Fire at the Watergate. pic.twitter.com/T83ttowUpr
— Joe McMonigle (@JoeMcMonigle) January 11, 2017
D.C. Fire and EMS are working to put out a blaze Wednesday afternoon in the Watergate complex. The fire is on the 13th floor at a building in the 700 block of New Hampshire Avenue NW, officials said.
Several floors have smoky conditions, officials said.
It’s not clear whether the building has been evacuated.
A Twitter user named Jocelyn (@jocemiller) posted about the fire about 1:30 p.m.
“All of a sudden we look out the window and see a condo has caught fire in Watergate 700,” she posted. “DC FD is on the scene now.”
No injuries are reported, fire officials said.
I’m becoming convinced that the US is just a performance art company with 300 million or so members…
? Martin
This is fine.
schrodingers_cat
Since every scandal after Watergate is XYZ gate, is the latest T scandal PeeGate or GoldenGate?
The Moar You Know
Perfect.
PaulW
We don’t need no watergate
let the muthaf0cker burn
PaulW
@schrodingers_cat:
i think the vote’s for GoldenGate. It just has that zing.
M31
Trump is on the way now with some underage hookers to put it out, don’t worry.
schrodingers_cat
@PaulW: Its in a heavily populated area of DC.
Gin & Tonic
Well, you know how to put out a fire “in the way of the Cossacks”?
? Martin
Trump suggests states that voted for him will get special attention
You seriously want to go to war with California and New York?
MJS
Lamest Reichstag fire impersonation, ever.
Captain C
Most, or at least many of whom did not sign up for this.
? Martin
@PaulW: No, please don’t. California doesn’t deserve that. Can we stick with just calling him Herr Tinkles?
Keith P.
Oh, lord, please let it be accidental. I cannot handle a week of hearing “Watergate-gate” ad nauseum.
MattF
The independent contractors hired to put out fires are debating whether they can make a profit by putting it out– or just wait for the high-value insurance policies from the elite inhabitants to cash out.
JPL
The fire was in a condo on the thirteenth floor, and has been put out.
GregB
Waiting for a sign that the Universal Mind has written you into the passion play.
Skating away on the ice of a new day.
-Jethro Tull
Thor Heyerdahl
Posted in the end of the press conference thread, a question I was thinking about this morning:
Since George HW Bush is ex CIA, is still eligible for PDBs, and since Trump mocked and defeated ¡Jeb!, how much Bush family revenge will happen toward Donny Littlefingers via CI and deep state?
dmsilev
@? Martin: I look at it differently. “Special” attention from Donald sounds like rather a bad thing, so let him focus on looting the Red states; they deserve it.
Miss Bianca
Seriously??
I think I’m just going to put my head down on my desk and take a little nap and/or sob with laughter-irony deficiency till all the madness stops.
Oh wait – IT WILL NEVER STOP.
ETA: Wasn’t there some point during the 2000 election coverage when Dan Rather just looked at the camera and said, “well, now my wastebasket is on fire”? Because of course it was! Why not?
FlyingToaster
@? Martin:
Trump should fucking bring it already.*
* I live in Watertown. I know exactly how “security” promises work. It’s not even security kabuki, which would be entertaining; it’s security no, which is just confusing and interminable.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: BrokenWatergate.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
I think PissGate sounds worse, warm nasty stinky wet piss, and the shitgibbon wallowing in it is gross. Yes PissGate.
khead
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit hallucinogens.
MattF
@khead: Wrong decade.
Yarrow
New from John Schindler:
Uh huh.
hovercraft
@ Martin:
Shush, no one tell him what happens to federal revenue if NY and CA see their economies shrink even as AL, MS, MI, TN and throw in all those other states full of the economically anxious.
George Spiggott
@JPL:
By PEEOTUS’ Russian fire brigade?
rikyrah
Mnuchin Needs to Explain the 19.5% Sale of Rosneft
by Martin Longman
January 11, 2017 1:50 PM
POLITICAL ANIMAL BLOG
It’s probably not surprising to anyone given what we already knew about Rex Tillerson, but the guy identified in the leaked intelligence report as the man who was holding the Russian opposition research file on Hillary Clinton had nothing but positive things to say about Tillerson and his appointment to be Trump’s Secretary of State. It’s easy to know this because Dmitry Peskov is Vladimir Putin’s official Kremlin spokesman. This would be like Josh Earnest having the job of compiling nasty information on a Russian presidential candidate.
When Tillerson was nominated, Peskov acknowledged that Tillerson had sympathies for Russia but said that they wouldn’t matter, “being secretary of state is very different from leading a company, even a very big one. Therefore any sympathies, so to speak, become secondary.” He further vouched for Tillerson, explaining that he has many contacts with Russian officials in his capacity as CEO of Exxon/Mobil and that he “carries out his duties very professionally.”
It’s true that this leaked report should be read with some heavy skepticism, but it’s also true, as Josh Marshall points out, that the author of the piece is known and respected by the U.S. Intelligence Community, and that many of his points have already checked out.
One piece that I find tantalizing is his prediction that a 19% stake in the Russian energy giant Rosneft would be privatized and made available to Trump or his associates in return for a lifting of economic sanctions.
GregB
Trump is literally threatening states that didn’t vote for him with a lack of security.
Yarrow
@GregB: Just as he threatened reporters and media organizations.
hovercraft
@Miss Bianca:
You are right it wil never stop. Feature not a bug, the senate is rushing through all these hearings simultaneously, the shitgibbon is holding a “news” rally err press conference, they want us overwhelmed and unfocused, shit slips through while we’re trying to get our bearings. The fire is just a bonus, the villagers will obsess over it because they’ve hung out there. Doesn’t the SoS have government digs there? Or did Condi just chose to live there?
dexwood
@schrodingers_cat:
Tinklegate.
gene108
When I was in middle school, one of my uncles stayed there on a business trip. We went to meet him. I was very impressed by the lobby. His room did not seem as nice in comparison.
SatanicPanic
@? Martin: Probably. At this point it seems inevitable. Nothing in his history suggests he’s willing to let slights go and we did just soundly reject him. I also don’t think he’s good at gaming out what will happen if he tries to preempt us on some of his pet issues.
LAO
@GregB: @Yarrow: And his supporters love him for it.
Bobby D
I am holding back incredulous laughter. Back in the 90s, when I was doing all that LSD, shrooms, and mescaline I never dreamed shit would get this surreal. I’m basically agnostic, but I’m coming around to the idea of a skyman god up there, just effing with us. Basically supreme deity as troll.
PaulW
@schrodingers_cat:
sigh.
read the lyrics to “Fire Water Burn”
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn
Burn motherfucker burn
Hello my name is Jimmy Pop and I’m a dumb white guy
I’m not old or new but middle school fifth grade like junior high
So I don’t know mofo if y’all peeps be buggin’ give props to my ho
‘Cause she all fly
But I can take the heat cause I’m the other white meat known as ‘Kid
Funky Fried’
Yea I’m hung like planet Pluto hard to see with the naked eye
But if I crashed into Uranus I would stick it where the sun don’t
Shine
Cause I’m kind of like Han Solo always stroking my own wookie
I’m the root of all that’s evil yea but you can call me cookie
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn
Burn motherfucker burn
hovercraft
@Yarrow:
Yes but everyone hates the media, so who cares, threatening the states that have the most people, is stupid, oh wait, that’s fine too, they had the audacity to se through him so fuck em.
Miss Bianca
@khead:
Are you sure you *did*?
rikyrah
@? Martin:
Uh huh
Uh huh
PaulW
seriously though, the Watergate buildings are a bit of an eyesore.
someone should renovate their exteriors to something more 21st Century.
know any developers moving to the DC area?
Citizen_X
@khead:
Too late; they’re apparently in the water supply.
That’s the only explanation I have at this point.
PaulW
@khead:
dude you’re still in the hallucination.
schrodingers_cat
@PaulW: Thanks, learn something new on Tunch News everyday!
GregB
Remember when Masha Gessen wrote the article about opposing autocrats people accused her of being alarmist.
? Martin
@hovercraft: He’s also threatening the states with ⅔ of the nations GDP, which, by the way have ⅔ of the nations GDP because we reject the retrograde policies that the other ⅓ of states keep trying to adopt.
Aimai
@MattF: crassus on line one. Mr crassus to the courtesy phone!
pamelabrown53
@schrodingers_cat: #2 (or should it be #1!)?
Goldengate is reminiscent of that song: “Goldengate, does it not rain anymore?”. Sad! My old brain can’t remember more than that snippet!
Droppy
@schrodingers_cat: MakingWatergate
Butch
I used to have to drive by the Watergate during the brief and unhappy period when I lived in DC. It always reminded me of a big food processor.
dr. bloor
DICK NIXON WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN DAMMIT.
/Moldy Dick Nixon
Yarrow
@LAO: Not all of them. We just need to keep pushing back. Some of his supporters will crack.
Calouste
@Yarrow:
I think the Russians are seriously overestimating their leverage there, once the shitgibbon has settled in. There is no way he is going to resign, and they would need to flip 19 Republican Senators for impeachment.
Gin & Tonic
Here’s a lengthy but well-thought-out report more or less debunking the BuzzFeed dossier. In English.
Yarrow
@Calouste: The Russians probably have plenty on the GOP Senators.
Speaking of the Russians, someone in a thread down below said Chuck Todd was mediasplaining and normalizing Trump. So the obvious question is… What do the Russians have on Chuck Todd?
SFBayAreaGal
House Hunters or House Hunters Renovation had an episode where a couple purchased a condo at the Watergate complex and did a complete renovation.
LAO
This morning I ran into a (former) friend, who I will no longer associate with because he is a vocal Trump supporter. He was shocked by my attitude and my refusal to listen to him “mansplain” why I shouldn’t be offended (as a woman, or as a human, or as an American) by his love of Trump. Finally, I just looked at him and said “Fuck your feelings” and walked away — feeling slightly empowered. I’m not sure I will survive the next 4 years without having any aneurysm.
Roger Moore
@khead:
How can you tell?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Yarrow: then Russians really don’t get American politics – Trump’s whole appeal to his WWC base is that irresistible tough guy judge persona he does, perving around with a bunch of hookers kills that (REAL men don’t pay for it, REAL men don’t have fetishes south of a border, so to say). In one day it turned Trump from a superhero businessman into a dirty old man in a trench coat
It’s like the Wingnut claim that 4/Chan made this up. So fing what? It’s all to believable about Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Go, Cubs, Go!
LAO
@Yarrow: I agree — we need to keep pushing back but we also need to recognize this a feature not a bug. Decades of demonizing the left and liberals — have resulted in a RW and a Republican party that views us as the enemy, not a foreign power. This will not change overnight.
hovercraft
@LAO:
I’d say that you told him, but this is the City, Fuck You is practically Good Morning ;-)
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ha! I wondered if that would happen.
I really wonder about things like the Medals of Freedom, Olympic gold medal winners, sports team winners — how many of them will want to either get the award from Trump or go meet Trump after they’ve won? Given the entertainment community’s almost complete boycott off Trump, I don’t see them wanting him to give them an award. Sports teams with a lot of African American, Latino or immigrant players? Same.
Elizabelle
Watch it be Bob Dole’s apartment.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good for the Cubs!
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well Obama is a ‘native’ son, and I’m sure that coming from Chi Town they know this will go over well with the home crowd.
LAO
@hovercraft: true — but he looked so shocked, like I kicked a puppy in front of him. I practically whistled during my walk to the subway. Man, it felt good!
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, but it made Trump deny that he’s a pig-fucker. Works for me.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Provokatsiya then?
seaboogie
Welp. I’m headed to Canada tomorrow for my father’s wedding. Pretty tempting to just stay there and never return.
Gave my pet minder instructions for my elderly kitty who lives on my bed, so I did get to point out the niceties of how we use the “pee-pads.” Sigh…
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
That’s the weirdest thing about these people — they genuinely think that we secretly agree with them and they really are shocked to find out that they live in a bubble and the rest of us really do think they’re assholes.
We don’t hate Trump because we envy him and secretly want to be just like him. We hate Trump because he’s an asshole.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman: I’m totally confused. If it’s prokokatsiya, will more stuff come out? Or will it all just be swept away as “junk news” where media dupes got played by Russian spies who are now laughing at us? If this is a nightmare, I’d like a different one please. If it’s real life, I’ll need more and better drugs.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Last year in India, many actors, writers and others in the creative fields returned their awards to register protests about the Modi government. Bad as M’s government is, they weren’t installed in power by Pakistan.
Miss Bianca
@Aimai: “Oh Operator, get me Crassus on the line”?
@seaboogie: Kiss Canada for us, and tell ’em some of us are sorry, eh?
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Or misdirection. Lay out some salacious bullshit and everybody’ll be chasing that instead of looking for the real story.
I just find it hard to believe that even Il Donaldo would be dumb enough to hire a couple of hookers in Moscow.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Similarly, the deeply trashy are shocked to find out that most of us consider them trashy, and the STUPID are convinced that they are always right.
I have no idea where we go from here. I’m kind of depressed today. Nothing breaks this cult of personality.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: Oh, boy…so where are we now? Or will it not matter in 20 minutes, because it turns out we’ll be somewhere else?
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tweet storm coming up in 3,2,1…
hovercraft
@LAO:
Well then good for you, we have to let them know that we will fight back. They are not allowed to normalize this shit.
Gin & Tonic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Anyway, the word is “provokatsiya” – like provocation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: somebody on twitter pointed out that this is a Chicago thing, as the Ricketts got in line bigly with Trump, and the one who runs the team I believe has accepted an undersecretary appointment. OTOH, IIRC two Cubs players (including Baez?) refused to stay in a trump hotel while playing… I don’t know which team.
? Martin
@Miss Bianca: Welcome to Calvinball.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Heh, right on Chicago!
hovercraft
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I thought learning what Perestroika and Glasnost meant was enough, now new phrases are being thrown at me every day, I can’t keep up ;-)
Chris
Huh… I always figured there was so much concrete and asbestos in that ugly place that it was fireproof.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Gin & Tonic: That will teach me to copy and paste! I got the concept, but still can’t figure out what it signifies – more to come? This is a warning, so listen up Goldielittlehands? Will the GOP and Vichy press just let it all go away if it’s a warning shot?
Kay
So the upshot of the press conference is special snowflake Donald Trump still refuses to release any information about his finances or business interests?
Also, Tillerson was just lying under oath about lobbying. Is that another new rule? Can everyone do that now? I sure hope so. These special rules give Donald Trump a huge advantage.
Everyone should follow the rules or no one should. We should make a decision, because Trump is exploiting this situation.
Steeplejack (phone)
@LAO:
Right on, sister!
Mai.naem.mobile
@Yarrow: Ive turned into a big conspiracy nut wannabe because pretty much anybody I see being nice to Lumpy(wheres there’s no obvious payoff) I think of as the KGB having something on them . Hell,today I got to thinking that Comey wanted Lumpy to win because he could hold this dossier over his head like how J Edgar Hoover did. I had been thinking the KGB had something on Comey.
Ooh,and I didn’t know that HWBush still gets PDBs because he’s the ex CIA director. Oh,man, Bar is gonna low energy Lumpy’s ass like a pig on a yuuuuge rotisserie!
Miss Bianca
@? Martin: you know, Trump kind of reminds me of a grown-up Calvin…with none of the charm, and of course, no Hobbes as a corrective influence.
But still devoted to “Calvinball”!
Doug R
@schrodingers_cat: I would love it to be called the Peepot Dome Scandal.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Miss Bianca: Check out Ruben Bolling’s Donald and John series, which has unfortunately concluded.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic:
Whether the hooker thing is true or not, Trump didn’t have to hire them. They could have been introduced to him as part of some other event he attended. He might have been told they were working for the Miss Universe pageant or whatever. He might never have known they were being paid. It doesn’t seem implausible that he would easily convince himself that women love him so much they’re lining up to have sex with him.
Mary G
@?Martin: Jerry Brown will wipe the floor with these bozos.
@LAO: Go, Go, LAO! I’m kind of disappointed that I don’t know any Trump supporters IRL (there might be some, but no one has admitted it).
dr. bloor
@Miss Bianca:
You’re not alone.
Yarrow
@Mai.naem.mobile: Yeah, me too. I don’t necessarily think that Comey and Chuck Todd and so forth are owned by the Russians. But it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Gin & Tonic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Don’t really have time now. Read John Schindler’s piece in the Observer.
Kay
As the icing on the cake, he’s now in charge of the investigation into Trump. I think I can guess how that comes out.
They shouldn’t say his behavior is “inexcusable”. It’s been excused. He wasn’t held accountable in any way whatsoever.
Yarrow
@Kay: What do the Russians have on Comey? They have to have something.
Miss Bianca
@Thoroughly Pizzled: @dr. bloor: Dear sweet jumping Jesus…I don’t know whether to laugh or shriek with horror. Maybe both?
catclub
@? Martin:
The leaks from his administration will be a torrent, a shower.
Mnemosyne
@Mai.naem.mobile:
If I were writing a novel about this, I would have Comey demand a pardon for Robert Hanssen, because they were working together the whole time.
But, as this election year has shown, there’s no novelist on earth who could have predicted any of this.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: At this point, most would snort and say “bullshit”. I won’t. I was placed into exactly that situation in Asia 20 years ago, and figured it out (that the women had been hired by the people trying to land the contract) only afterwards. Unlike Twitler, I learned from that experience.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): As I wrote earlier, I think the IC’s inclusion of this was to try to get the President-elect’s attention and their leaking to CNN that they had included this info to get the news media’s and the country’s attention that this stuff is circulating, while they can’t confirm it, they’re got enough trust in the source to worry them, and folks need to pay attention so as to lessen whatever leverage Putin may or may not have.
Whether its a mix of legit, false, and mix and mash kompromat or its provokatsiya doesn’t matter. Either would not preclude more to come. If the President-elect wants to put this to bed he can release his taxes, have Michael Cohen go in for a debriefing with the CI folks on his whereabouts, and open up all his books to his business dealings. If he wants it to linger and linger and linger and have the FT guys and Eichenwald and Corn and Farenthold and David Cay Johnson and others continually poking around trying to figure out who he’s doing business with where and when, then he and his folks should just keep doing what they’re doing.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne: Heinlein did.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: That’s the part I think is desinformaziya. I think the real story is what FT has been reporting on in bits and pieces on his financial connections to the Bratva and all the hard work that Adam Khan has put in delineating the connections in Trump’s network and providing his documentation and reasoning. That’s, I think, where the real meat is. If there is any. But, and again, if there isn’t any meat all the President-elect has to do to make this go away is release his tax returns, make Michael Cohen available for debriefing by the CI folks, and open up his business books for review.
Jamey
Reichsstag Fire: You’re doing it wrong.
retr2327
@catclub: I think that when the Obamas move out of the White House, they should leave waterproof mattress covers on every bed . . .
Calouste
I just noticed the sign the shitgibbon had on his lectern during this morning pressfarceference.
It looks from a distance like there is a “Do Not Enter” sign on it.
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
I haven’t read enough Heinlein to know which book or story that was. Personally, I’m wondering if some asshole stepped on a butterfly when their time machine landed.
Adam L Silverman
@Mai.naem.mobile: He doesn’t. He does not have a need to know. Unless a former President is being used as a special envoy, they don’t get briefed on anything that doesn’t effect them and their security as needed. The do not get the daily PDB.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: He is not in charge of the investigation into Trump. From what little coverage there has been, the investigation into Trump’s connections with Russia are being handled by the counterintelligence folks. Even the FBI component of CI reports up through the IC to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
FlyingToaster
@Calouste: It’s supposed to be his seal. But it’s crap clip art of the white house over bright red. He clearly didn’t bother to pay for a graphic designer to make the thing look like the White House instead of a horizontal white bar.
rikyrah
Coretta Scott King Opposed Jeff Sessions, and Still Would
by Martin Longman
January 11, 2017 2:50 PM
I don’t know if Coretta Scott King still pulls any water in Congress, but she once did. In fact, she may have been influential enough in 1986 to sink the confirmation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to serve as judge in the southern district of Alabama. She was unable to appear in person to testify against Sessions, so she wrote a long detailed letter to the Judiciary Committee explaining her strident opposition to the idea of giving Sessions a lifetime appointment. The committee chairman, Strom Thurmond, somehow managed not to enter the letter into the congressional record, but that didn’t prevent it from having some influence. In particular, Alabama Senator Howell Heflin surprised the Reagan administration by rescinding his earlier support and voting against Sessions in committee. This effectively sunk Sessions’ confirmation hopes.
For a long time, no one could locate a copy of King’s statement, but Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post has managed to unearth it and you can now read it for yourself.
This all happened a mere eighteen years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, which is considerably less time than has elapsed since. Maybe there’s no longer a consensus that King’s work had immense almost sacred value and that people like Sessions are an affront to his legacy. But I think Coretta’s testimony should stand, and it should count for much more when considering Sessions for the position of Attorney General of the United States.
I don’t see anything in Sessions’ subsequent record that would have changed her mind about his suitability for a position of such responsibility and I am certain that she would see Sessions as an outright threat to voting rights and the accomplishments of the movement of which she and her husband were such an important part.
chopper
i gotta admit, ‘watergate, on fire’ is a pretty good metaphor for the new administration.
Mai.naem.mobile
@Adam L Silverman: that makes sense because it wouldn’t make sense for a former POTUS to get PDBs.
I’ve thought for a while that HWBush was tapped as Reagan’s Veep because of his CIA connections . He didn’t seem like that great a candidate .
FlyingToaster
@Mai.naem.mobile: The Bush’s knew all the R money and oil people. Reagan knew all the media; but only the West Coast political scene. So Bush I was a very good fit for a R Veep.
Mike in NC
Poppy Bush is pushing 92, confined to a wheelchair, and generally not in great shape. No need for him to get briefed by the CIA or anybody else.
Trump will delegate his briefings to Pence or another dim bulb and the results will not be reassuring.
hovercraft
Thor Heyerdahl
@Adam L Silverman: thanks. I stand corrected. However does he still have access to intelligence reports? I thought I had read something in the past during the W presidency that said so.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@LAO: Fuck yea. Good for you. Nominal liberals in my life keep wanting me to chill out. Fuck that. If anything Im getting more angry since the ku klux christmas happened. We cannot let these people continue to deny the damage they are causing. Else they will do it again and again. I will never ever ever forgive them. Ever. This is treason; full fucking stop.
ETA: Im as pessimistic as anyone here, but I am coming around to some hope. If we BJ’ers/yeller dawgs stick together, we may, I like to hope, just might make it through this with our sanity unscathed afterall.
Miss Bianca
@chopper: I second that emotion. Maybe Gary Larson could revisit this theme.
Sandia Blanca
@retr2327: Doesn’t it seem likely that HerrDrumpf will be reenacting the golden shower scene in his first night in the White House? And that perhaps Melania is staying away for a different reason than previously stated?
cokane
heh Adam, your last line is like a paraphrase of George Carlin’s “being alive is a ticket to the freak show and in America you get a front row seat”
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Would love to see all the future champions of all the major sports over the next four years boycott the presidential visit. God, what if Kaepernick and the 9ers won one?! AS IF, I know, but still!
Kay
@Yarrow:
I don’t think you have to bring the Russians into it. He faced a choice- make Republicans mad by doing the right thing and shutting his big pie hole, or violate all ethical standards and norms and influence an election. He chose the latter.
hovercraft
This shit is getting real, for real life people, and we have no idea what the hell this moron will do. Between his petulant press “conference” this morning and his SoS nominee repeatedly saying “I don’t know”, we are so fucked.
Kidnapped professors beg Trump to negotiate release in Taliban video
Video is first public sign since August kidnapping that US and Australian teachers Kevin King and Timothy John Weeks are alive
There was no indication of where the video had been filmed but it seemed timed to coincide with the current US presidential transition.
“Donald Trump, sir, I ask you, please. This is in your hands. I ask you please to negotiate with the Taliban. If you do not negotiate with them, we will be killed,” Weeks said, adding that he feared he would not see his gravely ill mother again.
ETA: I know the US policy is that we don’t negotiate with terrorists, but what the hell he will do
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Calouste:
Remember what Angela Lansbury said about her plans to get even with the Communists after Johnny Iselin attained the Presidency with their help, for what they did to Raymond.
And she had MUCH better hair than Trump.
Mai.naem.mobile
There’s a tweet from a CNN reporter that the House voted on Friday to let the whole House have intelligence briefings. Hmmm…I wonder why? The GOP don’t usually like sunlight. I wonder if Mike Pompeo,McMullin and Rogers decided that President Tinkle may not be a good idea after all and start kinda sorta setting up for impeachment ?
burnspbesq
@schrodingers_cat:
Looks like we may have ourselves a PerjuryGate
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
Whoa. Trump’s ability to and fondness for surrounding himself with aggressive shouty types is a thing of wonder. Must be hard for all of them to shut their yaps long enough for Trump to shout at them. Sad!
Also, too, dude is dead wrong. Here’s foreign policy in fewer than 140 characters: “Moving embassy to Jerusalem. Bibi promised best reacharound ever, that day!”
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
The combination of how much they loathe, loathe, loathe, loathe us and yet sincerely not only want our approval but expect it is one of the many reasons I say conservatism is more properly a subject for psychiatry than politics.
hovercraft
@Mai.naem.mobile:
If that is true, it is the worst idea ever, there will be leaks all over the place, and I’d say that at least half, (I’m being generous) of them will not understand a goddamn thing they are briefed about. I assume that if by some miracle they passed such a law or instituted such rules, the IC would only brief them about the most innocuous things, nothing truly critical to national security.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gin & Tonic:
Who says Trump paid them? Most likely it was the Russian intellegance services that hired them, as a “gift” for their American friend along with the nice hotel suite they got him.
Trump just went with the flow after that.
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
I doubt very much that he was the one doing the hiring. Whoever he was there to do business with, I’m sure, is the one who hired the girls.
trollhattan
@Yoda Dog Democrat: Reason the infinity to pray the Cowboys don’t win. Jerry Jones will run your ass over high-tailing it to the Trump House.
debit
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
What you did there, I saw.
Buttermilk Sky
Ivanka plans to create business for the Trump Trivago by burning every other hotel in DC.
trollhattan
Josh Marshall:
Polls are corrupt losers. Sad!
Chris T.
@hovercraft:
He’s the best negotiator. He’ll make a great deal, the best deal. He’ll negotiate with the best terrorists, make the best — it’ll be great. And Mexico will pay for it all!
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
And that guy uses the time-honored device of bullying men talking to women they perceive as powerless — “Let me finish!” as their sentence goes on for five minutes.
gene108
@FlyingToaster:
GHWB also came in second to Reagan, in the 1980 Republican primary. He was not a nobody.
trollhattan
@Buttermilk Sky:
Heh. Secret arsonist squad name: Lolita’s Enflamers
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
Hard to watch, especially given how proud he was of himself. Wonder if Trump has already lost Tigerbeat on the Potomac?
Yoda Dog Democrat
Puh-leez.. I usually defer to the judgement of the inimitable Charlie Pierce, but his contention that Tillerson might not be confirmed is silly. They’re all getting confirmed. We just need to get as much on record as we can for the fight to come. Including those votes. Rubio’s getting points for toughness today from some of our allies. I say bullshit, it’ll all be proven kabuki theatre if/when he votes to confirm the weasel. Rubio has never had a spine and he didn’t grow one this morning, IMO. Happy to be proven wrong, Mr. Thirsty!!!!
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
Tell me that you can imagine Donald Trump getting brokenhearted over a dead raccoon he only met the previous day, or getting morally outraged over the way mankind treats nature, or having one percent of the thoughtfulness required for any of a hundred “Calvin and Hobbes reflect on the meaning of life” themed strips…
(Even with your caveats, that still needed to be said).
Bobby D
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I see what you did there. Flow. LMFAO.
LAO
@burnspbesq: Well, he did use that weasel word “directly.”
David Hunt
Is the building trying to commit suicide in despair? After everything it did for us, we elected Trump.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@trollhattan: lol, yea no shit, fuck that good ole boy… Fucking stupid cowboys.
Damn, that Zeke guy was good to my fantasy team this year though!
Iowa Old Lady
Since the crap in my draft won’t fix itself, I had to go write. I came back and, starting at the end of the press conference post, read everything. I find I am without words. The looniness of all this defies the structures of language.
The one coherent thought I had is that our national press has become dependent on access for reporting. They’re going to have to do something else.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
With Jeff Sessions as AG, who cares? You think Sessions is going to prosecute another Cabinet member?
Chris
@Yarrow:
No they don’t.
It’s fairly well known that the law enforcement community has a massive case of Liberal Derangement Syndrome in general, and that things don’t get any better when you get to the FBI (see also Hoover’s long and sordid history). I suspect it’s as simple as this: Comey, like so many others, made himself believe that Hillary Clinton was a criminal, and therefore figured that he was justified in trying to sink her White House bid, much in the same way as cops who are caught planting evidence or otherwise violating any number of rules because they just “know” that the suspect is guilty.
Miss Bianca
@Chris: You have a point…and it’s not on the top of your head!
More seriously, the genius of Calvin’s characterization is that he *did* have a tender and thoughtful side that balanced out his infant megalomania. Whereas Trump only has the infant megalomania. I sit corrected.
hovercraft
@Chris T.:
You’re kidding, but that’s the problem, these men have begged him personally, can he resist “showing” Obama up by negotiating the best deal evah for their freedom? He’s a loose cannon who wants/needs constant validation, this is the type of thing he may be unable to resist. I read somewhere that we have fewer people kidnapped then the Europeans because they know we will not pay, will he change that?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I blame Obama.
jonas
@Thor Heyerdahl: Ex-CIA heads can still get classified briefings (and the PDB is the most top secret of all top secret docs)? I don’t know about that… OTOH, I’m sure the Bushes still have plenty of friends in high places, including in the IC, and that an old Cold Warrior like GHWB is can’t believe what he’s seeing.
Groucho48
@Mnemosyne:
Presumably he’s talking about Heinlein’s novella “If This Goes On”
hovercraft
Relax everyone, Chuck Grassley has allayed all our fears.
Via GOS
Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican, has a fascinating theory for why it doesn’t matter if Russia has compromising information on Trump.
“It seems to me that when you go back through the campaign and all the things that Trump said that ought to give him political problems and all the things that were caught on tape — that he would probably just as soon not have the world know about it – it’s kind of improbable to me that anybody who knows anything about Trump — that’s going to end up hurting Trump. And he was elected President of the United States.”
SatanicPanic
@hovercraft: My thoughts exactly. The thought of being able to be on the news going “I brought them back! Only I could do it!” seems pretty impossible for him to resist.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Buttermilk Sky:
The action for an injunction and appointment of a receiver is going to be glorious. This could be the shortest hearing in the US District Court in DC in history, and Merrick Garland is the presiding judge at the appellate level at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
I can actually envision a fast track appeal of the injunction and receivership leading to an 8-0 affirmation from SCOTUS.
raven
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: You got your wish, Grantham gone.
Doug
No Enabling Acts next week, ok?
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
Yep!
I’d also add that while Calvin had Hobbes as a corrective influence, he also had his parents. A big chunk of the deeper thinking in that comic comes from his father trying to instill in him the importance of values beyond instant self-gratification, and musing to himself about just how much of the world we live in is primed to encourage nothing but the instincts that he’s trying to steer Calvin away from, and how much we lose from that.
Naturally, ninety percent of it goes over Calvin’s head and gets completely ignored and defied in his behavior. Because of course it does. He’s six years old. But it’s not hard to imagine that kid, raised in that household, on those values, eventually maturing into someone… strikingly un-Trump-ian. To an extent, it’s already happening. A lot of what he says about his animal pet causes and at least some of his misanthropic disgust with people isn’t too different from his father’s thoughts.
Trump is Moe. (And even that’s unfair to Moe. But anything more complex than that is giving him way too much credit).
Chris
@jonas:
I would really like to believe that there are enough Cold Warriors left in the Republican Party that basic self-respect/national pride, if nothing else, would lead them stand in the way of Trump and override him on international relations issues, if nothing else.
But I really just can’t see it. If there was ever more to the party than a nihilistic, sectionalistic loathing for their fellow citizens, I think it went out the window after 2008.
резидент американской области Российской Федерации
@raven:
Mississippi State fans should be lamenting. Sports journos tried to call it “poached”, but it is definitely a step down.
SiubhanDuinne
@dexwood:
No worries. He will end up being tried by a jury of his peers.
Chris
@hovercraft:
Oddly enough, I semi-agree. The question of whether Trump is literally beholden to Putin is less concerning to me than the fact that he’s such a massive Putin groupie in the first place. You could show me proof that Russia had absolutely no influence in the outcome of the 2016 election, and my concerns would barely be lessened.
If, in 1956, we’d woken up to the news that the head of the CPUSA had won the election and was now going to become President of the United States, my first thought wouldn’t have been “gee, I wonder if the KGB meddled in the election and if they have anything on him that allows them to control him.” My first thought would’ve been “Oh. Fuck. We are so screwed.”
Ian
Fry: why would Nixon stay at the Watergate?
Leela: They give you a discount if you have been here before.
Gary K
Alex Jones is gonna connect all the dots, right?
raven
@резидент американской области Российской Федерации: It won’t be for his salary.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
Hey Adam, did you see the waiver hearing for Mattis was cancelled? Why would they do that?
SiubhanDuinne
@Bobby D:
Yes. There are hymns.
Trolly, trolly, trolly
O, Trolly Night
Infant Trolly, Infant Lowly
etc.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Chris: Indeed. If they had those things, self-respect/national pride, they wouldn’t have voted for him like they did, in perfect marching lockstep. I always knew they were good germans but I had zero clue 100% of them would prove 100% morally bankrupt. I was very naive, clearly.
Patricia Kayden
@Yarrow: Nothing. Todd has always been an idiot.
Did anyone think that it was odd that Trump had supporters applauding him during the press conference today? I don’t recall President Obama ever being applauded by supporters during any of his many press conferences. I’ve also never heard of a press conference being taken over by the President’s private attorney. Or a President shouting down a reporter and telling him to pretty much shut the hell up.
This is beyond bizarre.
Ian
@Yoda Dog Democrat:
Kaepernik is on record as a both siders are evil kind of guy. He refuses to admit any responsibility or guilt for that orange fucking things ascension to power.
I know lots of angry white conservatives. He IS responsible for pissing them off by kneeling for the national anthem. Whenever I tried to defend his free speech to do so I usually heard “he should be hung”.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Patricia Kayden:
That can be the title for every post about Goldielittlehands for the foreseeable future.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m very glad of this, but isn’t the Cubs’ owner a big Trump supporter?
hellslittlestangel
MakeWaterGate.
goblue72
@Patricia Kayden: Only in a democracy. In an autocratic state, it makes perfect sense. The mob is easily inflamed and led by its nose. Its why Founding Fathers were as afraid (or more) of the mob than they were of the aristocracy.
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
Who will tell rikyrah?
резидент американской области Российской Федерации
@Patricia Kayden:
That was to give the illusion that he has media support for trashing somebody as “fake news” like he did with Acosta. Oldest trick in the book in optics.
The answer is for MSM to ignore press conferences, send young eager stringers. Fuck “access”.
AnotherBruce
@trollhattan: I’m guessing that this number will bottom out to 27% soon.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
I’ve never heard of a president having supporters at a press conference at all.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Who doesn’t?
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Ian: I know, I know, Im no Kaep fan, I heard his stupid both sides rant.. I guess I just brought him in there cuz it would be totally nuts if he were to be invited to Castle Black to meet geoffrey.. Totally nuts like eveyfuckingdayinthenewsnow totally nuts..
waysel
@Patricia Kayden: I couldn’t stand to watch, but I heard he filled the room with supporters. Were the journos in a pen again today? A mini rally?
goblue72
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I don’t think you do. WWC men are not going to bat an eye about Trump hiring hookers. They don’t have any problem with guys going to a strip club and shoving bills down a stripper’s G-string and paying for lap dances (and more). Hiring a call girl to come to your hotel room is barely one step beyond that. Now, if he was trolling by the freeway to pick up a street walker for a BJ in the alley, that might come off as a little desperate. But hiring an upscale hooker for your hotel room, not so much.
Paying them to piss on each other – now, that may come off as little strange, but not enough to matter. Esp. if it involves said hookers peeing on each other and not on Trump. That’s straight up male dominance – female denigration right up their alley. I mean, they’re hookers right? (from the perspective of Trump’s fans)
Thor Heyerdahl
@Ian:
I’m guessing that they’re probably not
Thor Heyerdahl
@Patricia Kayden: The kayfabe presidency.
Raven Onthill
So now we have threats leveled against reporters. What happens after inauguration? Does he start arresting them?
goblue72
@Ian: He have been a better messenger if he was any good as a QB. But reality is he’s a backup QB who was pretending to be a starter whose brief moment in the sun has long since passed. Making it to easy for critics to jump on him.
He’s the right-wingers QB piñata in the same way left-wing loved to pile on Tim Tebow, another completely over-rated, flash in the pan QB.
AnotherBruce
I’m so old that I remember when conservatives loved the movie “Red Dawn”. because they thought the Russkies would take away their freedoms. So then they go elect and support a Russian stooge who is willing to do just that.
Calouste
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones): I assume the shitgibbon is attempting some powerplay. McCain is the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee which is going to do the confirmation hearing on Mattis, and also in the news recently as passing on the oppo research dossier to the FBI.
Although reading up on it, the cancellation was of a hearing in the House, not the Senate.
goblue72
@AnotherBruce: Turns out they liked the movie because the Commies were being played by the Mexicans (technically, Cubans, but let’s be honest here…)
резидент американской области Российской Федерации
I want my trillions in Cold War spending back.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@goblue72: Both sides then, eh Blue? Noone asked for your two cents. You’re the tim tebow of this blog. Pound sand.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I can’t tell if Martin actually knows that CSK has been dead for 11 years.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
does seem like the sort of thing an insane fascist would do tho.
Calouste
@Raven Onthill: That’s my expectation, yes.
gene108
@goblue72:
Tebow got picked on by more than just left-wingers. Other players in the NFL “Tebowed” him, with his signature kneel down move.
Tebow was a good college QB, whose game did not translate to the NFL at all.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sandia Blanca:
Had not occurred to me earlier, but now it seems slightly odd to me that Usay, Quday, and Elektra were all at the “press conference” this morning, but there was no sign of Melania. I mean, if you’re going to have family there in the first place, however inappropriate that may be, then why not the loving helpmeet?
catclub
Is Jared Kushner putting HIS real estate holdings in a blind trust?
Bobby D
@SiubhanDuinne: Might be “out of sight, out of mind” thing. As I recall, the Drumpf peopls never really cleared up her immigration issues of working in the US without proper clearance.
Wapiti
@Patricia Kayden:
trumP is a needy little child and couldn’t face the press without an entourage encouraging him.
Bobby D
@catclub: If I cover my eyes when I walk by, I will forget that I own that 65 story building. @Yarrow: Russians got nothing on Chuckles Toddler, he’s just a fkin useful idiot,water carrying, false equivalence, hack. Guy is worse than David Gregory, and that’s saying something. I’d love to take that whiteboard and smash it over his smug, ridiculous little goateed mug.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Very much so. Well, maybe not as weird as that exchange with the CNN reporter. I seriously thought he was about to say, like he did during his rallies, “Get him outta here.”
chris
@SiubhanDuinne: she had to meet with her lawyers?
SiubhanDuinne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
And Quiet Flows the Don
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I was listening to MSNBC on the drive home and the 4pm idiot and the “intelligence correspondent” said that the Prague claim turned out not to be accurate something something Cohen shared his passport. Actually Cohen posted a photo of the outside of his passport on social media and this was all the proof they needed apparently. I think I may have looked like a crazy person talking back to the radio.
Chris
@Bobby D:
Seriously. Sincere question to all the people wondering if the Russians have blackmail material on MSM types and other Official Washington creatures: what could you imagine these people doing differently if they weren’t under Russian blackmail? How many times have you known them not to squirm and equivocate and muddy the waters and run interference for whoever the Republicans were, no matter what they’d just been caught doing, and tried to shrug it off with “but liberals are smug, and also, Chappaquiddick?” The eight years of unprecedented obstructionism and “our number one goal is to make Obama a one term president?” The war crimes, economic crashes, and disastrous management of George W. Bush? The resolution of a presidential election by Supreme Court fiat so transparent that they actually included a “this can never be used as precedent” clause? The attempts to impeach Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob from a consenting adult? Iran-contra? This is who they are. This is what they do.
Shalimar
@Yarrow: George W. Bush left office with an approval rating of 22%. Trump still has plenty of supporters who will desert him before the end, what with being far worse than Bush.
debbie
@MomSense:
Trump said they’d looked at a different Cohen. I’m very confused.
Shalimar
@SiubhanDuinne: Melania was a hired babymaker and escort. She is now too old for either of those roles in Trump’s eyes, which makes her useless. He will get a new wife at some point in the next 4 years since he is way past due for replacing this model.
Ksmiami
@Mnemosyne: an asshole I could deal with; to some extent lbj was an asshole; a stupid, incoherent, venal,corrupt narcissist with a vendetta on the other hand needs to be blasted out to alpha-Centauri. I’m really thinking that the us and the planet may not survive this regime.
Emma
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey! That’s an insanely good book(s). Do not sully it by mentioning in the same breath as the Orange Shitgibbon!
Calouste
@debbie: So that’s the third attempt at an alibi:
– First Cohen had never been to Prague
– Then he was with his son visiting a university on that day, even though there wasn’t a specific date mentioned in the report
– Now it’s the wrong guy with the same name
I guess the next excuse is that Cohen isn’t involved with Trump.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
JHC, did you see the photo of the mural of the two of them? Like deviant Nick Carraways. Trump is all thin and dashing, just like Vlad.
Calouste
@Ksmiami: The planet will survive. Unless you are able to put the moon on a collision course, there is not enough power to blow it up.
The human race on the other hand…
Miss Bianca
@Calouste:
Not only that, but his name is not even Cohen! Sad!
Chris
@Calouste:
And even if there was, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
SiubhanDuinne
@Emma:
No sullying intended, but I couldn’t resist the triplicity of “Flow,” “Don,” and the Russian connection.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@goblue72: Three points I think you aren’t considering
The “irresistible” part of the Trump persona – that doesn’t work if he has to pay.
How many 55+ white, conservatives from suburban Ohio just found out what the phrase “watersports” mean?
Being a pervert is a hippee thing in the conservative narative.
Just consider the shocked panic we’ve seen from Trump and his supporters in the last 24 hours. They know this stained Trump’s reputation.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Huh-huh, “stained.”
Bobby D
Tell me Paul Manafort never met with the Russians. I don’t give a poo about his little “Says who? Says who!?” shitbird of a lawyer Mickey Cohen and his travels when we have Manafort and Carter Page dead to rights.
Mnemosyne
@Bobby D:
Paul Manafort worked for Putin in Ukraine. This is documented.
But there’s nothing to see here, no, sir …
Yet another Jeff
Watersportsgate.
manyakitty
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: OMG. Would that have to go through him? I’d pay to watch it all go down.
amk
burn it all down metaphor taken too far?
tony in san diego
@schrodingers_cat: Watersportsgate
fuckwit
“When you’re born, you get a ticket to the Freak Show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat!” — George Carlin, RIP.
Groucho48
Oh, and Heinlein talking about his story, in the 60’s…