I hate to keep beating this horse, but I’m wondering if maybe the Trump-Russia story is one of those things that establishment media just isn’t set up to cover. I don’t mean that they can’t cover individual pieces of the story but that they aren’t able to put it all together. I had the same feeling when Josh Marshall was breaking the Bush US Attorney story, which was also ignored by establishment media. I guess some stories have too many moving parts and say things that are too negative about powerful people for establishment media to handle.
We have an “All The President’s Men” press corps but we’re living in a “Chinatown” world.
So good on the Times for finding this fact out but shame on establishment media for being unwilling to think the whole thing through. Josh Marshall:
I don’t know how much attention it’s received. But the appearance of the name of Felix Sater in this new article in the Times is one of the biggest shoes I’ve seen drop on the Trump story in some time.
[…]Having spent some time studying the matter, the biggest red flags about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia and businessmen around Vladimir Putin have always been tied to the Trump SoHo building project in Lower Manhattan, from the first decade of this century. I base my knowledge of this on this rather cursory but still quite good April 2016 article from the Times and my own limited snooping around the Outer Boroughs Russian and Ukrainian emigre press. (I summarized the most salient details of the earlier Times article in Item #3 of this post.) This was a key project, perhaps the key project in the post-bankruptcy era in which Trump appeared heavily reliant on Russian funds to finance his projects. Sater was at the center of that project. The details only came to light after the project got bogged down in a complicated series of lawsuits.
After the lawyers got involved, Trump said he barely knew who Sater was. But there is voluminous evidence that Sater, a Russian emigrant, was key to channeling Russian capital to Trump for years. Sater is also a multiple felon and at least a one-time FBI informant.
I never know how seriously to take John Schindler, but this is interesting too:
Sater's dad is a top underboss 4 Semyon Mogilevich, the world's leading mafia don.
Just another Trump coincidence.https://t.co/suhHGZpVU1
— John Schindler (@20committee) February 19, 2017
Trentrunner
NBC Nightly News did a story on the wacky file Russia is accumulating on Trump’s foibles, eccentricities, and weaknesses. They didn’t play it 100% for comedy, but the tone was “Isn’t Trump odd and aren’t those Russians sneaky?”
It was also a standalone story, with no attempt to connect it to any of the other Trump-Russia stories.
Today. With all these serious Russia stories breaking and developing.
So, no. Our media is not equipped to deal with this story.
SiubhanDuinne
Yup. We need a generalist who can look at all the information from 30,000 feet, and connect the dots. Specialists are indispensable, but by definition they can’t do that.
sharl
Despite my problems with him, Schindler is often worth a look, especially if he provides links to back up his stuff. I would just avoid those tweets where he tries predicting stuff with a dramatic flair; while I can’t follow him easily (blocked), I don’t recall those working out very well. But his camp followers seem to lap that stuff up, and in any event have short memories (as so many of us do).
Lapassionara
Where are Woodward and Bernstein when we need them?
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Everyone discourages generalists these days.
Emerald
Agree that our media is far from ready to deal with this mess. However, it truly is the biggest scandal in American history and they now know that they are themselves in danger after Twitler tweeted that they are the enemy. The IC, or whoever’s doing it (side-eye), is not going to stop leaking.
A few of them actually can handle it. The rest are just have to grow up and learn how to do it, or face their own extinction as a free press.
Unless, of course, they simply decide that it’s easier to collaborate. Oh dear, I just destroyed my own argument, didn’t I?
Doug!
I think media has always had trouble with stories like this.
Davis X. Machina
@Lapassionara: Woodward? Sucking up to Trump.
Ronnie Pudding
@Lapassionara:
Bernstein has been critical of Trump. Woodward is probably trying to swap praise for access.
Davis X. Machina
@Emerald:
This will be discovered to necessitate the birth of ‘leak fatigue’.
Denali
Adam Khan has pulled it all together. Journalists need to verify it.
Spaniel
Journalists and editors are not historians. Editors are the ones to help put things together, but they have other priorities.
? Martin
Residents of the California Central Valley should be prepared to evacuate with this next storm. There’s no specific warning, just a general warning that almost any part of the valley could suffer from either river flooding, flash floods, etc.
To give people a sense of the size of this general concern – the central valley is about the size of Maryland and New Jersey combined, and is home to 6.5 million people – about the population of Indiana. Just a feel for what sorts of things different parts of the valley are going through. It’s just a lot of water and nowhere to go.
The situation in Oroville is pretty stable. Lake 47′ below flood and they’re having no problem keeping up with input. The main difference is that where previously they were trying to minimize use of the main spillway to avoid damage, and allowed the lake to get too high, now they’ve given up any effort to protect the spillway (since it’s pretty much totally gutted now) and will run it full-open. They’d almost a full week of continuous heavy rain, or a cold heavy storm to drop snow followed by a warm one to add rain and snowmelt. So, Oroville isn’t an urgent issue right now – this just widespread flooding.
efgoldman
@Lapassionara:
They were run of the mill street reporters who got lucky. More to the point: where are the Ben Bradlees and Katie Grahams.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: They, I am sure, are saving the really big things for later. The drops that are dripped are just going keep getting bigger.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
Dead, I believe.
Feebog
I fear you are right Doug. There are a lot of moving parts to this story, and the media seems wholly unable to start weaving the threads together. The Flynn story is a prime example. It is not a stand alone story, but rather part of the larger, more complex Russian entanglement the entire Trump organization (meaning business, campaign and administration together) is in. But I just don’t see the MSM getting this at all. Instead we are being fed a continuous stream of dysfunction and incompetence stories regarding Flynn and his abrupt departure. I don’t see a lot of stories trying to connect Flynn with the larger picture and exactly where he fit in. Maybe they will get there eventually, but right now, the MSM is barely treading water.
efgoldman
@Doug!:
The weekly news magazines (Newsweek, Time, US News) used to be able to do stories like this, devoting most or all of their front section. They’re gone. Online formats don’t support that kind of story.
The Atlantic could do it, if they’d a mind to. Maybe.
Jeffro
You know I do not have the tech talent but someone who is good with presentations could probably slap together a 5 to 10 minute video showing all of the different forces coming together to support trump, how they pushed him through the primaries and election, and then and what they hoped to get out of the deal.
Not that it would change a whole lot of minds – I just want to see right wing losers howling in cognitive dissonance
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Lapassionara:
Louise Mensch (former Tory MP, now lives in NYC) appears to be taking their place.
She’s doing some amazing work on airplane tail numbers.
Cheryl Rofer
Not to be too kind to the media, but this is a difficult story to cover. Both Trump and the Russians use many cut-outs and fictitious companies to cover their dealings. There are many moving parts, which have not looked connected until this week, when some tenuous connections have started coming to light. Also, the track record is that journalists who probe too deep, on the Russian side anyway, wind up dead. This is a demotivator for both reporters and the editors who assign them.
Information that suggests this might be an issue to investigate has been available at least since last summer. I collected what I could find last July. But not much effort was put into it.
I saw some commentary on Twitter tonight, particularly by Laura Rozen, where people were trying to put the big picture together. It’s hard to do that when you don’t have all, or a large number, of the pieces.
Jeffro
PS – once there is more evidence about Russian oil barons and mafia figures laundering their money through the Trump organization we won’t need quite so much help drawing a picture for those with eyes to see .
The problem is there aren’t a whole lot of folks open to new information anymore .
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
It also seems like they are catching them in more lies by controlling the flow of leaks. Flynn allegedly lied to FBI, peers, media because he didn’t yet know they had recordings of the calls.
Chet Murthy
@Lapassionara: No idea about Bernstein, but …
? Martin
I think the problem with a story like this is that the modern financial system is so opaque and allows for massive abstraction of identity through multiple shell companies in different countries, with people’s names not attached, that it’s difficult to even see what the 30,000 foot view would be, and when you get a notion of what it might be, it looks like a goddamn conspiracy theory, not a news story. And unlike Watergate where you were up against a bunch of political operatives and a small cohort of the FBI, etc. this is a story where presumably you’re up against both the Russian mafia and the Russian government proper. Nontrivial…
Planet Money did a nice couple of segments on shell companies in tax havens. It’s a very light listen, and they do a great job of explaining just how insane things are. They set up an offshore company called ‘Unbelizable’ in Belize, just to see how it works.
This is the kind of thing that you need an entire news organization working on – and outfits like the NYT and the WaPo just don’t have the army of investigative reporters that they used to have. We might be relying on the FBI to unwind parts of this one.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, i asked for that
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know, and it’s one of my hobbyhorses. We desperately need people who are educated in, and curious about, many (seemingly) unrelated disciplines, people who can make the connections, the things that look like intuitive leaps of illogic but which turn out to unlock the secret patterns and connections.
I’m grateful there are specialists. We need them. But there’s a danger to staying holed up in a silo. We need the people who can move easily from the tower of one to the sub-basement of another to the courtyard of a third.
? Martin
@Jeffro: We only need Congress to be open to it.
Adam L Silverman
The Sater-Mogolivech connection is legit.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Tell me about it. Totally stalled my career. They look at my resume and see all of these different things and assume I must suck at all of them. But when they have a problem – they run to me. Fuckers.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Louise is a genuine treasure on the plane connections to Russian bagmen and Trump
She also has a frightening theory – the Carolina Conspiracy – that Weiner was set up from the very beginning to plant the Hillary email story, given the timeline. She doesn’t think there was a 15 year old that Weiner sexted, and oddly enough, the suspect plane comes into the tale in locations that match.
It seems farfetched, but the pieces fit, and it took the obsession of Chaffetz and the GOP on email to set it into motion.
Comey is a conspirator in the story, and Chaffetz may be as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: I am a tireless advocate of a liberal arts education. I know Martin and others are strong STEM advocates and they are not wrong, but the liberal arts people who have learned a bit of this and that have their place.
ETA: Obama wasn’t educated as an engineer.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Valdis Krebs, one of the best when it comes to social network analysis, has already done the SNA.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Artemenko is viewed in many circles as a traitor.
catbirdman
@Lapassionara: Woodward was on Face the Nation this morning, largely yawning and suggesting there’s plenty of precedent for presidents targeting the press.
Lyrebird
@efgoldman: On the other hand, I am so relieved that Eichenwald and (some name beginning with F) are there reviving the flame of actual journalism, and the dude who moved from Boston to be one of the WaPo editors deserves some credit.
I’m not disagreeing with the OP, I’m just trying to find rays of hope. When Dubya was lying us into war, who did we have? Judy Miller helping out, shock and horror when some NGO made a disrespectful ad about Petraeus but crickets when a sitting President just squashed the voice of a general who wouldn’t say what he (W) wanted to hear, when his Veep destroyed the cover (and presumably network) of an intelligence officer working on I-flipping-ran, …now we actually hear dissent from Chris Wallace of all people!
For tonight I am going to take hope from this.
I know I know, the reply from @Omnes Omnibus was funnier. To be expected.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m a huge advocate for the classic liberal arts core, up dated for modernity as needed. Once everyone has that, then specializing in STEM or medicine or law or any of the social or behavioral sciences or the humanities. But the liberal arts core as foundation is critical.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lyrebird: Farenthold.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: That was my understanding.
efgoldman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I defer to nobody in my hatred for both of them, but we’re veering into Robert Ludlum territory now.
I suppose it’s possible, but like 911 truthers, a conspiracy of that size requires dozens to hundreds to thousands of people, none of whom ever say anything.
mai naem mobile
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’ve kinda sorta thought that Weiner may have been set up. He comes across as kind of stupid enough to be set up. I frankly can’t believe Huma let him use any internet enabled device.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Who is this Schindler guy? I see people referring to him all the time, and he seems to cast himself as some kind of ex C.I.A. guy or something, but he strikes me as some random blowhard. What’s his deal? I really don’t know anything about him. I’d never even heard of him until a few weeks ago.
sukabi
@MomSense: which is immensely stupid of him, as a former Ltg and head of was it DIA he should have been well aware of what lines of communications are subject to capture by our intelligence services…
It boggles the mind how incredibly stupid he’s been.
hellslittlestangel
Investigative reporters had better hurry up and investigate before Trump turns to this unassailable defense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ELuUzct3A
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Harrumph again! At my undergrad, this program was central. Pusey went to be president of Harvard. My FS prof was the guy I asked to be my faculty advisor. He was also responsible for me switching from History to Government as a major.
efgoldman
@Lyrebird:
Marty Baron.
Bezos also deserves some credit, for leaving the editorial side more or less alone.
On the other hand, fucking Fred Hiatt needs to retire about ten years ago.
mai naem mobile
@efgoldman: I find myself going into conspiracy theory territory a lot recently and I consider myself very skeptical and i feel like i have a good nose for smelling bullshit. I also feel like I am crazy with some of my theories during the past year.
Gin & Tonic
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Ex-NSA guy. Actually knows a thing or two. In some cases he appears to be a mouthpiece for people who can’t talk but have an agenda.
tobie
@Jeffro: It looks like Russian mafia figures are also acting as go-betweens between the US/Trump and Russia/Putin. That, I thought, was the gist of Josh Marshall’s post.
This is an incredibly complicated story to piece together with convincing evidence given the use of shell companies, third parties, etc. I have little faith that TV journalists are up to the task. This kind of entanglement doesn’t lend itself to either the 5-minute spot or the pro-and-con format that cable tv has come to love. But some journalists have shown themselves to be outstanding in following the money. I’m thinking of Rukmini Callimachi and David Farenthold but I’m sure there are others. I wonder if Jane Mayer is researching this subject.
Felonius Monk
@Lapassionara:
Bernstein pops up occasionally, but Woodward is too busy pretending he’s really Robert Redford.
efgoldman
@sukabi:
I wonder if his stupidity was along the lines of “they can’t do that to me!”
Adam L Silverman
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Former Navy Intelligence officer. From there he went to the National Security Agency where he was, at one point, the technical director for an NSA program. Technical director indicates the functional subject matter expert lead. From there he went to the Naval War College as a professor. He got himself into a disciplinary problem as a result of social media usage and resigned his professorship ahead of disciplinary action. He has a PhD in History and his specialty includes WW I and Eastern Europe.
GregB
Although it is anectdotal, this interview with NY/Jersey comic Joey Diaz indicates that there have been stories of mob involvement by Trump for decades.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=owgPCYGxjfE
burnspbesq
One notes in passing that we still don’t know who bought the 19 percent stake in Rosneft that was sold at the end of last year. You can surmise who I think is at the bottom of that pile of Cayman companies.
Another Scott
Maybe someone could ask Donnie what his son meant in 2008, and about this other stuff from last year? Washington Post from July 29, 2016:
But Donnie says he has no dealings with Russia so his son must be wrong, amirite??!
What’s out there, and has been out there for months, isn’t complicated. The press could force him to answer obvious questions, but they seem more interested in covering his pep rallies and his twitter gruntings.
Let’s hope that the various lawsuits go forward and that information there isn’t buried in NDAs and the like. It’s hard to see Donnie answering these questions truthfully otherwise…
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
@Felonius Monk: Woodward is apparently looking at all the good things Trump has done, and finding much to admire. Like he’s done for every preisident since 1974
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Somebody with about $10.5B in cash. That narrows the list down quite a bit.
burnspbesq
Where the Russian mob/oligarchy is concerned, nosy fellows are at risk of losing more than their noses.
Mary G
Adam Khan’s tweets can be hard to read and understand, but when I stuck with it I was struck by how many things tie together. He is now saying that Kushner is $4 billion in debt and may be the actual mover behind a lot of the Russian money involvement, with Trump as the carnival barker distraction.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree with you on this. The people I encounter who I truly consider the smartest, as in the ones who have the most sophisticated understanding of the systems that make up the world and how they interact, are all liberal arts, social science, or visual arts people. These types of learning are sadly undervalued right now.
burnspbesq
Or someone that Putin is willing to spend that much to buy.
aimai
@efgoldman: Are we really veering into conspiracy theories–i.e. that are farfetched? Occam’s razor says that the Russians blackmailed Comey. Every single thing he did about Clinton was against the law prior to the election. It boggles the mind to think that mere partisan antipathy towards the democrat, when he knew Trump was compromised by the Russians, led him to sabotage her.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Khan may be spot on; I hope he is. We need the FBI to get admissible evidence.
Lyrebird
@efgoldman: Yes, yes, and…
@Omnes Omnibus: Farenthold, YES! Thanks & have a peaceful night!
scott (the other one)
I think very few people in the media, at any level, are emotionally prepared to deal with a story this huge. A presidential election was compromised by some combination of the Russian, the Republican nominee, various members of the GOP, and the FBI, to varying degrees. That statement is, at this point, almost certainly undeniably true. Drilling down and getting into the details is difficult but, moreover, to a group that’s used to the fun of reporting about blowjobs and earth toned clothes and hopey changey, this is fucking terrifying stuff. And the idea that they themselves might be on the hook for either by far the biggest scandal in American history—meaning they might bring down not only a president but an entire party and potentially lead to war, or else be hung out to dry if they get it wrong (or even if they get it right)…well, no wonder the overwhelming majority of them are playing “la la la I can’t hear you.”
sigaba
@Felonius Monk: Woodward and Bernstein were metro beat crime reporters. They worked Watergate like a city corruption story and that’s what this needs, lots of facts and specific allegations.
National political media doesn’t care abot facts, it’s all about how X or Y “plays.”
liberal
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): One interesting thing about him is that he’s a dick pic guy.
Davis X. Machina
@sigaba: On the tombstone of the Republic, put “Killed By A Story Arc”.
Timurid
Move along… nothing to see here.
What’s going to make this crisis so intractable is that the GOP caucus in Congress is beholden to two groups that are more pro-Trump than they are pro-Republican. If we had President Kasich who was mired in a terrible scandal, they could move quickly to impeach him and replace him with Vice President Rubio or Speaker Ryan. One interchangeable Republican would step in for another, and life would go on. 2020 would suck, but there is no avoiding that. But Trump has his passionate base of “deplorables.” For them, no other Republican will do. The 2016 primaries proved that. And Trump has strong support among elites (i.e. donors) who have come to the conclusion that developing trends like inequality, the growing labor surplus and the end of the white majority will make the existing democratic system unsustainable (for them at least). Trump has many flaws, but he can offer something no other Republican can. He is willing to be a King, not just a President. He can start the transition to a more authoritarian American polity.
If the GOP Congress goes through with impeachment, they will be savagely punished by both groups. And it’s hard to imagine a revelation awful enough to change their minds. Both of these groups would happily sell us to the Russians to get what they want and need.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: Why not both STEM and liberal arts? That’s what my undergrad college emphasized. Science math and engineering degrees with a third of our credits in liberal arts.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve hired plenty of programmers. The English majors always did better than the compsci people. Just knew how to think better.
eldorado
i have some problems with how talkingpointsmemo goes about it’s business, but there is no denying that they bird-dogged that u.s. attorney story when nobody else in the media even thought there was a there, there.
efgoldman
@aimai:
The razor I see says Comey is a partisan Republiklown with Clinton Derangement Syndrome who just had to get involved because of his moral superiority. It’s the same moral superiority that made him famous in the Ashcroft matter. Much simpler.
I suppose it’s possible that Pootie Poo has kompromat dossiers on every Republiklown in DC, but plain old bullshit partisanship accounts for a lot.
ETA: And it was DOJ norms, not laws, that he violated. Still fireable.
sukabi
@efgoldman: probably a lot of that…all these guys think the rules are for other people.
Adam L Silverman
All the connections were made here:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
The foreword/intro is written by David Cay Johnston who is one of the President’s biographers.
piratedan
@efgoldman: i really have no problem seeing Chaffetz and Comey being involved… after all, all we have to do is review their actions during the election process. Are they behaving in good faith or hyper-partisans who’ve partaken of the kool-aid? Perhaps they’re not on the FSB payroll, but at this point, considering the total cravenness of the majority of the GOP, I’m more than willing to believe them of anything based on how they’ve behaved during the previous 8 years. These guys care no more for the country than I do for a shit sandwich. They’re apparently interested in power and will take and accept any mechanism that allows them to wield it.
Millard Filmore
@aimai:
As much as I like conspiracy theories, I have a problem with this. Comey’s recent meeting with those intelligence committee congress critters had them leaving the meeting with ashen faces.
1) if Comey is compromised, I cannot imagine what he could tell them that would leave his reputation intact, and still have that impact.
2) I do not think Comey went into that meeting to confess.
efgoldman
@piratedan:
They’ve been like this since the Newtnik congress of ’94. They’ve not had complete control until now. W was halfway rational, and the Dem win in ’06 kept them down. Then Obama for eight years, and it was obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. This cycle they hit the lottery, and like some alcoholic in a trailer park, they can’t spend it fast enough.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
I will never understand the dudes who think women want to see unsolicited pictures of their dicks. Fellas, believe me, if I want a picture of your dick, I will ask for it. Until that moment, just assume I don’t want to see it. KTHXBAI.
dogwood
@Millard Filmore:
The Russians would be wasting time, energy and money getting dirt on people like Comey, Ryan, Chaffetz, etc. They don’t need to be blackmailed to do their dirty work. They do it willingly.
I’m also skeptical of this Schindler stuff. He reminds me of the “Whitey” tape dude.
Millard Filmore
@Mnemosyne:
And believe you me, you will have it 10 seconds later.
Shalimar
@liberal: From talking with friends who date a lot, the number of guys who think sending pictures of their dick is an important way of showing their interest is depressingly large.
Mnemosyne
@Millard Filmore:
It depends on what he confessed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a confession along the lines of, So it turns out that Hillary was right about Russian screwing with our election, but you can’t tell anyone or else it’ll bring the whole country down and spark a civil war.
If I were writing the novel of this, Robert Hanssen would have been the low-level Russian operative who was sacrificed to protect the high-level one: Comey. It would be a great shocker midpoint for the story.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus:
I studied at a liberal arts school, and am thankful for it. I’m an advocate for STEM education for three reasons:
1) Culturally we have not really sorted out how to value liberal arts degrees, leaving too many of those degree recipients unable to pay off debt.
2) There are massive technological changes underway that in the near term require STEM training. I suspect that 1) above will partially resolve itself once we hit the point where we fully recognize how little the STEM degrees can do past the technical phase.
3) Economically (tax policy, etc), we strongly incentivize companies to avoid solving 1) and 2).
I’m an advocate for changing policy in such a manner that liberal arts degrees become more valuable (not academically valuable, but valuable in the sense we’re willing to pay good money for those degrees), but until that happens, my advice to young people is to not roll the dice hoping that some future government will solve this stuff and allow them to pay off their loans. It’s a practical not academic argument.
Millard Filmore
@Mnemosyne:
As a non-congressman, that information would leave me red-faced with anger and rage. The disclosure would have to be much bigger to have the blood still drained from my face at the end of a meeting (i forget low long it was).
seaboogie
@Omnes Omnibus:
This.
Khan has a lot of research and connections that need to be proven as legit or debunked, but a trove of info that FBI, CIA and journos need to investigate and nail down, if true. If it’s legit and I were him, I’d hire a food taster, pronto. Might be a case of Twitter moving from Arab Spring to Western Downfall. I am cautious, concerned, and curious as to what is to come.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Will have to look that up…and share it around…and around…
Aleta
Let’s hope there are some Mark Felt types at the FBI and CIA who want to help reporters with the Russian stories. And if those sources exist, let’s hope reporters have known them long enough to be sure they can be trusted.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
I am in the camp that a dick is not attractive unless it is attached to an attractive man. Both sexes’ genitals are very much form-follows-function things. So dick pics, IMHO, are never hot.
Jeffro
@tobie:
I think she’s mostly doing domestic “dark money”-related finance (and what a web that is)
This is the piece that not many folks realize the IC can drop on Trumpov: just what money went where, from whom, in order to buy his and his subordinates’ crazy-a$$ pro-Russia advocacy.
Jeffro
@scott (the other one):
Especially when it includes the likely possibility that a) half the GOP MoCs are being bought off or blackmailed to not look into Trumpov’s Russia connections, and b) that the FBI is clearly also in the mix.
You’d have to be, what, a squeaky-clean, actually principled conservative who doesn’t care about the next election as much as s/he cares about rooting out this sort of corruption and/or influence by a hostile foreign power? Or else you could do like everyone else and kick back and hope things blow over and that you’ll end up on top, right Marco Rubio
efgoldman
@Jeffro:
You’ll find one of those the day after you see a T Rex in the wild. They are equally extinct.
Seth Owen
Just a dose of realism for those expecting the media to save us. Journalists don’t have supoena powers. They can’t get anything that any ordinary citizen can’t get. They can’t make people talk.
Journalists perform an invaluable role in our society. I was proud to be one. But they are no substitute for the investgative powers of the state. If we are so far gone that the professional law enforcement and IC folks can’t break this, then no amount of Woodward and Bernsteins can rescue us.
It may be that those professionals may use the media (via leaks) in the internal turf battles going on, but it’s a mistake to think that it’s a dereliction by the MSM to not put together the dots on a massively sprawling scandal like this. Shoot, it will probably take a few dozen historians several decades of research to sort out just what we already know about. I’m all for the MSM doing what they can but we need to be realists. At the end of the day the NSA, CIA, FBI, Congress, courts, etc. will have to meet the challenge. If they don’t, I don’t care how courageous or competent the Washington Post is, we are screwed.
workworkwork
@frosty: Mine, too! Computer science degree with required electives in philosophy, theology, history, natural science,classical studies, Fine Arts and communications.
Mind you, it was a Jesuit-run university.
Mike in DC
There’s about a dozen people on Twitter worth following with respect to the Russia stuff: Schindler, Nance, Mensch, Adam Khan, Sarah Kendzior, Eichenwald, David Corn, Eric Garland, Garry Kasparov, Julia Ioffe, Masha Gessen and occasionally Rick Wilson.
laura
@? Martin: I man a picket line in Gustine a couple of times a week and the drive down I-5 has been scary late at night in the rain. The Consumnes and Mokelumne are running so wide and so high it can be tricky to see where the roadside ends and the water begins.
If/when the call to evacuate comes, I’m hard pressed to see the route of escape when the main roads are inubdated.
Zinsky
Great post, Doug, and your central thesis may well be correct. It must amaze Putin and the Russians how blasé the American press has been about tampering with a presidential election. Makes us look like a bunch of shallow, self-absorbed turds – kinda like our Dear Leader himself!
Spaniel
Speaking of conspiracy theories, I am surprised a post from ALAHPUNDIT from the other day has not gained more traction. Seemed Comey was at Congress giving a briefing to some members of the Senate. Seems that even the staff members were not aware of the meeting and the senators stayed in town longer than expected for a long weekend.
Applejinx
I think people who decry conspiracy theories fail to understand this: power is all the same. Once it escalates enough, it’s literally all the same, it’s the only important part. Italian Mob, Russian Mob, Republicans, corporations: who would believe an upstanding energy corporation and darling of Wall Street could hold California hostage for money? Enron totally did.
Power is all the same. Being shocked that the President is all mobbed up seems to be missing the point a bit.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a mountain of an article. The “neoliberal”, etc., epithets give me pause, but there’s a lot of seemingly well-sourced information there. Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kristine
@Adam L Silverman: Link?
Kristine
@Mike in DC: And I’m following almost all of them.
I remember when Twitter wasn’t quite so…educational.
J R in WV
@Trentrunner:
NBC is just pretending to support news shows now. They own the tapes depicting Donald J Trump as a successful manager, that also showed him as a bigot and a sexual violator, and never released them. They have a vested interest in Trump’s appearance as a success. So, no, they have no ability to deal with geopolitical news today.
The NYTimes, for whatever reason, decided to abandon their role as objective presenter of information and analysis of news and events. They too are unable to deal with today’s geopolitical news, although they do show signs of internal dispute over how to present the Trump administration, now that they helped elect him.
The Washington Post appears to have new management directives to present truthful and accurate coverage of the Trump administration and its flailing about. CBS appears to be presenting lies as lies and objective truths as, well truth.
I gave up on NBC during the DNC, when Andrea Mitchell and the nation watched speeches together, followed by Andrea’s lies about what we just watched. She must hate Hillary more than she loves America, or perhaps Trump owns a controlling interest in Andrea Mitchell’s soul.
Ella in New Mexico
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
@Mike in DC:
Pretty much since the weekend of the big “Muslim Ban” I have found Twitter to be the first place I go to see real time updates and breaking news. Following the Tweets from the ACLU, good journalists and other advocacy orgs that weekend I could barely put my iPad down.
So now, in addition to reliable news outlets and my favorite blog hosts I follow Schindler, as well as Adam Khan, David Corn, David Dayen, David Farhenthold and Kurt Eichnewald who all have unique insights and have done their homework. I also like Julia Ioffe, JJ McNab and Jill Filipovik
Shoot, I even follow some “conservatives” who care about the rule of law, American tradition, and non-politicized national security. Louise Mensch looks like a keeper too-cant wait to catch up on her “Carolina Conspiracy”.