Dolt 45

Bothsiderism Open Thread: PROVOCATIVE!

by Anne Laurie| June 24, 201812:10 pm| 227 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Repubs in Disarray!, Assholes, Clown Shoes, Let A Thousand Watergates Bloom

I’m not saying it’s a good idea but the anti-Trump base seems pretty exercised so maybe Congress should just impeach him as a goodwill gesture and this polarizing issue behind us. https://t.co/xLHGjPKCi4

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 23, 2018

Trump tweets about the “witch hunt”

May 2017: 3 times
June 2017: 5 times
July 2017: 6 times
Oct 2017: 1 time
Dec 2017: 2 times
Jan 2018: 1 time
Feb 2018: 3 times
March 2018: 2 times
April 2018: 9 times
May 2018: 20 times
June 2018: 22 times

— David P Gelles (@gelles) June 23, 2018

“Um Boss, you know Nixon used to always use the phrase Witch hunt.”
“So.”
“Well, you may want to stay away from comparisons to Nixon.”
“This Nixon, Roger says he was treated very unfairly, very unfairly.”
“Um, I guess but…” https://t.co/fK63bKybAa

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) June 23, 2018

Remember when?…

In all seriousness, was there a single article written in 2010 about how most Obama voters still liked Obama? I feel like if you pitched that you’d be laughed at.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 23, 2018

Bothsiderism Open Thread: PROVOCATIVE!Post + Comments (227)

Russiagate Open Thread: Michael Cohen Makes A Move

by Anne Laurie| June 20, 20186:02 pm| 233 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Open Threads, Russiagate, Trump Crime Cartel, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Michael Cohen resigns from as deputy finance chair of RNC…..apparently suggesting it's partly on principle over family separation. https://t.co/J7xDlOoK1a

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 20, 2018

… In his resignation letter to Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, Cohen cited the ongoing special counsel investigation as one reason for his departure. ABC News has reviewed the email…

Cohen also criticized the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border, the first time he’s distanced himself from the president.

“As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy is heart wrenching,” Cohen wrote. “While I strongly support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be used as bargaining chips.”

Cohen on Tuesday hired New York lawyer Guy Petrillo to represent him in a federal investigation headed up by the Southern District of New York.

I drafted the post below just last night. Nothing is ever certain in Trumpworld, but it sounds like the Hoarse Whisperer’s tweets at the end might be relevant; if Cohen’s decided that Donald is not really his friend, then the next logical step would be discovering a moral compass…

This is gonna end like Reservoir Dogs isn’t it. https://t.co/EKxCXol5Z2

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 20, 2018

It’d be some kind of poetic justice if Trump’s notorious parsimony (to phrase it nicely) with the people who work for him turns out to be what brings him down. From CNN:

Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen has signaled to friends that he is “willing to give” investigators information on the President if that’s what they are looking for, and is planning on hiring a new lawyer to handle a possible indictment from federal prosecutors.

“He knows a lot of things about the President and he’s not averse to talking in the right situation,” one of Cohen’s New York friends who is in touch with him told CNN. “If they want information on Trump, he’s willing to give it.”…

The shift in legal strategy and signals of potential cooperation with investigators come as Cohen feels increasingly isolated from the President, whom he has been famously loyal to for more than a decade. Last week, CNN reported Cohen has indicated a willingness to cooperate to alleviate pressure on himself and his family…

Several defense lawyers say that if Cohen is ultimately indicted, they don’t expect him to be charged with any wrongdoing until the government completes its review of the evidence seized in the raid. The court-appointed special master overseeing the review of material for attorney-client privileged information said it could be completed as soon as June 25…

Cohen complaints about Trump not paying his legal fees are all the more striking because 1) Trump campaign paid $230K of his Russia legal fees + 2) Trump family paid for doc review process after the April raid (as first reported by NYT). https://t.co/l8fr1aVYQH

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) June 20, 2018

From The Hill:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Cohen has “frequently” complained that the mounting costs of his legal fees are “bankrupting” him, according to one source, and that he is frustrated that the president, whom he feels owes Cohen for years service, hasn’t offered to cover the fees.

Trump told reporters last week that he hasn’t spoken to his former attorney in months, adding that Cohen no longer does any business with him.

“I always liked Michael Cohen,” he said Friday. “I haven’t spoken to Michael in a long time.”…

Afterwards, they’re hurt, shocked and incredulous.

How could they have done this to me after everything I’ve done?!

Then they’re just hurt.

Then they look for comfort in people who have been wronged by the narc as well…

…and those people usually weren’t as loyal.

2/

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 19, 2018

Michael Cohen is well on his way to that point…

…and once he gets there and opens the spigot, there will be no holding back what he gives up.

The first turn is the hardest.

Then comes the flood.

Trump is in big, big trouble here.

<end>

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 19, 2018

Russiagate Open Thread: Michael Cohen Makes A MovePost + Comments (233)

Space Farce Open Thread: To the MOON, Alice!…

by Anne Laurie| June 19, 20189:28 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Military, Open Threads, Science & Technology, Assholes

“Rich guys seem to like rockets,” Trump says, to chuckles from the room, after declaring he will return Americans to the moon.

“Explain that. They do like rockets for some reason.”

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 18, 2018

All the real billionaires, the Big Swinging Dicks, get to go on the TV and talk about their mighty throbbing rockets. Donny Dollhands thinks he ought to be able to grift his very own (no doubt Trump-branded, gilt-painted) bunch of rockets out of a grateful nation… and his will be the only ones carrying NUCKALAR BOMBS, suckitlibs!

Trump wants an off-planet branch of the U.S. armed forces.

Congress would have to approve a Space Force, and lawmakers have been divided on it.

Much of the push motivated by space investment by Russia and China. https://t.co/OKB7hFenNr

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 18, 2018

Okay. Today trump decided to establish a Space Force. This MORON does not even realize that the US Air Force has a Space Command has been around since 1982. This imbecile simply cannot continue as CIC. Fire the Liar

— American Veteran (@amvetsupport) June 19, 2018

Fortunately, our American armed forces have some experience with slow-walking “demands” from temporary autocrats, so I think we’ll see the first Trump Rocket unveiled on approximately the twelfth of Never. Per the Washington Post:

… Trump has floated this idea before — in March, he said he initially conceived it as a joke — but has offered few details about how the Space Force would operate. Several experts noted that an act of Congress is required to establish a new branch of the military.

Trump said Monday that the branch would be “separate but equal” from the Air Force and that Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would oversee its creation.

“It is not enough to have an American presence in space, we must have American dominance in space,” Trump said, adding that he didn’t want to see “China and other countries leading us.”

Dunford’s staff acknowledged Trump’s comments in a statement Monday afternoon, pledging to work closely with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s office, other Defense Department officials and Congress to “implement the President’s guidance.”

“Space is a warfighting domain, so it is vital that our military maintains its dominance and competitive advantage in that domain,” the statement said.

And a spokeswoman for Mattis said in a statement that Pentagon officials “understand” the guidance.

“Our Policy Board will begin working on this issue, which has implications for intelligence operations for the Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy,” Dana White said without elaborating. “Working with Congress, this will be a deliberate process with a great deal of input from multiple stakeholders.”…

In a letter to lawmakers last year, Defense Secretary James Mattis "strongly" urged Congress to reconsider a proposal to establish a separate "Space Corps," saying it was "premature" to set up a new organization "at a time I am trying to reduce overhead." https://t.co/QPByED6Qc0

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) June 19, 2018

Reminder: Commander Babyfingers de-funded NASA and appointed a non-scientist to run it.

Apparently our Space Force will require no knowledge of space. https://t.co/1cS73nsEU3

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 18, 2018

As the first act of the Space Force initiative, can we arrange for Babyfingers to tour the front?

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) June 18, 2018

I found the first recruit to enlist in Trump's space force. pic.twitter.com/elkNNoHbYR

— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) June 19, 2018

Space Farce Open Thread: <em>To the MOON, Alice!</em>…Post + Comments (107)

Child Internment Camps Open Thread: “But My RATINGS!”

by Anne Laurie| June 19, 201810:32 am| 118 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Immigration, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Repubs in Disarray!, All Too Normal, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Are these Nazis Walter?

I told y’all Nuzzi was a professional assassin:

I would have waited until I was called on to play it, but I was not being called on. After another reporter’s phone began loudly ringing with a melodic jingle, I figured the briefing room could probably deal with a more important disturbance.

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) June 18, 2018

Donald Trump doesn’t even pretend to believe in any of the pieties he reads (badly) off the teleprompter, but he most certain does believe in his bigly media presence. All of a sudden child-internment has started interfering with his TV image — not to mention the fortunes of the GOP come November, insofar as he cares about that — and it’s gotta be chafing him like a sandy swimsuit one size too small.

This feels new(ish). In the past, lots of left-of-center opinion writers or analyst types would call administration statements lies, and maybe a few straight reporters would join in. But with this Nielsen presser … it feels like all the straight reporters are calling them out.

— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) June 18, 2018

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I’m hoping more pressure on this ugly bruise will encourage Lord Smallgloves to discover that *somebody* (probably Nielsen, she’s only a woman after all) cruelly misled him over the whole situation, and will have to be publicly humiliated and stripped of their (her) Oval Office Occupancy epaulets…

“Trump’s usual ability to bury a negative story under confusing messaging and chaotic news doesn’t seem to be working the same way it has in the past.” https://t.co/FUJxWc0mzb

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 19, 2018

We've seen plenty of cases where question framing has a dramatic effect on responses. Here, support for family separation stays between 27-32% across some fairly different ways of asking.

— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) June 18, 2018

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Child Internment Camps Open Thread: <em>“But My RATINGS!”</em>Post + Comments (118)

A Dozen Facts Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo Need To Know To Negotiate With North Korea

by Cheryl Rofer| June 16, 20182:31 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Foreign Affairs, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

The primary issue that is being negotiated with North Korea is its nuclear weapons and the missiles they might be mounted on for attacks on the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan. A meaningful agreement will have to include many technical issues.

Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are not nuclear or rocket scientists, nor can we expect most politicians to be. But the technical facts are no less difficult to learn than the economics. (Oops! They get that wrong, too. I will push forward anyway.) Pundits commenting on the negotiations and people who simply want to understand may find this list useful.

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North Korea has nuclear weapons. We don’t know how many or whether they are mounted on missiles. They have tested five nuclear devices, the last of which was probably a thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb). The best guesses at how many they have are in the 20-30 range. Estimates as high as 60 can be found.
North Korean missile testing is not as far advanced as nuclear testing. Questions such as whether the warheads can survive re-entry into the atmosphere and ability to aim them remain for outside observers and possibly for the North Koreans as well.
North Korea has several types of missiles with different ranges. Some would be aimed at Japan or South Korea, others at the United States, depending on those ranges.
The Earth is a sphere, so North Korean missiles headed for the United States will go north on a great circle route, not straight across the Pacific, as is too often shown on television graphics.

This

not this

We know some things about the North Korean weapons complex, but not as much as we’d like. We know the reactor that produces plutonium and the centrifuge facility that produces enriched uranium, but not whether there are other such facilities. We know some of the other manufacturing facilities, but not all of them.
The North Koreans used explosives to close the entrances to tunnels at their nuclear test site. My professional opinion, based on photos of the demolition, is that this was a minimal closure and the tunnels can easily be accessed again. I haven’t seen other opinions.
The North Koreans have several missile test sites. They have offered to deactivate one, but we don’t know which one.

7a. It is useful to learn the names of the various sites.

Verification is an essential part of arms control. It’s an abstract word that includes many concrete actions. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization can supply the expertise to design verification plans and carry them out. They are international organizations with inspectors from many countries.
Verification consists of getting information from North Korea about their holdings of fissile material and the facilities in which missiles and bombs are produced. It includes inspections of those facilities by human visits and by installed equipment. The inspectors report to their organizations or an organization set up by treaty to monitor the treaty. Decisions must be made on schedules of inspection, equipment to be used, access to facilities, and other details.
Taking apart a nuclear weapon can be tricky. If North Korea decides to dismantle its nuclear weapons, that adds a layer to verification that we don’t have a lot of experience with.
Other expertise exists in the United States, in the State Department, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. Each has different sorts of expertise. A couple hundred of these experts backed up the negotiations with Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Other arms control agreements have elements that can be used in an agreement with North Korea – New START and its predecessors, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, previous agreements with North Korea, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the JCPOA.

There are more basic things too, like how nuclear weapons work, why enriched uranium and plutonium are the fissile materials of choice, the kinds of fuels for missiles, but these are extras. It’s enough to know that plutonium (not “enriched”) and enriched uranium are the fissile materials and that the photos the North Koreans have shown are plausible as nuclear weapons and that the nuclear and missile tests show real progress.

So far I have seen no indication that Trump or Pompeo understands any of this.

Acknowledgement: This post grew out of a Twitter conversation with Dan Nexon.

A Dozen Facts Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo Need To Know To Negotiate With North KoreaPost + Comments (88)

Russiagate Open Thread: Waiting for the OIG Report to Drop

by Anne Laurie| June 14, 20189:43 am| 167 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Election 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Whether POTUS is pleased or angered by the findings presented to him today in his private briefing on the DOJ IG report, it will be interesting to see whether he is disciplined enough to hold his fire, or if he scoops the IG’s public release by impulsively tweeting his reactions.

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) June 14, 2018

1/ Gird your loins. There's a buzz growing in the Nunes Treason Caucus circles (and in their pet media outlet) in an attempt to blow the IG report sky high.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 14, 2018

3/ It won't matter what the IG report says; like the original Midnight Run play, the unmasking play, the FISA play, the House Intel report play, and the rest of the Nunes/Harvey plays, it'll be fodder for the Trump media and one more line of defense that will fall apart quickly.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 14, 2018

The OIG report is coming out today. It will yield a media frenzy, frantic digging out of small pieces of new information, certain presidential gaslighting and use of the matter to attack the unrelated Russia probe, and equally certain howls of vindication from Team Hillary. /1/

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) June 14, 2018

Does the IG offer any reason to believe that the investigation’s judgements were influenced in any direction by politics? /4/

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) June 14, 2018

Does the IG offer any reason to believe that any senior official in the FBI engaged in any misconduct or abuse? /6/

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) June 14, 2018

Does he find any misconduct by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page? Or have the names of these two career officials been dragged through the fever swamp mud for months for nothing more than bad judgment in expressing private views to one another? /8/

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) June 14, 2018

Please do not be Hoodwinked.

If Trump's Inspector General adds anything to the Clinton email story it was created / added later.

There is NOTHING that the Benghazi Committee, led by people who wanted to take Clinton down more than feed their own children, wouldn't have found.

— Robert #Resist Sandy (@frodofied) June 14, 2018

Russiagate Open Thread: Waiting for the OIG Report to DropPost + Comments (167)

I Looked Him in His Eye and Saw His Soul

by John Cole| June 12, 201810:35 am| 135 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45

This fucking idiot:

“I do trust him, yeah,” Trump said. “Maybe in a year you’ll be interviewing and I’ll say I made a mistake. It’s possible. We’re dealing at a high level, a lot of things can change a lot of things are possible.”

Anyone who votes Republican is a fucking idiot, too.

I Looked Him in His Eye and Saw His SoulPost + Comments (135)

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Naturally gregarious and alpha

The revolution will be supervised.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Gastritis broke my calculator.

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We have all the best words.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

No one could have predicted…

The house always wins.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Lighten up, Francis.

Women: they get shit done

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

This blog goes to 11…

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

How has Obama failed you today?

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

Wetsuit optional.