So, remember when FBI Director James Comey upended the 2016 election in the final weeks because WEINER EMAILS? Yeah, he had nothing:
The FBI told a federal judge that it needed to search a computer to resume its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server because agents had found correspondence on the device between Clinton and top aide Huma Abedin — though they did not have any inkling what was being discussed, according to newly unsealed court documents.
The documents, made public Tuesday after a Los Angeles lawyer sued for their release, reinforce the impression that when the bureau revealed less than two weeks before the election that agents were again investigating Clinton, they had no new evidence of actual wrongdoing. The FBI’s revelation upended the presidential election, and to this day, Clinton and her supporters say it is at least partly to blame for her surprising loss to Donald Trump…
Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign spokesman, said on Twitter there “was nothing in search warrant filing to controvert Comey’s statements from July and truly establish probable cause of a crime,” and that it was “salt in the wound to see FBI rationale was this flimsy.”
E. Randol Schoenberg, the lawyer who sued to have the warrant unsealed, said he saw “nothing at all in the search warrant application that would give rise to probable cause, nothing that would make anyone suspect that there was anything on the laptop beyond what the FBI had already searched and determined not to be evidence of a crime, nothing to suggest that there would be anything other than routine correspondence between Secretary Clinton and her longtime aide Huma Abedin.”
“I am appalled,” Schoenberg said.
But James Comey is an upright crime-fighter of sterling character whose moral rectitude demanded that justice be done, though the heavens fall. And now a narcissistic, no-nothing, crackpot grifter will be in charge of the world’s most fearsome nuclear arsenal. The end.
Elizabelle
I wish we could redo this election.
I am not so thrilled with No Drama Obama. This is a huge deal.
Any chance Obama will fire Comey now? Although then we’d get Giuliani or someone even more wicked than Comey.
Trentrunner
Let’s just be clear: The Comey announcement WOULD HAVE BEEN a big nothingburger if not for the media’s 2-year wallpaper coverage of this EMAILZ nothingburger.
Comey sang the final aria, but the media set the stage, trained the singers, and built the goddamn opera house.
D58826
link to huffington – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-subpoena-that-rocked-the-election-is-legal-garbage-attorney-say_us_58597cd9e4b03904470b0633
Bobby D
Comey should be prosecuted. Not being a lawyer (thank god, the engineer jokes are bad enough), I’ll leave it to the more legally astute to weigh in on what charges, but subverting a presidential election should carry a sentence of at least 25yrs-life in prison.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Best Buddies: Trump, Austrian Neo-Nazis, and Putin
by Martin Longman
December 20, 2016 3:02 PM
In the process of pointing out that their flirtations with John Birchers and other general “rightwing nutballish” behaviors are quickly turning the Trump administration “into the grease trap of American political history,” Charles Pierce stops to notice that incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is still in league with the Russkies. To wit, the lunatic far-right Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache traveled to New York in November to meet with Flynn. The Freedom Party presidential nominee, Norbert Hofer, just came within a whisper of winning an revanchist Anschlussian political victory in the early December election. He had hoped to do better, saying just prior to the vote that he was drawing “encouragement from Donald Trump’s presidential victory in the United States.”
So, Strache, Hofer, Flynn and Trump are best buddies, it seems, and now Strache and Hofer have decided to balm their political wounds by sidling up to the Kremlin:
Pierce’s response is laconic:
Of course, this is impossible because liberals who lived through the Cold War keep telling me that all this Russia-bashing is just so much Dulles Brothers flimflam designed to distract the plebes from their rightful destiny at the head of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To bash Russia is to bash the left here at home in order to crush the left everywhere from Ho Chi Minh City to Buenos Aires.
It therefore cannot be that our president is in the thrall, if not the control, of a “worldwide right-wing movement” to restore the purity of essence to the European bloodstream and bring Christianity back to its former central and crusading glory.
Mike in dc
This, and the bit about people sitting on the Apprentice tapes because they thought Clinton would win, are maddening.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
The CIA comes to you telling you that the Russians want to interfere…
but,…Hillary and emails.
catclub
also a similar post at TPM. No reason to break precedent. And precedent meant not even pursuing political subpeonas.
Not to mention publicizing them.
Botsplainer
Comey should go on TV, announce “I’m sorry” and then do himself with his service pistol in order to expiate his crimes against humanity, because there will be a deluge of them.
Sasha
So, did he violate the Hatch Act?
hitchhiker
What happened on Nov 8th is that we all learned we don’t (and maybe never have) lived in a country that values justice or liberty. It sounds dramatic because it is.
I’m paying close attention these days to whatever people of color have to say, since they’ve known all about this forever. I’m white. I didn’t have to know it, and I didn’t have to care about it. Whatever efforts I made in the past to make things more fair or to make people more free were NOT NEAR ENOUGH.
I actually think all the arguments about who should lead the Democratic party going forward are stupid, unless they involve black women. Black women got it right in this election. They weren’t swayed by the effing email stories or the Comey letter or the bros or any of it. They also showed up in big numbers.
Time to listen to them. Clearly they’ve more than earned a chance to lead.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Josh Marshall at TPM argues convincingly that we’d end up with someone worse if Obama shit-canned Comey. And that makes sense. But it seems wrong for the motherfucker to make such a horrendous, consequential error in judgment (if we’re being charitable) or engage in such egregious ratfucking (if we cast charity aside) and continue on in his high-profile job as if nothing had happened. I can’t imagine a satisfactory conclusion that doesn’t involve Comey eating his fucking gun. I hate thinking that way, but there it is.
@Trentrunner: True.
Lalophobia
@hitchhiker:
What a shock that a country founded on genocide and slavery would, at least, have elements in its government that failed to value justice or liberty. This is not something anybody who’s plugged in should only just be learning now.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer: I do not think Dylann Roof should get the death penalty. In view of his youth, when he committed those terrible murders of nine wonderful people.
But I would be fine with Comey being sentenced to death for treason. He has delivered us into a world of pain and no hope by issuing in President Trump.
I don’t care if Comey dies of old age in a federal cell, awaiting his execution. But he deserves a death sentence. He did far more damage than Dylann Roof ever contemplated, even with hoping to get his “race war” on.
germy
Interesting comment over at LGM, on The Way Forward.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
Probably somebody like Kobach. Smart and terrifying. Guy has Heydrich written all over his face.
raven
@germy: Allie McBeal?
JPL
@Sasha: It appears so, and it would be great if we had someone who would investigate that.
Elizabelle
One silver lining: I suspect his reputation, and how he is viewed, is important to Traitor Comey.
And that is now in tatters, for everyone who is not a wingnut. And Comey probably knows it. He is shit on toast for ethics.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Beat me to it. Only thing I’d add is maybe his role model, Junior G-Man Louie Freeh, should join him an take part in the festivities.
I really don’t like watching gory movies, but I would absolutely tune in to watch that evil motherfucker off himself. Hell, I’d volunteer to be his kaishakunin if he wanted one.
Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, but Lynch or Obama should have fired his evil ass after his July “I REALLY FUCKING HATE HITLARY” speech. There would have been about a month of “it’s a political firing ZOMFG!!!” bullshit, but it would have been over and done with in plenty of time for Hillary to kick TEFA’s butt in the debates, etc.
JPL
@Elizabelle: He has probably been asked to many holiday celebrations, and given many atta boy! Mission Accomplished.
Baud
@hitchhiker:
Truth be told, I’m terrified of facing rikyrah in the 2020 primary.
This whole thing is so disgusting. But we need to unify!
MomSense
@Lalophobia:
When you start going through the list of our leaders, you realize how seldom it is that the good ones win. And they are the most memorable because they do so much lasting good mostly in the process of cleaning up the disasters of the previous leader. If they are really good they are able to plant seeds for the future.
germy
@raven: Let’s run Bruce Springsteen and be done with it.
randy khan
Don’t worry, NR will explain to us that Comey had nothing to do with the result. (I’d be worried that I’m about to invoke the evil spirit, but I’m pretty confident that we’re going to get it anyway.)
germy
@Baud: rikyrah/baud 2020
Mnemosyne
So, basically, James Comey hated Hillary Clinton more than he loves his country. He preferred to sell the United States out to a foreign power than allow Hillary Clinton to be president.
And you know what? He’s probably proud of it.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
Don’t worry, he only shows up if someone says something disparaging about St. Sanders of Vermont using that person’s familiar name. I think he has a Google alert set up.
SFAW
@randy khan:
Does Nearly Russian still comment here? [I haven’t been dropping by much lately, so am not fully aware of all Balloon Juice current traditions.]
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t find anything to disagree with there. Unfortunately.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: What happened to the plan to call him Wilmer to avoid the trolls?
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: Traitor Comey.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Oooh. Good one. I think a lot of us did not hear the “Wilmer” plan.
Kay
It’s just so lame that a private lawyer had to file this. When I saw it I thought “oh, yay! Finally, some answers!”
Then I got immediately depressed because we’re relying on these arbitrary people just haphazardly “stepping up”, or not. We’re short on LAWYERS in DC? There’s not a person with a spare moment to investigate the FBI interfering with an election?
I hope some concerned citizen feels like spending their own time and money investigating Donald Trump’s 5000 conflicts of interest. Otherwise we can just forget THAT ever coming to light, I guess. Maybe we can run an internet fundraiser and hire a private investigator? We can call him up “how’s that United States of America case coming? Find anything?”
It’s all so banana republic-ish.
Baud
The collection of evil that had to come together to steal this election is astounding.
raven
@germy: Oh, she’s married to Harrison Ford.
SteveKnNKY
The first election after the VRA is undone by the Supreme Court. Wholesale purging of 7 million voters in the states sh!Theel won by less 100k voters. And people squabble if HRC ran a good campaign. Bernie had one striking point. That the wealthy and people in power have fee consequences compared to the rest of us.
I have no real way to validate the email issue on the election. But we can certainly measure the affect of the voter suppression in WI, OH, PA and FL. Plus the other states controlled by the GOP grifters.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: I think Comey would have become the favorite panelist on the Sunday shows, like McCain used to be, and harangued Reckless Hillary from that platform for months. Probably do a star turn at the RNC too, and get brought up in all the debates.
Botsplainer
@Elizabelle:
I’m super OK with Comey sharing a 16 man bay with a mixture of Bloods, Crips and MS13 members. Give the guys a unifying cause, hose the remains out of the cell in the morning..
japa21
I actually think the announcement of not finding anything in these emails probably hurt more than the original announcement of their looking into the emails.
All polling indicates that although the first announcement made some difference, I think it would not have been enough. The second announcement almost seemed set up to give Trump’s campaign enough time to throw out the “there wasn’t enough time to examine all those emails” canard. It made it look like Comey was covering up for Clinton. I think that is what really provided the final difference.
If that announcement had come out even the day before the election, it would probably not have made as much difference. I am not usually a conspiracy type person, but I feel confident that the Trump campaign and Comey coordinated on the timing.
Bostonian
Obama’s administration should go on a security clearance cancellation spree. Comey’s should be pulled, obv., while all computers he’s touched are searched for Russian contacts.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: Remember as a young lawyer he was one of the fire breathers on the Starr inquisition team. They were convinced that if they just looked hard enough they would find a crime somewhere. We’ll they never did so he had to be satisfied with destroying Hillary’s shot at history, Destroying the country is just collateral damage.
laura
@germy: beat me to it!
Frank Wilhoit
@Baud: The message that we need to unify around is the rule of law: full stop, neither more nor less nor other. We got where we are by letting people off the hook. Over the next few years, it would appear that a lot more people are going to be let off the hook, and that not (for the most part) in any furtive manner, but in an open and prideful manner. This can resonate.
On the other hand, many innocents will also be punished, but that does not resonate and it would have taken a millenium of moral education to change that.
And on the other other hand, we had one opportunity to adopt this message, in 2000, and we let it pass. Such opportunities do not come again.
All of this comes to Charles Pierce’s message, as expressed in a relatively oblique and passive-aggressive manner, but clearly readable between the lines.
Bobby D
@Betty Cracker: I’d take a public resignation & apology and full explanation that Trump is now illegitimate, and then 25 years in a federal PYITA prison (none of that country club bs) followed by 100,000 hours community service emptying porta-potties in the summer in Texas.
Who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t. Just start the hari kari already Comey.
D58826
@Kay: We need a lefty version of Judicial Watch but with the ethics required to go after real wrong doing and not just fishing expeditions on every piece of paper Trump every touched.
chris
All this talk about why Trump won and why Hillary lost seems beside the point to me. Trump won and Hillary lost because some DINOs flipped and some Dems stayed home. My theory, because I felt the same way, is that they stayed home because who in their right mind would vote for the shitgibbon? Besides the 27% of course and I really didn’t expect him to crack 40% but he did and y’all got a problem now. So does the rest of the world.
I just wish the solution was readily apparent…
(Just my humble opinion, I’m a Canadian. Some of us up here are reviewing the history of Austria circa 1933 and we’re scared too. And we’re really scared for all of you.))
germy
@raven: George Clooney’s wife would be a great FLOTUS.
Bnad
Five days after the Comey letter came out, my high school best friend’s wife, who had been politically silent on F*Bk until then, came out for Trump.
Kay
@D58826:
Or, we need the huge group of public employees we’re already paying to look into interference with an election.
Comey is a public employee. He’s not some untouchable organized crime figure. He has to explain to the public what happened here. He already violated the norms and rules that kept him apart from politics. Now that he’s done that he needs to explain. It’s too late for him to hide behind FBI independence. He forfeited that protection when he interfered in an election. We should find out what happened and he should be called to account. He owes the public that.
Baud
A shout out to the plurality of voters who saw through the bullshit and voted for the good of the country last month. Heroes all.
Botsplainer
@Frank Wilhoit:
Dude – the time for that has passed. We’ll be lucky to avoid internment.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW: Shhh, it’s downstairs.
Bobby D
Clooney could win, and seems smart enough and humble enough to do a good job and surround himself with good people. Personally, I think prior work in govt is vital, but many don’t care.
He’s more mature and less irritating than Gavin Newsome (California’s two likey contributions to the 2020 primary race are Gavin and Kamala Harris), and is from Kentucky, a state he could possibly win where a normal Dem wouldn’t stand a chance. Unless he went all DNC Sycophant to Corporations style, I’d back him.
hitchhiker
@Lalophobia:
Thanks, you’re right. I’m a complete dumbass jerk who deserves to be told to sit down and shut the eff up.
Bobby D
@Kay: Can the AG not compel the guy? I don’t know where the authority lines are drawn, but I’d think she (Lynch) was his boss?
Tokyokie
@Frank Wilhoit: I read Pierce’s piece yesterday (and just now referred back to it), and basically he contends that because of this country’s inability to own up to its folly, we have reached this point. But the list itself is instructive:
The Warren Commission in 1963-1964.
The Nixon campaign’s interfering with the Paris peace talks in 1968.
The Nixon pardon in 1974.
The Reagan campaign’s interference with the release of the Tehran Embassy hostages in 1980.
The lack of accountability over Iran-Contra, culminating with George H.W. Bush’s blanket pardons in 1992.
The Florida vote count in 2000.
The lack of accountability for the World Trade Center attack in 2001.
The intentional misuse of intelligence (and the lack of accountability for doing so) during the runup to the Iraq invasion in 2003.
The lack of accountability for the authorization of torture after the Iraq invasion.
Russian ratfucking of the presidential election in 2016.
With the exception of the first item on the list (which goes back more than a half-century), everything on that list is a GOP operation. But hey, both sides do it, and besides, e-mails.
debbie
Hey, Betty. Did you get blocked after your NPD Tweet to Trump? I’ve been laughing like crazy.
Kryptik
OT, but I’m sure John will appreciate that Sen. Manchin has come upon the solution to the state’s opioid crisis: Declare A Wre on Drugs.
I shit you fucking not. He even pulls out the goddamn marijuana gateway drug BS.
Archon
I believe Obama made two calculations that turned out to be incorrect. One, that if Republicans didn’t operate in good faith the electorate would punish them for it and two, that there were some Republicans still left that resolutely believed in the idea of country over party and that they would use any real power conferred to them by Obama responsibly.
Today’s Republicans in the Senate, to the House to your county commissioner to your next door neighbor are all craven. If they weren’t craven they wouldn’t be Republicans, not now. I don’t believe Obama was completely naïve about this, I just think he didn’t grasp the full extent to what the Republicans party has become and how little resistance this radicalized party would get from our institutions (like the media) and the voters.
germy
@Tokyokie:
To be fair, our friends on the right have their own list. Items like Fast and Furious, Jade Helm… stuff like that.
Elizabelle
@hitchhiker: It was a good comment. I doubt anyone is saying that.
=====
This is all a preventable tragedy, happening in real time. It does make me curious about how people responded in 1933 and at other times.
debbie
@germy:
His work with Darfur makes that not such a silly idea. He’s pretty, but he’s also more than that.
Tokyokie
@germy: Yes, but the stuff on Pierce’s list all happened, and the Republican list is all Alex Jones conspiracy theory bullshit.
Elizabelle
George Clooney would be a fine public servant.
So would Steven Colbert.
Al Franken has shown the way.
germy
@debbie: Hey, if they can run Reagan and Drumpf… then George Clooney doesn’t seem like a bad idea. As the original LGM commenter noted, this is the state of our media. Maybe they’d go all ga ga over a celebrity.
Clooney/Franken 2020
germy
@Tokyokie: My point.
Baud
Baud! needs to get into the movies ASAP.
debbie
@Baud:
Surely there’s a part for you in the latest installment of the Oceans Saga.
NeenerNeener
@germy: Maybe??? We’re a nation of starfnckers, of course they’ll go ga ga.
mai naem mobile
Comey should lose his law license. If Hilz et al had some balls that’s one thing they would go after.
Kay
I have another question for Mr. Comey and the rest of the public employees at the FBI.
Who orchestrated this bullshit propaganda placed in the NYTimes on October 31st?
This dispatch completely denying any connection between Trump and Russia just magically appears a week before the election? A month after the election they change their mind and align with the rest of the intelligence agencies?
Who did this? Who decided to contact the NYTimes and exonerate Trump with this bizarre denial that could have come from his campaign? I mean, come on. We’re paying these people for this? They all still work there? That’s comforting. There isn’t a single named person in this piece. Presumably they don’t contact the NYTimes without Comey signing off. He interfered AGAIN on October 31st?
Now he goes silent? That’s convenient. He wouldn’t shut up for the whole election but now he’s standing on tradition.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: IIRC, Clooney’s dad ran for Congress in KY.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yes. Ask that question, Kay. It’s a good one.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby D: She’s in full ass-covering mode.
@debbie: I don’t think so. But I would wear it as a badge of honor!
Baud
@Kay:
Comey is scum, but I can see him being out of the loop on this one. I agree it should be investigated.
germy
George Clooney on Why He’s Never Running For President: ‘Who Would Ever Want to Live Like That?’
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: First thing to cross my mind when I read about this earlier.
Tokyokie
@Elizabelle: That’s what scares me. A lot of Germans went along for a variety of reasons, all of which, in retrospect, seem foolish. Some thought that Hitler wasn’t as extreme as his anti-Semitic rhetoric. A lot of well-heeled businessmen thought they could influence Hitler and enhance their personal fortunes by doing so. Others figured that they wouldn’t be affected, so they were not all that concerned. I’ve been telling everybody I know for months that der Trumpenführer is a monster (Seriously, can anybody cite a single positive character virtue that the man possesses?) and will leave destruction in his wake, and still a lot of them supported the evil bastard.
And I reserve special disdain for fundamentalist Christians who hate Obama and love them some Trumpenführer, even though Obama represents every godly trait they pretend to prefer in a political leader and der Trumpenführer represents none of them. Kind of tells you how deep their loudly professed love of Jesus actually is.
NeenerNeener
@germy: Hey, for Trump it’s going to be a part-time job. If Trump can do it once in awhile, so can Clooney :-D.
Tokyokie
@germy: Sorry, but I’m too despondent to appreciate irony.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
It is treason against this country.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Keep on asking those good questions, Kay
SgrAstar
@germy: Don’t forget the FEMA camps….
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Word had not spread to all quarters. Security was breached.
El Caganer
Damn. Judging from some of the comments in this thread, it sounds like folks are ready to throw a Budd Dwyer Memorial Party.
mai naem mobile
@germy: she’s got middle eastern heritage so they would do the ‘she’s a muslin,she’s a muslin’ shit. I think both Clooneys are smart but I really don’t want them to go through this. If you want to do celebrity do Tom Hanks who’s played so many American heto type characters. As stupid as it may sound and I hate the Lumpy is a biznessman shit I think Bloomberg or Mark Cuban kind of celebrity businessperson would succeed. I can’t stand either one. Oprah? Also,seriously,Michelle Obama. I completely underestimated this lady.
Lalophobia
@hitchhiker: Dude, it’s not like the history of this country is obscure or hard to learn about. There’s a goddamn blockbuster musical out right now about at least some of that shit, and it’s not the only one that’s ever been written about that either.
I don’t tell people to sit down and shut up, but this is far from new. It’s going to end up, in a lot of ways, worse than a lot that’s come before it, but it’s not new.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
The whining is coming from inside the house!
Brachiator
@Tokyokie:
You leave out those who fervently believed and wanted everything that Hitler promised. Make Germany great again. Make America great again!
Dante would have had to come up with a new circle for these hypocrites. But I mentioned to someone recently that Trump said the magic words, “punish women who get abortions,” and the evangelicals swooned with delight.
And look. Obama’s pardon of hundreds is another manifestation of his decency and compassion. Where other presidents strain to give cover to their cronies, Obama uses the last days of his presidency to give out second chances. And yet I saw some conservative media rag that falsely claimed that the only thing that Obama was doing in these final weeks was playing golf.
Mnemosyne
@hitchhiker:
Now, now, it’s not like she called you a cotton-headed ninny-muggins.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I wonder if the “FBI agent” was named John Barron. Isn’t that the pseudonym that Trump would use to call people and pretend to be his own publicist or something?
Tokyokie
@Brachiator: I intentionally left out the Nazi true-believers, because they were never going to do anything to stop Hitler’s rise. And I’ll readily admit that my attitude has been greatly affect by Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, a series of detective novels set just before, during, and just after World War II. The first one, March Violets, is especially good at depicting the mindset of German who went along to get along. (And I still use “March violet” as a pejorative that nobody understands.)
Elizabelle
@Tokyokie: Yes to all of that.
And the Franklin Graham circle of hell. He feels it was God that hacked this election, not Russians.
Because He heard the prayers of the faithful.
[And apparently was selectively deaf to the rest of us. Why go with a flood — so common these days — when you can send us the Great Orange One.]
Elizabelle
@Tokyokie: Time to read those Kerr novels. They have been praised here before.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
I’m still holding in reserve the chance to call my fundie cousin a goat who thinks she’s a sheep. That’s going nuclear, though, so I’m saving it for an emergency.
Tokyokie
@Mnemosyne: You might just ask her to contemplate whether any stories exist in which somebody who made a deal with the devil came out ahead.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: What’s wrong with goats? Are they biblical? (Other than as sacrifices …)
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
As you should!
aimai
@chris: There was a ton of misogyny from white male dems–they voted for Johnson because “johnson” and a lot of hysterical anti-hrs stuff from the berniebrats that led some of them to stay home or vote for stein.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
Nah, she’ll just say that Hillary was the real devil and we had a narrow escape.
@Elizabelle:
It’s one of the most famous parables in the Bible. Basically, there are people who paid lip service to being Christians (goats) and people who actually did the hard work (sheep). She’s a goat pretending to be a sheep.
chris
@aimai: Agreed. But the entire globe was thinking, how could anyone vote for the abominable asshole? Once again underestimating the stupidity of the electorate. I fear the future for all of you, I really do.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: Hmmmph. Just because goats are more animated and mouthier.
Elizabelle
@chris: We fear too. Jesus. Cannot believe this is happening.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Kay, I adore you and this is a series of incredibly important questions, but I hope you’re not confining yourself to a Balloon Juice comment thread.
Please, I implore you, send your questions to President Obama, AG Lynch, Dean Basquet (sp?) of the zanytimes, might as well cc the WaPo while you’re at it, not to mention Marcy Kaptur and Sherrod Brown, and anyone else you can think of who could amplify your message with their own megaphones.
ETA: Oh FFS, autocorrect. I type “NYTimes,” you decide I really meant “zanytimes”? I am torn between “WTF” and “well-played, you.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Tokyokie:
A few fixes.
Mike in NC
If a terrorist attack occurs here in 2017, the Trump regime will declare a State of Emergency to last indefinitely. Maybe even beyond 2024. Kiss the Constitution goodbye.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Betty Cracker: Don’t be charitable. There’s no reason to be. Pursuing the investigation, quietly, without any data to warrant it, is barely supportable, but as a “fine, if it’ll make you anti-Hillary die-hards happy,” it’s reasonable. Wrong, mind you – it’s an unwarranted intrusion – but it’s reasonable given the stories of troubles at the bureau.
Announcing it publicly is so beyond the pale that it simply can’t be justified. Remember: You don’t get in trouble for making mistakes with classified information! You get in trouble for *DELIBERATELY* sharing it with people not allowed to have it, or for “gross negligence” which is a legal term, not something you can say “well, it sounds grossly negligent” and bring charges.
So: there was no likely crime to be discovered. Given this, even seeking the warrant is wrong. To announce a meritless investigation in the run up to an election is such blatant electioneering that charity really has to go out the window.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
I pretty much did that on November 9th. Kind of like saying a final goodbye to a dying relative when they slip into a deep coma, although it may be some weeks before their vital organs finally give out.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: I bought the trilogy and plan to take to Tampa with me for my plane reading.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I must say, I do like zanytimes.
Jeffro
@Mike in NC:
Well, we know full well that some sort of attack will happen…probably some dumb ‘lone wolf’ shooter attack. So the question is, will we let the Unfit-elect get away with suspending our Constitutional rights (and those of our neighbors)? Hope not. First sign of a Muslim registry, I’m calling the media to meet me – a most un-religious middle-aged white guy – at the registry office, cameras a-blazing, and I’ll be calling on everyone but 62M Trump voters to join me (and make the registry worthless).
chris
@Elizabelle: I think I’m still in shock.
Suffragete City elftx
@Kay:
“This dispatch completely denying any connection between Trump and Russia just magically appears a week before the election? A month after the election they change their mind and align with the rest of the intelligence agencies? ”
That article was published the day after Reid sent his letter to Comey. How telling is that?
dww44
@Bobby D: I’ve long agreed, But what are the chances of that actually happening? As bad as a Donald Trump replacement would be, I’d still opt for a public and legal humiliation of Comey, and sooner, rather than later. His actions both in October and earlier in the mid summer were the most overt partisan political actions of any FBI Director in my lifetime, including J. Edgar Hoover whom I actually do remember. The latter’s political machinations were mostly under cover and out-of-sight..
Gex
@hitchhiker:
Only white men could have been under such illusions. I guarantee you black and brown people never did. Nor LGBT people. Perhaps white women did, but they voted Trump.
Soul On Ice
@Kay:
Spot on, Kay. And, along the same lines, why isn’t it a bigger story that the director of the FBI was basically extorted by a field office in NY/NJ? If the reporting is to believed, Comey was faced with a quasi-insurrection by rogue anti-Clinton agents who devoured the odious Clinton Cash book and threatened to go public with their (bullshit) theories of Clinton malfeasance. Let that sink in – Comey was bullied into throwing the election by a small cabal of rogue agents. Hoover would have probably found common cause with those assholes, but he would have quashed their rebellion within an hour on principle. Look at me, pining for a fascist like Hoover….we are truly through the looking glass.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Comey as a latter-day McCain could not have done as much damage as he did from his official perch.
Esme's Mom
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t need to cross out ‘semitism.’
J R in WV
@SteveKnNKY:
So, Steve – how knnky are you?
I mean, I mean… What is your bent?
;-) At least you aren’t Nearly Russian!
Hitless
@Tokyokie: I had just started reading the Berlin Noir cycle prior to the election and I agree that it is disturbingly, maybe anguishedly, resonant.
A Quiet Flame, the fifth book, has flashbacks to 1932 that are hard to read. You have people being angry at Jews for not looking more like normal Germans and being angry at the disabled for how much money their care will cost the state. I’m sure that it would be hyperbole to say the same voices speak in America now….
goblue72
Maybe the Democratic Establishment will finally get a fucking clue that you DO NOT APPOINT REPUBLICANS TO ANYTHING when you are in charge. “FUCK. THE. GOP.” should be tattooed on the forehead of every Democratic staffer & politician in DC.
SteveKnNKY
@J R in WV: I’m just a boring middle aged slightly better off than middle class white guy with his family in blood red Northern KY. Too many trump stickers and gadsden flags anymore.
Still amazed – stunned how our election between Conway and Bevin looks like the presidential.
SFAW
@goblue72:
As long as it’s tattooed twice: one for other persons to read, and one in mirror writing.
SFAW
@SteveKnNKY:
I especially liked when Comey released a letter saying that “someone” said Conway may be a serial killer. And then “retracted” it after the election.