Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Bark louder, little dog.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Come on, man.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Good lord, these people are nuts.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

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Reader Interactions

219Comments

  4. 4.

    misterpuff

    He could have tried hiding in the drapes or have taken a potty break. I call Bullshit.

  6. 6.

    Felonius Monk

    What part of “Stick out like a sore thumb” does he not understand?

    ETA: OTOH, Joe Lieberman is 2′ 8″.

  9. 9.

    Mary G

    I put it on the last thread, but apparently Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare blog is BFFs with Comey and gave an interview full of juicy stuff on the PBS Snooze Hour about how Comey tried to keep Twitler at arm’s length, even hoping to hide in the blue curtains in his blue suit to avoid notice. Also, that day when Trump blew the kiss to him and he came over and was semi-hugged despite Trump’s anger at Comey being more famous than him, he was trying to stiff arm Trump and keep it just a handshake, but Trump pulled him in. I second @misterpuff: in calling bullshit.

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JWR: I just did a guest lecture/seminar for a friend from grad school’s class via skype. I’m wiped. You’re lucky I spelled “in the” correctly.

  13. 13.

    aimai

    @amk: I think its pretty clear that Obama had a good working relationship with Mueller and Mueller persuaded him that Comey was a good choice and would be excessively upright. And if the Clintons didn’t turn out to be the white whale to his Ahab, and the Inspector Javert to the Clintons as Jean Valjean, the whole thing might have been fine.

  14. 14.

    misterpuff

    While I admire Comey’s bureaucratic thoroughness (I, myself, hate paperwork), the more I hear from the Comey circle, the more I think he has surrounded himself with a coterie of worshippers, well, worshippers at the altar of “Integrity” and he basks in the adulation.

    I could be wrong.

  16. 16.

    PsiFighter37

    @misterpuff: Oh, you are almost 100% certainly right. That’s part of his problem. Fortunately, it’s going to work heavily against Trump in the upcoming weeks/months.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @misterpuff: There are no good guys in this story. Only bad and worse guys. If we can have to use the bad guys to fight the worse guys, so be it.

  21. 21.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Here’s a pic of him in his FBI Director outfit

    Exactly right. Good choice.

    ETA: I don’t really think there’s any chance at all of his being appointed.

  22. 22.

    rikyrah

    GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer claims emergency rooms are “universal health care”
    By Oliver Willis | May 18, 2017

    Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer is spreading dangerous lies about health care access, giving his constituents wrong information in order to bolster the GOP’s health care repeal goals.

    Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) has repeatedly and falsely claimed that a law mandating hospital emergency rooms provide care to anyone who needs it is the same thing as “universal health care” — a cruel interpretation of the law that has become an article of faith for Republicans.

    Cramer, who may run against Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in 2018, made his statement in at least four appearances over the last two weeks.

    At a town hall meeting, he told constituents, “We have universal health care access because we require by law and by tradition and by compassion that any person that walks into an emergency room receives care.”

    In another appearance, Cramer said, “In the early ’80’s or mid-’80’s we…passed a law requiring health care for everybody in the United States of America. That was 30 plus years ago. So that means no one can be turned down for care.”

    He also made the claim in two radio interviews, and at another town hall meeting, as repeated justification for his vote in favor of the Republicans’ health care repeal plan, which would strip health insurance from at least 24 million Americans.

    http://shareblue.com/gop-rep-kevin-cramer-claims-emergency-rooms-are-universal-health-care/

  24. 24.

    Virginia

    What I really do not understand is why anybody, anywhere, would allow their name to be associated with the tRump admin.

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JWR: All is well. Just a bit of brain fry…

    Also, I bring glad tidings. As I indicated at the time, they would still screw this up. I was confident in that because unlike Paul Ryan and anyone else in his caucus, I actually understand the rules of the House, the rules of the Senate, the differences between them, etc.

  26. 26.

    jl

    @rikyrah: That line goes back to GHW Bush, who was laughed at for spewing nonsense like that. I guess they figure sheer repetition will convince people.

  28. 28.

    Corner Stone

    @Felonius Monk:

    ETA: OTOH, Joe Lieberman is 2′ 8″

    That is why he is such a good choice for him at FBI. He and Sessions can swap out suspenders, pants, leggings and other elf wear.

  30. 30.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Ryan really thought that the Senate could rubber stamp the House BS quickly? Fricken nuts. Or, to take a tragic view, sadly carried away by his frat rat kegger dreams of yore.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    Now my blood is boiling again, because when Twitler gets to Saudi Arabia, he’s going to announce the sale of $110 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by Jared Kushner.

    Sensing that the cost might be a problem, several administration officials said, Mr. Kushner picked up the phone and called Marillyn A. Hewson — the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, which makes the radar system — and asked her whether she could cut the price. As his guests watched slack-jawed, Ms. Hewson told him she would look into it, officials said.

    The Saudis have been dropping bombs, bullets and missiles on Yemen for two years now. It’s blamed on Iran or AQ, but it’s really a function of the dick-measuring contest between two of the princes, as far as I can tell. America has been actively helping all along with plane fueling and targeting, which must not be very good because they keep killing civilians. Seven million people are on the brink of starvation and now a cholera epidemic has broken out. I consider cooperating with this Obama’s greatest sin, and now Twitler is doubling down by a factor of 1,000. This is going to have all kinds of blowback from Shias.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: He’s not going to make it through the Senate. I wouldn’t be surprised if Feinstein doesn’t put a hold on the nomination as the ranking member on Judiciary until she can get answers. The major issue for any nominee is having to answer the question of “did the President ask you to pledge your loyalty to him?” “I appreciate your answering no, but should it later come out that you in fact were asked to do so will you pledge here publicly and under oath to resign immediately?

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    @jl: Can you imagine what kind of human being it would take?
    “But, thousands of people, American citizens, will dies each year needlessly because of the changes to this healthcare bill.”
    “Hey, we’ve been dreaming about doing this since we were drinking out of kegs.”

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: The attempt to jam the vote through without regular order, including a CBO score, was always the flaw. Remember, Ryan has never moved a major piece of legislation through to become law. He’s only ever actually moved three minor pieces through to law. Two of them were renaming Post Offices in his district. He is not a titan of the House.

  37. 37.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Adam L Silverman: Ain’t that a b*tch? Unfortunately I don’t see Republicans doing anything differently on the re-vote. They’ll vote for the AHCA again.

  38. 38.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: Heitkamp should run commercials with clips of him saying that fading into clips of ordinary people who received bills in the thousands of dollars after going to an emergency room for a heart attack or who ended up having a limb amputated because they don’t give you a 90 day supply of insulin when you go to the emergency room. Or maybe she can get clips of hospitals shutting down because too many people come to the emergency room and can’t afford to pay.

    My sister went to an emergency room of a major academic medical center in NYC with her friend who was having extreme pain and difficulty walking, and after doing a scan and finding nothing the ER told them to leave. They even threatened to call the police when my sister became upset. It turned out that he was in kidney failure secondary to a terminal cancer — and he was one of the lucky ones because he actually HAD insurance.

  39. 39.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He’s not going to make it through the Senate.

    I just don’t want to see that droopy face and hear that whiny bass, In his own way, listening to him is as bad as listening to Citron Shitheel.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: This is why we let Saudi do what it does:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story-behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret

    Failure was not an option.

    It was July 1974. A steady predawn drizzle had given way to overcast skies when William Simon, newly appointed U.S. Treasury secretary, and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, stepped onto an 8 a.m. flight from Andrews Air Force Base. On board, the mood was tense. That year, the oil crisis had hit home. An embargo by OPEC’s Arab nations—payback for U.S. military aid to the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War—quadrupled oil prices. Inflation soared, the stock market crashed, and the U.S. economy was in a tailspin.

    Officially, Simon’s two-week trip was billed as a tour of economic diplomacy across Europe and the Middle East, full of the customary meet-and-greets and evening banquets. But the real mission, kept in strict confidence within President Richard Nixon’s inner circle, would take place during a four-day layover in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

    The goal: neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon and find a way to persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America’s widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. And according to Parsky, Nixon made clear there was simply no coming back empty-handed. Failure would not only jeopardize America’s financial health but could also give the Soviet Union an opening to make further inroads into the Arab world.

    It “wasn’t a question of whether it could be done or it couldn’t be done,” said Parsky, 73, one of the few officials with Simon during the Saudi talks.

    Much, much more at the link.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Patricia Kayden: I think he’s going to have trouble with the whip count if he has to redo it. Especially because he’ll have to wait for a CBO score. The longer this takes the better. In two weeks they’re going on Summer vacation so they can start campaigning for 2018. Anything, other than a CR and debt ceiling raise in September, is not going to get dealt with if it isn’t dealt with by May.

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Barbara: The smartest political move, and most dangerous overall move, is to either make McCabe permanent or pick another, senior career agent.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: @efgoldman: He’s not going to make it through the Senate. I wouldn’t be surprised if Feinstein doesn’t put a hold on the nomination as the ranking member on Judiciary until she can get answers.

    Be interesting if it’s Feinstein and not some hippie like Dick Durbin or Sheldon Whitehouse (saw a tweet that they were both furious at the idea of FBI-Dir Lieberman)

  48. 48.

    efgoldman

    @Doug R:

    Lieberman and Sessions come from different shires?

    If Evil Leprechaun tried going to New York or New England, he’d dissolve at the border like the wicked witch when she gets soaked.

  49. 49.

    jl

    @Patricia Kayden: I should have read the excerpt more carefully and gone to the link before I commented I think the story is worse for them than I thought.

    Ryan hasn’t even sent the bill over to the Senate. The GOP leadership decided that they were too unsure whether they will get a favorable CBO score (I think a favorable score is very unlikely) or whether can finesse an unfavorable CBO score to keep the thing under rules for reconciliation.

    Thing is, apparently Ryan didn’t even tell his own whips. So, this story is news to a lot of the GOP House. Probably will pass again, but will be another fine mess. And Democrats will make sure public follows the mess, no matter what the arcane procedural disguise.

    Ryan is really arrogant, and must think everyone is a docile idiot who is slobbering to get the chance to let him eff them over, just like Trump.
    The GOP is Trump and Trump is the GOP at this point. Really no difference, except for level of self control in public and in front of the twitter.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Barbara:

    I am still opposed to full legalization of opiates because I think they’re too dangerous, but Portugal’s model of having hospitals provide maintenance levels of opiates to addicts in a clinical setting is looking better and better to me. Our emergency rooms spend way too much time trying to figure out who’s faking pain in order to get drugs, and they get it wrong way too often.

  52. 52.

    Yarrow

    Why would anyone take a job from Trump at this point? They should know it would only lead to disaster for them. Trump destroys everything that comes near him.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: The best way to think of Ryan is as a not very bright ideologue back bencher who was made Speaker because none of the different GOP factions could agree on anyone else. He has no actual legislative accomplishments to show after almost 20 years in the House. He does have a lot of bullet pointed presentations with snazzy graphics he’s handed out over the years. He doesn’t actually understand how the rules can be worked and when they can’t.

  56. 56.

    Felonius Monk

    @Yarrow:

    Trump destroys everything that comes near him.

    Apparently some people enjoy being turned into compost.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodingers_cat: Himself. A senior, career FBI special agent isn’t going to be a crony. So there would be no guarantees regarding the ongoing investigations. And it would make it almost impossible to politicize the bureau. Which is a good thing.

  59. 59.

    sdhays

    @Adam L Silverman: Wow. But they haven’t really “screwed it up”, have they? This appears to have been Ryan’s plan all along – do whatever it takes to pass any bill and then dare anyone to change their mind when it needed to be changed to actually fit into reconciliation. They’ve got 217 of their guys to walk the plank already; if some tweaking/gutting/redrafting needs to be done, anyone who backs out now will become a pariah in the caucus and a prime primary target.

    What’s amazingly stupid is that this works on Republican Congresspersons because they’re dumb as nails and don’t give a shit about this country. No matter how much I think I’ve internalized the fact of Republican depravity, I still can’t believe how shameless these people are. They have absolutely no self-respect. I don’t know why they even bother pretending that they “read the bill” or give a rat’s ass what the leadership crapped in it if they just let themselves be strung along by the nose anyway.

  60. 60.

    Felonius Monk

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He does have a lot of bullet pointed presentations with snazzy graphics he’s handed out over the years.

    All of which are ultra-conservative, wet dream bullshit.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Don’t dis da Droop!

    ;)

    (OT: Could you check the trash or whatever obscure folder FYWP is prone to disappear comments into? Had a rather complex one go poof in the thread below. It’s possible I mistyped either my nym or email.)

  62. 62.

    JWR

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Feinstein doesn’t put a hold on the {Lieberman) nomination as the ranking member on Judiciary until she can get answers.

    I think you’re putting way too much faith in my dear old DiFi. I remember the lead-up to the Iraq war, and while Barbara Boxer received boatloads of roses for her No vote, (literally! Real roses!), Feinstein’s own office, as far as I know, received thousands upon thousands of calls and emails urging her to vote against the war. So I’m hoping she does the right thing, but as is always the case with her, keep yer fingers crossed.

  63. 63.

    sdhays

    @jl:

    Ryan is really arrogant, and must think everyone is a docile idiot who is slobbering to get the chance to let him eff them over, just like Trump.

    From what I’ve seen, he’s not wrong that his caucus is filled with “docile idiots”…

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sdhays: It passed by one vote last time. He’s got no margins. And there’s no way any revisions to get an acceptable CBO score would make the bill better/more palatable. Also, there will be no way to do this quietly while no one is looking. So there’s going to be a ton of bad press right as they start their reelection drives. All of these are pressure against getting this back through a second time. There are no guarantees, but this would be a more difficult lift than two weeks ago.

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    Rick Wilson just said “rip shit bonkers” on the God forsaken MSNBC just now with LO’D.

  66. 66.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He does have a lot of bullet pointed presentations with snazzy graphics he’s handed out over the years.

    It’s probably some administrative assistant in his office who took a ::ptui:: Power Point course.

  67. 67.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: The deal wasn’t secret very long. Maybe the details of how the agreement was reached have been untold, but the fact that was how the international petro-finance worked has been well known for a very long time.

    I have to wonder if the deal made any difference, really. Was Saudi Arabia going to keep billions of US dollars in cash in warehouses out in the desert? International financial flows would have netted out about the same anyway. Maybe would take longer is all.

    Edit: actually, just burying the dollars in the sand would have had some benefits to the US.

  70. 70.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: I was there in my college parking lot unscrewing my license plate to switch with my roommate during the great oil crisis of the early 70s, so I could wait in one of those long lines like the one in the picture. (Man, I am old. Maximum $3.00 worth of gas and it filled my VW bug.)

    But for fuck’s sake, that was 41 years ago. With all the drilling and fracking and clean energy technology around, do we have to enable these guys, who bred 9/11, until the end of time?

    As to them owning a massive amount of T-bills, that article’s a year old and they haven’t sold them yet. If they are so broke, cutting off the war on Yemen would save them a lot of money. Where else is safe enough for them to move that money to?

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    This is weird:

    “President Donald J. Trump Proclaims 5/14/2017 through 5/20/2017 as #PoliceWeek”
    Proclamation➡️http://45.wh.gov/sLr2xt
    #ThankACop #LESM

    Why is it in quotes?

    Why is it showing up on Twitter ~ 2 days before it ends?

    Why is it a week?

    Who’s running the store in that brain of his? Anyone? (Rhetorical)

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    efgoldman

    @rikyrah:

    I will never be as cool as my 2 year old nephew in a bounce house

    My granddaughter (four in August) loves bounce houses, but she really adores those pits full of foam balls.

  78. 78.

    sdhays

    @Adam L Silverman: All good points, and you could very well be right (I certainly hope so!). But I suspect that this was Ryan’s plan all along. I think he concluded that if an up-to-date CBO report was in the mix before a vote was taken, he’d never get enough of his boys to walk the plank. So he purposefully ignored it and forced through a rushed vote on the bet that he’d be able to hold all of those 217 on the vote to “fix” it.

    But you’re absolutely right that in retrospect, passing a bill that the Senate could actually act on two weeks ago would have been a lot easier than it is now. And clearly it was always a stupid, desperate plan because of the timeline issues you raise. I just don’t think that this was an accident; the Speaker concluded that defrauding his caucus was the only way to pass TrumpCare, so that’s what he did.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @amk: They’re also now panicking. So they’ll start to turn on each other.
    https://www.axios.com/house-leadership-worry-more-of-their-meetings-were-secretly-recorded-2413142464.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic

    House Republican leadership is agitated after the Washington Post published a transcript from a secret recording of one of the inner-sanctum conversations in the office of Speaker Paul Ryan.

    The transcript shows House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy joking with his colleagues that then-candidate Trump and California Republican Dana Rohrabacher were both on the payroll of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “The unknown is frustrating,” said one senior GOP aide, referring to the possibility that this wasn’t the only private leadership conversation that was secretly recorded.

    Behind-the-scenes: House leadership sources have pored over the article and are privately discussing theories about where the leak came from:

    One theory — bolstered by the article’s dateline (“Kiev, Ukraine”) — is that the Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, or one of his associates, left behind a recording device after meeting earlier that day with Ryan.
    But of the five senior House GOP sources I’ve spoken to since the leak, none of them really believe that this leak came from the Ukrainians. Capitol security teams do regular sweeps of leadership offices and my sources aren’t aware of recording devices being found.
    The most widespread theory in House leadership is that the secret recorder and the leaker was Evan McMullin, who as a former leadership aide participated in the June 15 conversation and confirmed the private conversation to the Washington Post. (I am told that the Post, in their back-and-forth with leadership over the story, privately said that the source wasn’t McMullin. There’s no evidence that he was the leaker and I’ve reached out to him for comment.)
    Evidence or not, leadership sources are privately worried that McMullin had a tape on while he sat silently through all of their confidential meetings. They’re concerned about what leaks could come next.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    probably some administrative assistant in his office who took a ::ptui:: Power Point course.

    Dude. You just dissed, like, half of my job. Though we usually use PowerPoint to show off our art collection, so we use it for good, not evil.

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sigaba: I doubt it was McMullin. He knows how to deal with the press in a way that would have kept his name out of this if he was the actual source of the tape. They have a leak. What they don’t know if it is still one of the senior aides to leadership. If so they may have recordings of what happened this morning. The panic and self inflicted damage as they go looking for the taper/leaker is going to be delicious.

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    Off to ultra-ultra-thin slice some unusually large onions using the mandoline.

    If any comments fro me show up later on, that means I still have fingers.

    :)

  86. 86.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    (ETA: So this is not news– I went to Dean’s twitter to look for more detail, then went back to where I found it and this tweet is from April 2016– still news to me)
    this is news, at least to me. A left-twitter fight has (re)erupted over who killed the Public Option– Joe Lieberman or corrupt sell-out Barack Obama (you can guess who’s on which side), and Howard Dean chimed in with this

    Howard Dean‏Verified account
    @ GovHowardDean
    @ ZerlinaMaxwell @ HonestOne We did actually have 60 votes. I was being briefed by Reid and Schumer. Lieberman backed out at the last minute.

    So Blanche Lincoln, Jim Webb and Ben Nelson were on board for the Medicare buy in at 55?

  87. 87.

    sigaba

    @Adam L Silverman: I thought it was funny that McMullin was quoted in the Wapo article giving a totally earnest assessment and keeping any thoughts on any “joke” angle to himself.

    Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.”

    FTR I’m pretty sure some of the people in the room think they were joking.

  89. 89.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: If this is about the public option, then it wasn’t Medicare buy in at 55, it was a public option as a choice of health insurance for everyone. You’ll have to check with Anderson to be sure.

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sigaba: I don’t think they were joking. You don’t swear everyone in the room to secrecy if you’re joking.

  91. 91.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mary G:

    As to them owning a massive amount of T-bills, that article’s a year old and they haven’t sold them yet. If they are so broke, cutting off the war on Yemen would save them a lot of money. Where else is safe enough for them to move that money to?

    Bitcoin!

  95. 95.

    sdhays

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That was certainly the way it looked from the outside. The “blue dogs” were clearly posing – I actually give them a lot of credit. Their “place” in the caucus is/was the right flank, and that was part of their brand and how they won elections back home. So they made a show of opposing “socialism” while agreeing to a compromise that would let it be implemented later. It was win/win.

    Then Joe Lieberman stabbed them in the back. He announced he wasn’t voting for any bill with anything like the public option. All of a sudden, the blue dogs were no longer the “rightest” in the caucus, so they joined him. Lieberman didn’t care about the public option. It was petty payback for liberals who kicked him out of the party.

    The man is a moral scumbag.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    There was also a proposal to allow people to buy into Medicare starting at age 55 as opposed to purchasing private insurance on the exchanges. Joe Lieberman personally killed it and bragged about it.

  98. 98.

    sigaba

    @Adam L Silverman: Wish we could hear the tape. I don’t think McCarthy was joking (I don’t think he had the goods either) and I think Ryan was pretty desperate to make it sound like a joke.

    If this is their casual chatting in committee meetings I can only imagine what their hacked emails look like.

  100. 100.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman:

    ” You don’t swear everyone in the room to secrecy if you’re joking. ”

    But you do swear everyone if some of them thought it was a joke at first.
    Passing through Ryan’s head was the old line that the only conspiracy that stays secret is one where only two people know it and one of them is dead.

  104. 104.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: No, there are now negotiations, but he is frustrated. He has finally gone public to pressure MSNBC with this tweet:

  105. 105.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman:

    They’re concerned about what leaks could come next.

    And Trump is still planning to leave tomorrow, right? Things could get really interesting while he’s away. I wonder if there will be a late afternoon news dump when he’s in the air and he won’t find out about it until he lands.

  107. 107.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mnemosyne: that’s what I remember, but that it was Anthony Wiener that Lieberman singled out as the target of his spite. I don’t remember the PO getting as close in the Senate as Adam and SD (and HowardDean) say, but I’ll take their word for it. It all seems about five hundred years ago

  108. 108.

    blowback

    @Mary G: Trump has got to get some jobs for Americans somehow and the only manufacturing left seems to be the MIC. Bombs, bullets and missiles are all cheap even when subject to the best gouging of the MIC, so it’s got to be some expensive gear – say five of the successor class to the Zumwalts should bring in the $110 billion and the Saudis aren’t going to get anything that works for the next twenty years. It’s the one time people may be happy that Trump is a grifter, By the time he’s finished the al Saud family with be on welfare if not homeless.

  109. 109.

    Mary G

    @sdhays: And Ryan’s a chump for thinking that the Senate would act on his timetable. Members of the great deliberative body think the House is a bunch of uppity peons and getting them to do anything in a rush is an impossible dream. It seems like Ryan and the turtle hardly ever talk.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @GregB: Remember: 1/2 turn every three minutes, flip after seven minutes, to ensure even cooking and that nice diamond pattern.

  111. 111.

    Yarrow

    @GregB:

    The GOP upper echelon is starting to look the are stuck on the raft of the Medusa.

    They have been for months. They just didn’t know it yet.

  112. 112.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Let’s try this again:
    http://thehill.com/homenews/media/333411-lawrence-odonnell-may-be-out-at-msnbc-in-june-report

    Veteran MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell may be out at the network as soon as next month, according to a new report.

    The 65-year-old host of “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” has four weeks left on his contract and may not be renewed, HuffPost reported on Sunday.

    “Four well-placed sources tell HuffPost that MSNBC has not been in contact with O’Donnell’s team of representatives to negotiate a new deal,” reads the report.

    “The absence of active negotiations weeks before a contract expires is highly unusual and often a sign that a contract won’t be renewed,” it continues.
    O’Donnell has been on a ratings tear as of late and is second on the network only to Rachel Maddow. O’Donnell, a former producer for NBC’s political drama “The West Wing,” took to Twitter late last week to tout his program’s success.

    “Last night @maddow was #1 rated show in all of cable tv, not just cable news. @TheLastWord was #2,” wrote O’Donnell to his 1.67 million followers.

    “Thanks for your support. We need it.”

    Unidentified sources told HuffPost, however, that NBC News and MSNBC Chairman Andy Lack “is no fan of O’Donnell’s program.” They added that Lack only believes O’Donnell, who has been with MSNBC since 2009, is enjoying his recent ratings surge is because of the strong lead-in provided by “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

    Lack reportedly wants former NBC News anchor Brian Williams to take O’Donnell’s spot at 10:00 p.m. Williams currently hosts “The 11th Hour” at 11:00 p.m.

    The Hill has reached out to MSNBC for comment.

  113. 113.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: I can’t make any sense of whether it was a joke or not from the transcript. I was actually very slightly impressed that Ryan seemed to have some idea of what was happening in Ukraine (but his spin “And guess … guess who’s the only one taking a strong stand against [Putin’s interference in Ukraine and Europe]? We are.” was ludicrous.)

    But whether McCarthy was joking or not (and he certainly didn’t seem to be earlier when he was talking about the Russians breaking into the DNC), it is damning against Ryan and Scalise specifically. A political “family” doesn’t come before their sworn oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And it’s generally damning against anyone who participated in the discussion without pushing back or demanding the facts about the possibility that Trump (and Rohrabacher) actually were being paid by a foreign power. You don’t joke about stuff like that if you’re actually in the Congress (especially if the subjects are actually in your own party!).

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I’m tracking on there being a Medicare buy in at 55 and there being a separate public option. It is unclear from Dean’s tweet which one he is referring to.

  118. 118.

    sdhays

    @GregB: True. He and Trump actually have a lot in common. He bragged on national TV about wasting taxpayer money and Congressional time dragging Hillary through the mud on a made up scandal just as he was about to become Speaker. As soon as he gets excited about something, it will all come out.

    If they’re smart, they’ll keep him off the TV from now on…

  119. 119.

    sigaba

    @Timurid: You know in KSA they behead people for doing stuff like that. They do it outdoors, in public; they love inviting foreigners to watch, so they get the message.

  120. 120.

    GregB

    Is it wrong that I am starting to contemplate the idea that Sean Hannity murdered Roger Ailes?

    I mean he’s the only man standing at Fox and it is verrrrrrry suspicious.

  123. 123.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: Ryan Grim had a piece a couple of weeks ago, and one of the points he makes is that Lack’s goal is to rebuild Chopper Bri’s brand (as the kids say) and rebuild MSNBC around it. His other protege at NBC is Matt Lauer, which puts that whole awful “national security town hall” fiasco in a new light for me. Grim also says that Tamron Hall was pushed out, by Lack, because Lauer saw her as a threat.

  125. 125.

    sdhays

    @Another Scott: Of course, to be fair, it doesn’t take any behind-the-scenes knowledge to suspect that Trump is/was taking money from Russia. His uncharacteristic servile behavior to them is a major, ahem, red flag.

  129. 129.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Timurid: Stephen Miller is writing the speech. Here’s the list of his greatest hits regarding Islam:
    http://bridge.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Stephen-Miller-factsheet.pdf

    Stephen Miller
    • Stephen Miller is Senior Advisor to the President for Policy in the Trump
    administration.
    • With Steve Bannon, Miller wrote President Trump’s suspended executive order
    which many called a “Muslim ban.” According to Politico, he did not consult Senators
    or lawyers when drafting the order, which resulted in deportations and long
    detainments of individuals from Muslim-majority countries.
    • According to Politico, Miller wrote speeches for candidate and President Trump,
    including his Republican National Convention speech and his inaugural
    address, though Trump claims he wrote them himself. Some analysts have said that
    Miller is “the Trump speechwriter whose own voice is closest to Trump’s.”
    • While at Duke University from 2003-2007, he wrote a biweekly column for Duke’s The
    Chronicle. In one article, he wrote that “Islamic terrorists…have declared a death
    sentence on every man, woman and child living in this country.”
    • As a college student in 2007, Miller was the first national coordinator of the Terrorism
    Awareness Project (TAP), a project of the the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
    The Southern Poverty Law Center considers the center an anti-Muslim hate group.
    Horowitz, the center’s head has been a “friend” to Miller since 2001.
    • TAP described its mission as making “students aware of the Islamic jihad and the
    terrorist threat, and to mobilize support for the defense of America and the civilization
    of the West.” Under Miller’s leadership, TAP organized and promoted “IslamoFascism
    Awareness Week” and ran an ad in Duke student newspaper, The
    Chronicle, that included phrases like “Jihad is…about the global rule of radical
    Islam.” Miller appeared on the program “Fox and Friends” to discuss TAP and its
    advertisement.
    • Richard Spencer, who leads the white nationalist National Policy Institute, claims he
    was a “mentor” to Miller, something Miller denies. According to Mother Jones the two
    men collaborated to bring Peter Brimelow, a white nationalist voice, to a Duke
    University debate event in 2007. Spencer has said the “expression of religious and
    ethnic identities by non-Europeans” is leading to “moral and cultural bankruptcy” in
    the West. Miller said he “condemn[s]” Spencer’s “rancid ideology.”
    • Miller previously served as a press secretary for Rep. Michele Bachmann, who
    often speaks of the “threat” of “radical Islam.” Miller was also the
    communications director for the then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. Appointed U.S.
    Attorney General in 2017, Sessions once warned of the “totalitarian threat” of “radical
    Islam.” The Atlantic reported that while he worked for Sessions, Miller collaborated
    with Breitbart and its former head, Steve Bannon.
    IMPACT: Having worked with an organization considered by many to be an anti-Muslim hate
    group, Stephen Miller now works as a Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump. He shapes
    policy that directly affects Muslims.
    Last updated March 28, 2017

  134. 134.

    jl

    @sdhays: Trump hired and listened to Flynn on an important national security matter when Trump knew Flynn was under suspicion illegal and/or unreported payments from two foreign countries. One of Trump’s important campaign issues, and smear against Obama, was that he would destroy Daesh, not coddle them, which was the important national security matter that the corrupt Flynn interfered with.

    So, I dunno, what is that, a smoking flag, red smoke, or a firing gun? .

    And Trump is contacting Flynn to try to keep him from talking, against everyone’s advice (or supposedly against everyone’s advice, I suspect some of them are lying and maybe in on the calls).

    Man, Trump is filthy dirty into something. If this were a Marx Brother’s comedy it would be fun to watch. I want this over with asap. I won’t get my wish. Probably everything will leak like a sieve, though. Even Mueller’s investigation.

  135. 135.

    amk

    so, mr ivanka, “the unpaid advisor”, lobbied for saudis in public? fucking #maga, yay.

  137. 137.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MisterForkbeard: Okay, now it makes sense. By the way, I was sitting less than 30 feet from Williams the first time he told that story publicly that I know of. It was less than 10 days after the even happened. At that point it was an attempt to ingratiate himself, and it was tailored in order to do so, with a retired 4 star general.

  139. 139.

    Timurid

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He is seriously going to start a fucking riot.
    It’s going to be like the scene with the Blues Brothers in the cowboy bar, but nobody will know the words to “Stand By Your Man.”

  140. 140.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I don’t remember the PO getting as close in the Senate as Adam and SD (and HowardDean) say, but I’ll take their word for it.

    Lieberman killing the public option out of spite (and probably also because he was a tool of the insurance industry) is certainly how I remember it, though I could be wrong. I’m also enough of a realist to acknowledge that the Blue Dogs might have backed out before the final vote, but since they never got the chance, I’m comfortable putting all the blame on Holy Joe.

  143. 143.

    Yarrow

    @Timurid: Maybe he wants to start a riot so he can use his big boy bombs and bomb some Muslims again. He got such praise from the media when he did it before. He’s probably thinking it’s just what he needs right now.

    I’m hoping the rest of the world realizes he’s an idiot and basically just laughs at whatever he says.

  149. 149.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Adam L Silverman:
    My god. I can’t believe it. Ryan is less competent than Boehner. Any plan that passes CBO muster is not going to closely resemble the one he rushed through. It will be an entirely new negotiation. And McConnell has shrugged his shoulders and made it clear he’s not going to help.

  153. 153.

    sdhays

    @jl: Right, but the tape of McCarthy was back in 2016 before this had happened or was public knowledge. So you could spin it as idle speculation. What’s damning is that they clearly think probably at least some truth to it, but don’t view that as something to be concerned about, particularly in the context of the earlier part of the transcript.

  154. 154.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mary G: I’ve heard there’s a saying in the House, “The folk on the other side of aisle are the opposition, the folk at the other side of the building(the Senate) are the enemy.”

  157. 157.

    Timurid

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m not sure which outcome I dread more… Trump fleeing from airport to airport to escape crowds of rampaging hooligans… or Trump somehow managing to make it through a series of public appearances without shitting himself, punching somebody or being declared anathema by a major world religion or two, giving the MSM an excuse to come home to Daddy and bubble on and on about “pivots,” “statesmanship” and “the worst is behind us.”

  160. 160.

    hueyplong

    Compared to Trump, W was Michael Jordan. Trump will definitely take a shoe in the coconut if one is thrown.

  161. 161.

    sdhays

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The way I remember it, they were against “the public option” but were silent on “Medicare for 55 and over”, basically waiting to see how the winds blew. At least on the outside, it really looked like they were willing to say yes. And then Lieberman shit all over it.

  162. 162.

    Another Scott

    @jl: A couple of Six things usually pop into my head when I think about Trump:

    1) He’s a brain damaged old man.
    2) He has (effectively) never been told “no” his entire adult life.
    3) He’s surrounded by people that do what he tells them to do.
    4) He thinks he has enough money to solve any problem, and that money is what motivates everyone else in the world.
    5) He has no respect for the rules, institutions, traditions, processes of government.
    6) He doesn’t care about details, no matter how important.

    He thinks he can impose his will upon anyone else because he’s rich and because he’s The President.

    So when someone tells him that Flynn was dirty or too hot to talk to or dangerous, he doesn’t care. He has decided that Flynn is “a good person”, and that’s all that (he thinks) matters. He doesn’t care that Flynn was paid by the Turks and that caused Flynn to shut down a military operation that Erdogan didn’t like. It doesn’t matter to him.

    Trump probably doesn’t care that Flynn, or any of the rest of his minions were getting paid by Putin or Erdogan or Kim or Duterte or even Soros. Making money is good, and his people are “the best, good people” so they obviously aren’t going to be bought or compromised.

    Trump probably doesn’t know or care about any of the details of actually running the Executive branch of the US government. He knows in his gut what’s what, and that’s his reality.

    I suspect lots of things were going on in his campaign, and in his dealings/money laundering with Russian investors, that made him very favorably disposed to Putin. How much did he really know, as opposed to how much did his minions tell him? Who knows. I hope Mueller finds out…

    So, IMHO, any sort of prosecution that is based on what Trump “actually knew” is a risky strategy. I think it’s quite likely he – the inventor of “prime the pump” – doesn’t “actually know” much of anything any more.

    (Needless to say, I have no inside knowledge – this is just my opinion as an outside observer.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    efgoldman

    @Another Scott:

    A political “family” doesn’t come before their sworn oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

    Hahahahahaha!
    Who are we discussing, here?

  165. 165.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Timurid: He makes one more offensive schedule change for the Israel portion of the trip and I expect a kidon team will get the green light.

  166. 166.

    efgoldman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Come clean efg, we know you’re the one who loves the bounce houses.

    Something would break – either the bounce floor, or one of my ankles, or both.

  168. 168.

    jl

    @sdhays: I was not directly addressing the McCarthy spill/joke, whatever it was. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.

    I stand by my take on the GOPer fratrat family secret tape. It sounds like McCarthy mentioned something that he thought everyone knew something about, but it became clear some of them were out of the loop. So, Ryan awkwardly tried to make McCarthy’s slip never happen in retrospect.

  169. 169.

    Another Scott

    @efgoldman: They may think and hope it does, but it doesn’t.

    Yeah, it’s more of a hope and longing than an immediate expectation… ;-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  170. 170.

    efgoldman

    @jl:

    when Trump knew Flynn was under suspicion

    Absent any contemporaneous evidence, like audio or video recordings, saying that he “knew” anything, no matter what people might have told him, is assuming facts not in evidence.

  171. 171.

    jl

    @Another Scott: I agree on your six points re Trump. But a simpler theory on Trump’s bizarre actions re Flynn is that Trump knows that Flynn knows things that will absolutely ruin Trump: get him tossed out of the WH, broke, in jail or some combination. I’m sticking with that theory for now.

  172. 172.

    David Anderson

    @Redshift: iirc the public option was dead in the Senate. Lieberman was the public face of opposition but the last 10 Dem Senators needed were getting pounded by the doc/hospital lobbies against any PO. However the House liberals floated Medicare buy-in which Lieberman had recently campaigned on as a compromise. 59 Senators were on board but Lieberman decided to oppose I. Order to hippy punch.

  178. 178.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Rather amazing that the vermin of the Village have far less insight to Ryan’s imaginary “wonkyness” than you do. I think you’ve pretty much described him to a tee.

  181. 181.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ” I was pretty impressed with Bush’s reaction time with the shoes; then again, I was drinking then and was easily impressed. ”

    Even the abject Dub managed to do a (very very) few things that made me (very slightly) proud that he was president. The agile shoe duck was one of them. Discipline in hitting the gym for his workouts was another.

    But, I thought it couldn’t get worse than Dub overall. Then the GOP coughed up this exploding hairball.

  185. 185.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @David Anderson: this is more like what I remembered, except that there were 59 Dems on board for Medicare-buy-in (ETA: not that I doubt it happened, I’m just shocked)

    @efgoldman: I thought a chopper was, like a Chinook, a specific kind of helicopter, the kind Radar always sensed coming before anyone could hear them

  186. 186.

    NotMax

    Whoops. Mentioned a banhammered nym.

    Getting a strong L. Boots vibe on this thread now.

  188. 188.

    efgoldman

    @jl:

    Flynn knows things that will absolutely ruin Trump: get him tossed out of the WH, broke, in jail or some combination.

    I think other people (Jared? President Bannonazi?) know this, and they may be whispering in his ear.
    Cause and effect isn’t one of his big concepts.

  189. 189.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl: There was also the AIDS stuff in…Africa, sending the big jet to pick up President-elect Obama, other than that a complete disaster. Kind of miss the guy right now.

  192. 192.

    sdhays

    @jl: Ryan probably did know more about it than what you could glean from publicly available information, since he would have been privy to secret intel reports.

  197. 197.

    jl

    @efgoldman: Thanks, That is something I hadn’t thought of. Easy to imagine Trump cronies knowing a lot of stuff that Trump does not know they know. Cause and effect are not big with Trump. Situational awareness a concept he can only very vaguely grasp, Self-awareness, and agency and strategic/tactical motives of others, completely beyond him.

  201. 201.

    burnspbesq

    Have we PNG’ed Erdogan’s security detail yet? Or is the Trump campaign looking to hire them?

  202. 202.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Adam might have cause to snoop into the innards of the site and make the call on this.

    (fires up the Adam signal on the rooftop)

  203. 203.

    Adam L Silverman

    @burnspbesq: I’ll have more on this tomorrow. We now have video from VOA Turk showing Erdogan actually directing his security detail to go and beat on the protestors, watching it, and then speaking with them afterwards. At the same time Turkey’s Foreign Minister is threatening to expel (persona non grata) Brett McGurk the US Special Envoy for coordinating the coalition response against ISIL.

  205. 205.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: @NotMax: I’m confused. Mnem, please email at the address you’ve got for me and let me know what/who the heck you’re talking about.

  208. 208.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    We now have video from VOA Turk showing Erdogan actually directing his security detail to go and beat on the protestors

    Procedural question: Were the demonstrators on public streets/sidewalks, or on Turkish Embassy property, which is technically part of Turkey, not the US.

  209. 209.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: My understanding is they were in the street/public road and in the park across the street from the embassy. From the reporting I’ve seen DC’s Metro PD is working with State to identify the perpetrators from Erdogan’s security detail and the embassy staff in order to try to pursue charges.

  210. 210.

    Another Scott

    @efgoldman: I thought embassies were foreign soil, too, but they’re not.:

    Is the embassy territory sovereign territory?

    Hopefully by now you have an idea of the answer, which is no.

    […]

    Does the embassy enjoy immunity though? Absolutely!

    It is this immunity that most likely confuses folks when it comes to sovereignty. The [US] mission [building] is protected and is considered US property, but the territory does not belong to the US (or any other country with an embassy). Again, the Vienna Convention does not state that the property belongs to the embassy’s country.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  211. 211.

    efgoldman

    @Another Scott:

    I thought embassies were foreign soil, too, but they’re not.:

    Another fact I’d been taught by sixth grade, down the crapper.

  213. 213.

    NotMax

    @Another Scott

    Trivia: Through treaty with the U.S., the land on which the United Nations complex sits in NYC is technically not a part of the U.S. (or New York) but an extraterritorial entity unto itself.

  215. 215.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax: Some grade school teachers have a lot to answer for.
    Of course, given how long ago it was, i doubt they’re answering to anybody any more.

  216. 216.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    Very early on in elementary school, after seeing a lot of smoky exhaust coming from auto tailpipes, asked the teacher what happens to the yucky stuff.

    Answer was, roughly, “Oh, it goes up into the sky where we don’t have to worry about it ever again.”

  217. 217.

    burnspbesq

    The real reason why Comey had to go: he took Trump over the old Obama basketball court, posted him up, and dunked on him.

  218. 218.

    Ian

    @Mary G:
    As jaw dropping as it may seem, this is how the war profiteers have always done business. Call up someone on the good old boy network, we can drop the 110$ billion down a few dollars, just keep those bombs flying.

    Little scary that the good old boys network is so close to the presidency these days.

  219. 219.

    Applejinx

    @Ian: These days? It’s not different at all. It’s just that they’re doing it badly.

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