildren. The judge later ruled that their names be struck from the record.

In the pre-sentencing letters, one attorney from Buffalo pointed out that when Collins was Erie County Executive, he decreed that worker’s compensation recipients would have to pick up their checks in person at the county courthouse, instead of having them mailed or deposited electronically. At the courthouse, these recipients would be interrogated to see why they couldn’t do light work. The lawyer represented a man from Batavia – 30 miles from Buffalo – who had seven surgeries and obviously couldn’t come to Buffalo to get his check. The state worker’s comp board reversed Collins’ policy in a 12-0 vote, but the whole incident gives you an inkling of the quality of mercy that Collins was willing to provide to others: none and fuck them.

So, in a little bit of justice, Collins had to stand in front of a judge today, sobbing, begging for sympathy, and regretting that he ruined his son’s life by giving him insider information the son used. (His son is going to be sentenced for that next week). Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the rest of us, in this case, the judge wasn’t sympathetic.

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Consent of the governed or a Political GIGO loop

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This paragraph by Amy Walters is not crazy and therefore it is extremely problematic in what it says about our society’s political feedback mechanisms:

 

The other important reality of this era is the degree to which national polls have become less helpful in assessing Trump’s electoral college strength. A president sitting at 42 percent approval, with “strong disapproval” outweighing “strong approval” by 10-12 points is not going to win the national popular vote. But, that doesn’t mean he can’t win the Electoral College.

Open thread for depressing thoughts this afternoon….

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Breaking: Big Dumb Baby Big, Dumb, A Baby

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As some of you may have noticed, the President has taken to displaying a map of his unspeakably huge electoral victory.

What I didn’t know until yesterday is, it’s not even a map of his election!

Obviously a county map is stupid anyway–land doesn’t vote!–but good lord.

Open thread! Anybody got exciting plans for the long weekend? I’m seeing Weathering With You tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to. Aside from that, I’ll probably be binging The Expanse, and playing the Metal Gear Solid 2 remaster I just bought.

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McFaul On Disinformation

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Started, they have, the disinformation wars.

Michael McFaul, the US Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, warns us that the disinformation will be flowing thick and fast during the impeachment trial. He points out three tactics:

  1. Deny facts
  2. Deflect attention, also known as “whataboutism”
  3. Disseminate lies

The net of all this is to make us feel that nothing matters, that there is no such thing as truth. Watch for Republicans to do this and for it to be amplified by bots and trolls (my collective term for automated and other troublemakers) on social media, the unthinking media, and your friends and relatives.

Don’t let the argument degenerate to “Well, that’s your opinion.” There are facts, and we need to keep pounding them.

Also, read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Money Changes Everything Memories

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Two weeks out from the 2016 elections, a first-time donor born in Ukraine lit up the map of the Republican Party with a $50,000 cash donation to Donald Trump’s joint fundraising committee.

By cutting just one check to Trump Victory Committee — well before he became a central figure in the impeachment of the president he helped elect — Lev Parnas left an indelible mark on two national and 20 state Republican entities.

Trump Victory subdivided his contribution into $33,400 for the Republican National Committee and $2,700 to Trump, the then-maximum allowable donations. The remainder went to GOP entities crisscrossing the country from New York to California, each receiving a modest sum of $661.90.

Official paperwork from the donation lists Parnas an employee of the Fraud Guarantee, the same company Parnas used to hire Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani in a relationship that has drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors.

Three years later, down to the same month, the Justice Department on Oct. 10 unsealed an indictment of Parnas for using a straw donor and laundering foreign money into U.S. elections. Federal prosecutors claim he and his Fraud Guarantee co-owner, Igor Fruman, used the shell company Global Energy Producers to funnel $325,000 in foreign cash into America First Action, a Trump super-PAC.

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Yes, And?

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The Post has been publishing excerpts from Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s A Very Stable Genius, and it’s about what you’d expect. The latest is Trump calling generals “dopes and babies”.

My response to that is more-or-less “so what”. We knew who he was before he ran, it became clearer as the campaign progressed, and now we have one more anecdote to add to the massive pile of evidence that Trump is spectacularly unfit for office. My basic understanding of Trump has not been enhanced one bit by the information published in the excerpt, and I don’t think I would learn much new from the book itself.

The Post has been one of the better (if not the best) of mainstream media outlets – “Democracy Dies in the Dark” was a clear signal that they recognized Trump as a serious threat, which is far beyond a lot of other outlets. But the Post still exists on a continuum of press attitudes. At one end of that continuum lies outlets like NPR, which are still trying to wedge Trump’s behavior into the template of what a normal President would do. At the other end is an outlet like the Post, which gets it that Trump is not normal, and are unafraid to report that.

But nowhere on that continuum of mainstream media attitudes is an outlet that regularly and frankly reports that Trump is what Republicans have become. Every lying Trump enabler in Congress, except the ones like Steve King who have been exiled by Republicans, gets a whopping benefit of the doubt about their attitude towards Trump. Look at the attention Mike Lee and Rand Paul got last week over some really garden variety bitching about the terrible briefing they got. Lee and Paul got that attention precisely because they are Republicans, and the stage directions that the press follow say that if a Republican complains about what another Republican does, then it’s a legitimate complaint. Otherwise, it’s noise.

Well, that little rule of thumb might work in an normal environment where both Republicans and Democrats are fighting about normal things. But this is not a normal environment, and we are not fighting about normal things. Democrats are literally fighting to save the country. Republicans are aiding and abetting someone trying to destroy it, because they could not figure out a way to stop being a party that caters mainly to white males. But saying “Democrats are the only party that cares about anyone but white males” or “Republicans would rather sacrifice the rule of law than lose political power” makes you sound like you’re off script, so instead we have two of the best reporters in the country writing this book.

It’s like being faced with a stinking manure pile that is poisoning the water supply, and spending your time examining it the pile instead of addressing the crisis. “Oh, that’s a horse apple.” “Hmm, just as I thought – another cow pie”.

Yes, it’s a fucking shit pile. We get it. Let’s talk about who put it there.

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Open Thread: Late Night Notes on Lev Parnas

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Per an unreliable narrator:

But look how happy he was, at Mar-A-Lago!:

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Potential Book Club Material: “A Very Stable Genius”

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I’m kidding, of course — we know most of this crap already. But kudos to the authors on the timing of their release…

President Trump reveals himself as woefully uninformed about the basics of geography, incorrectly telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.” He toys with awarding himself the Medal of Freedom.

And, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, Trump does not seem to grasp the fundamental history surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor…

“A Very Stable Genius” — a 417-page book named after Trump’s own declaration of his superior knowledge — is full of similarly vivid details from Trump’s tumultuous first three years as president, from his chaotic transition before taking office to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation and final report…

The book by the two longtime Post reporters — who were part of the team that won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Trump and Russia — was obtained ahead of its scheduled release Tuesday.

Many of the key moments reported in the book are rife with foreign policy implications, portraying a novice commander in chief plowing through normal protocols and alarming many both inside the administration and in other governments.

Early in his administration, for instance, Trump is eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin — so much so, the authors write, “that during the transition he interrupts an interview with one of his secretary of state candidates” to inquire about his pressing desire: “When can I meet Putin? Can I meet with him before the inaugural ceremony?” he asks…

In spring 2017, Trump also clashed with Tillerson when he told him he wanted his help getting rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that prevents U.S. firms and individuals from bribing foreign officials for business deals.

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump says, according to the book. “We’re going to change that.”

The president, they go on to explain, was frustrated with the law “ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company’s executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands.”

The book, the duo writes in an author’s note, is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 sources, corroborated, when possible, by calendars, diary entries, internal memos and even private video recordings. (Trump himself had initially committed to an interview for the book, the authors write, but ultimately declined, amid an escalating war with the media).

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday…

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Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: Good for Governor Northam

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… A sense of crisis enveloped the capital of Virginia on Thursday, with the police on heightened alert and Richmond bracing for possible violence ahead of a gun rally next week that is expected to draw white supremacists and other anti-government extremists.

Members of numerous armed militias and white power proponents vowed to converge on the city despite the state of emergency declared by Gov. Ralph Northam, who temporarily banned weapons from the grounds of the State Capitol. The potential for an armed confrontation prompted fears of a rerun of the 2017 far-right rally that left one person dead and some two dozen injured in Charlottesville, about an hour’s drive from Monday’s rally.

The unease increased after the F.B.I. announced the arrest on Thursday of three armed men suspected of being members of a neo-Nazi hate group, including a former Canadian Army reservist, who had obtained weapons and discussed participating in the Richmond rally. The men were linked to The Base, a group that aims to create a white ethnostate, according to the F.B.I.

For weeks, discussions about the rally have lit up Facebook pages and chat rooms frequented by militia members and white supremacists. Various extremist organizations or their adherents are calling Monday’s rally the “boogaloo.” In the lexicon of white supremacists, that is an event that will accelerate the race war they have anticipated for decades…

The rally on Monday, the holiday marking the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was initially organized to protest the Virginia Legislature’s proposed restrictions on gun purchases.

The organizer, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, is prominent in the state’s Second Amendment rights movement, donating tens of thousands of dollars to lawmakers over the years. Its president, Philip Van Cleave, refers to himself as an extremist but issued a statement saying the rally was meant to be a peaceful protest about gun rights.

In the past, its lobbying efforts were focused on loosening the state’s gun laws.

But with a new Democratic majority in the Legislature, the group has made it clear that Monday’s event will be focused on opposing sweeping gun control measures that could be enacted next week....

On Thursday, the House of Delegates and the Senate held their regularly scheduled sessions under tighter-than-normal security by the Capitol Police. The Senate approved several gun control measures, including a bill that limits people to buying only one gun each month.

Also Thursday, a circuit court judge upheld the governor’s temporary ban on weapons in the area around the Capitol from Friday until Tuesday…

The F.B.I. has grown increasingly concerned about The Base as it has worked to recruit more people. The group encourages the onset of anarchy, according to the Counter Extremism Project, an organization that tracks far-right extremists. Experts say that its founder, an American, appears to be living in Russia…

Of course not every ‘gun rights activist’ is a racist, nor is every racist an ammosexual — but is it surprising how much the two groups overlap?

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