I guess we now know why Kushner wanted to fire Comey and end the Russia investigation
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 26, 2017
eventually we have to look at guys who have never done a single smart thing and stop pretending they're canny because they inherited money pic.twitter.com/LttP9XtGYB
— slackbot (@pareene) May 26, 2017
his one Big Real Estate Deal is a notorious boondoggle that nearly ruined him
— slackbot (@pareene) May 26, 2017
People mistake polish for intelligence all the time. And a polished, controlled person looks like a genius in the context of the Trump admin
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) May 27, 2017
Carter Page walked in off the street, into the Trump campaign? What's that say to you @CatchaRUSSpy & @MalcolmNance? https://t.co/VxqiGWH4UX
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) May 25, 2017
As Donald Trump surged in the Republican primary polls in the early months of 2016, his outsider campaign faced growing pressure to show that the former reality-TV star and noted provocateur was forming a coherent and credible world view.
So when Carter Page, an international businessman with an office near Trump Tower, volunteered his services, former officials recall, Trump aides were quick to make him feel welcome.
He had come with a referral from the son-in-law of Richard Nixon, New York state Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, who had conveyed Page’s interest to the campaign, Cox said.A top Trump adviser, Sam Clovis, then employed what campaign aides now acknowledge was their go-to vetting process — a quick Google search — to check out the newcomer. He seemed to have the right qualifications, according to former campaign officials — head of an energy investment firm, business degree from New York University, doctorate from the University of London.
But what the Google search had not shown was that Page had been on the FBI’s radar since at least 2013, when Russian officials allegedly tried to use him to get information about the energy business…
The circumstances that led to Page’s easy access to the Trump campaign represent one of the main questions facing investigators: Were Trump’s connections to multiple Russia-friendly advisers mere coincidence, or evidence of a coordinated attempt to collude with a foreign government? Or were they the result of incompetent vetting that left a neophyte candidate vulnerable to influence from people with nefarious agendas?…
Remember, Kushner's dad came up with the crack idea of secretly filming his brother with a hooker and blackmailing him, which worked great.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 26, 2017
(Spoiler: That ‘crack idea’ is how Chris Christie eventually put Kushner Senior in federal prison)
the big weakness in my Trump/Corleone family comparison is that pretty much all of them are Fredos https://t.co/iInpgAgsU2
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) May 26, 2017
Some say the administration will end in ICE, some say in FOIA/from what I know of corporate lawyas, I hold with those who favor FOIA….
— emily nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) May 26, 2017
Trentrunner
Dershowitz on CNN saying Jared did it probably because Trumpworld mistrusted Obama and wanted secure communication w/Russia that Obama couldn’t find out about.
Yeah.
Corner Stone
Give em up, J Kush! Give em aaaalllll up!
JMG
Having Dershowitz on your side is no break. All anyone remembers about him is that he was one of O.J.’s lawyers.
Major Major Major Major
This is why Loki mostly stuck to fucking with Thor and the frost giants.
Adam L Silverman
@Trentrunner: I know Dershowitz. If he is as bad a lawyer as he presents as an intellect/academic, then you don’t want to retain him for anything.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Coyote waits!
Jeffro
A quick Google search? I’m shocked they went to such great lengths…
amk
@Trentrunner: Yeah, have more faith in russians than in your own president. Great argument by that legal luminary,
Bobby Thomson
@Trentrunner: Dershowitz really should disclose that he’s also on the Russian/Trump payroll. I wonder if that will come out in one of the dumps? He’s just Lanny Fucking davis with a slightly nicer pedigree.
dexwood
@JMG:
I have a fuzzy memory of 1970s Dershowitz standing up for truth, justice, honesty. Of course, that was long before he defended corruption, power, and money. Pucker up for Donald, counselor.
Jeffro
I am trying to picture the chaos that results when Kushner starts to give up Page, Manafort wants to give up Stone, Kisylak asks to just go home, Trumpov wanders around in his bathrobe trying to shake people’s hands WITH FORCE, and the FBI counterintelligence unit starts musing about ‘expedient solutions’.
My profound hope is that the FBI can restrain themselves, and just put the whole crew in adjacent cells, so they can give each other shit all night every night out in Florence.
trollhattan
I understand this week’s NYT magazine has a feature on the Kushner Co., slum lord and their tactics.
Either everything Trump touches becomes shit or he attracts shit. Either way, Scheisse.
Davis X. Machina
@Trentrunner:
It’s simple:
Trump, uniquely among postwar US presidents, realizes that we need to embrace Russia, not intimidate it.
It’s especially galling to see progressives lighting up Trump and his campaign for having the perspicuity to adopt this position.
Russian cooperation was, and is, badly needed on a number of issues of importance to true progressives, whether it’s ME security, the Iran deal, climate, and — this is the big one — keeping Mrs. Clinton out of the White House.
Jared was just taking necessary steps towards those important ends. Sometimes the mir i druzhba gets out of hand, that’s all.
OK, it’s all I’ve got….
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I never knew that when fascism came to America it would be led by people as fucking dumb and clownish as this. Four months ago I was scared. Today, I’m only disgusted, astounded by the incompetence and tired of it all.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Dershowitz also says OJ is innocent.
Adam L Silverman
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): And I still don’t have a blintz truck on my street corner!
PST
I had Dershowitz as a teacher back in law school. He was an egotistical showboat. I remember him bringing in Harry Reems of Deep Throat fame to lecture us.
Roger Moore
I think it’s probably a mix, mostly B plus some C. There are way more people with Russian connections around than can be explained by simple coincidence. Some of that may simply be that trump was already surrounded by people with Russian connections and he grabbed people who he already knew, which speaks to incompetent vetting. But there were also people who had no existing Russian connections but started getting them after they joined the campaign, like Sessions. That makes me think Russian influence was critical to the campaign.
Steeplejack
I was reliably informed last night that Lawrence O’Donnell never shows up on Friday. And yet here he is. Hmm.
Trentrunner
NYTimes is reporting, in its own story on the Kushner Russian back-channel, that it was to be used for discussing Syria and “other policy” issues.
LOL.
jl
I don’t know if this is the third shoe for this evening, or more like a smelly sock. Anyway, much of the deal may be that Trump cronies were promised more loans from Russian banks for Trump related biz projects If Trump admin ended sanctions. if that is true, then question is whether Trump was in on the deal, and was there a down payment from Russia. Found via Josh Marshall’s twitter
Exclusive: Trump son-in-law had undisclosed contacts with Russian envoy – sources
Reuters
FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws…
Kushner’s was one of the names that was revealed, the official said…
FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-fbi-kushner-exclusive-idUSKBN18N018
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@PST: What a fucker. He should have brought in Marylin Chambers.
Bobby Thomson
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Under some readings of the ethical rules, he’s prohibited from ever suggesting OJ is guilty, even if it’s based entirely on public information, and even though he can’t be tried again.
patroclus
Dershowitz used to be a fairly good lawyer, but he kind of lost it when he wasn’t standing up for Ms. von Bulow’s constitutional rights and it’s been all downhill since then. He fell in love with his press clippings and his earnings capability in defending scumbag celebrities and in hearing his own voice on TV all the time.
But now I’m beginning to understand Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped him. It sounded so ludicrous at the time, but if you think like Jared and Trump, that’s what they suspected and hence, it sounded reasonable (to them).
Barbara
Emily nussbaum rocks. That’s too funny.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: Back before the 2016 election cycle heated up that was the pattern. He’d finish his week Thursday night and fly home to California. They used to show Lockup: Your Location Here episodes starting in that time block. Once the election season got underway and the President emerged as the GOP front runner they made a scheduling change.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): that’s a good description of how my feelings have changed as well.
jl
@patroclus: Probably, though he’d never say it, Trump is really pissed that it wasn’t him. Just his damn flunkies, hogging all the attention of the really classy spies. No, Trump just got hassled by loser dweeb news reporters..
Spanky
@PST:
On what?
Wait, do I really want to know?
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
Famous rapper:weed holder::Dolt45:JKush
jl
Josh Marshall tweet with link to Reuters story.
Sounds like big trouble
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/868279246048944128
jl
What is weird is probably, so many people in domestic and foreign police and IC agencies will leak so much stuff, it will get surreal.
Probably the Trumpster Treason Trivia board game, and the TV game show (and if not put out by some company, the lawsuit over the rights) will all be out, while Chaffetz is still trying to get out of town and Ryan and McConnell are still wafflegafflegabbing on the evening news, and people like Brooks are very nuanced and troubled, puzzled and agonizingly pained by it all, including THE LEAKS!.
Ridnik Chrome
@Trentrunner: During the GW Bush era Dershowitz wrote an op-ed saying that judges should be able to issue warrants allowing certain suspects to be tortured. Nobody anywhere should respect or even listen to anything that fucker says about any subject ever. The fact that he’s still being invited to appear on CNN at this late date is beyond disgusting.
p.a.
@Spanky: With the name Spanky I’d assume you’re dying to know.
Origuy
@Adam L Silverman: I was hoping for at least a food truck that sold pirozhkis and blinis.
rikyrah
Man, LarryO has been on 20 minutes with no commercial break
MomSense
@jl:
If I were a NATO member or a vulnerable Baltic State I’d be leaking all the things after Dolt 45 refused to affirm Article V.
eclare
@trollhattan: Reverse Midas touch: Shitas.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Can you believe this? The scope of the corruption and collusion is blowing my mind.
MomSense
@eclare:
Minus.
Adam L Silverman
@Origuy: That would be nice too!
Major Major Major Major
@jl: I like the second reply to that tweet. The picture of the weird Saudi globe picture, and the text “I don’t think the ball is working.”
p.a.
Russia already bankrolled Trump. Once elected, were they threatening to cut him off unless he 1) dropped sanctions 2) weakened NATO, esp in the Baltics, Poland ?
jl
@MomSense: We all need to do our part. Since the media loves to recycle old scandal names and taglines to death, we need to be proactive. I don’t want to start hearing ‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’
How about: ‘When didn’t the president know, and why not, can he be that fucking stupid?’
Jeffro
@MomSense: I guess I missed a good show?
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
Not.enough.coincidences.in.the.Western.World.
Sanjeevs
@Adam L Silverman: I’m wondering if the reason for the new channel is because it’s not Team Trump looking for Russian help but the other way around.
The Steele dossier was publicly passed by McCain to FBI on Dec 9. So if the Russians heard of this around Dec 1 they might urgently need to find the moles. So maybe this meeting was to ask help from Flynn,
And we know that the Trump team began copying classified documents during the transition.
rikyrah
31 minutes – no commercial break on LarryO
rikyrah
Finally, a commercial break
eric
Coincidence that this drops the SAME week there is a leak about lifting sanctions on Russia? We report, you decide.
Aleta
Bradley P. Moss, Esq @BradMossEsq
Hey, remember how copies of classified docs went missing from the transition offices? Yeah now I’m wondering who was suspected in that…
rikyrah
When following the money ?, never ever forget the $500 BILLION DOLLAR EXXON DEAL.
The rest is just White noise
Peale
It’s like they didn’t even bother to test the corruption waters first. Commit a little crime first. Maybe lean on a sheriff somewhere to get rid of a parking ticket. Or drop a $20 bill in the palm of an underpaid bureaucrat and offer them a well paying job in the private sector to get out of a jam.
MomSense
Zbigniew Brzezinski passed away tonight.
hovercraft
Can we please stop with this comparison, Fredo was way more competent than this lot. Yeesh! This is more on the level of Wylie Coyote and Elmer Fudd, with the Three Stooges thrown in.
Steve in the ATL
@PST:
Translation: I went to Harvard law School
Well, big shot, I got my JD at Princeton, so there!
InternetDragons
Jezuz, these people are so blatantly horrible:
“Trump’s advisers were similarly secretive about meetings with leaders from the United Arab Emirates. The Obama White House only learned that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was flying to New York in December to see Kushner, Flynn and Stephen K. Bannon, another top Trump adviser, because U.S. border agents in the UAE spotted the Emirate leader’s name on a flight manifest.”
hovercraft
@trollhattan:
Yes.
Adam L Silverman
@Sanjeevs: I do not know.
Mike in DC
If Kushner doesn’t at least lose security clearance over this, it means things are even worse, because Trump is still protecting him.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
it’s a great point. Garry Kasparov’s “Winter Is Coming” notes the astonishing oil $$$ concentrated in just a relatively few hands in Russia. He also thinks Putin might be the richest man on the planet at this point. $500B would certainly help Putin continue to keep his people in line and continue his cyber/psy-ops war on the West.
Trump, Tillerson and Ross all deserve maximum sentences and RICO forfeiture of their fortunes.
Mnemosyne
Just to get the current timeline straight in my head, are Trump and Kushner on the plane to come back from their trip, or are they already back in DC?
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Great, now both of you can be part of Ted Cruz’s study group.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Wonder what he thought of his daughter and JoeScar.
Timurid
And in other news, not much going on, just an anti-Muslim stabbing spree on a Portand commuter train…
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: They return Sunday. The G-7 Summit concludes tomorrow.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: FTFNYT: He’s got one more day in Italy.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
JDM
That Emily Nussbaum pun combo was one of the greatest of all time. :)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@MomSense: The news that russians spies are in the WH must have killed him.
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
He was probably following Cole’s twit feed and it killed him.
hovercraft
@InternetDragons:
He’s the guy who hosted the meeting between Eric Prince and Putin’s guy in the Seychells, also purported to be to establish back door communications, so still part of the same story.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
He did tell him to his face on live tv that his understanding of ME was stunningly superficial.
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Javanka came home after the Vatican.
Ladyraxterinok
@Steve in the ATL: Just think of all of us who didn’t get – or want – a law degree!
efgoldman
@Trentrunner:
Same Dershowitz who approved of W’s torture regime. Yeah, he’s credible. And I’m Wilt Chaimberlain’s love child.
MomSense
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
No doubt. I’m glad my stepdad and some of my Russian (defectors from USSR) and Eastern European teachers didn’t have to see this.
Steve in the ATL
@Ladyraxterinok: quit rubbing it in!
Also, for anyone who didn’t catch the joke, Princeton doesn’t have a law school
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman:
Tracking.
MomSense
@jl:
He doesn’t know much but he sure knows about Russia. Why is it that he only seems interested in Russia??
SiubhanDuinne
I am officially in love with Emily Nussbaum. .
hovercraft
@efgoldman:
But he said that his one driving principle is to protect civli liberties and the constitution, whenever anyones civil liberties are being threatened he will be there!
Shalimar
@Adam L Silverman: Not sure how Dershowitz is in a courtroom. He had an excellent reputation 30 years ago. As a PR media guest, he is basically Lanny Davis. If you’re having trouble with the law and need someone to go on cable shows as a supposedly neutral party and present the dumbest arguments possible with a sheen of legal bullshit in your defense, Alan Dershowitz is your guy.
Peale
@Trentrunner: yeah. Makes sense. You know, I have paranoid delusions from time to time. I think the Feds are going to arrest me for counterfeiting someday. That’s why I periodically whack the guys who run my printing presses and am looking to automate things. It’s all understandable given my propensity for paranoia.
Felonius Monk
@Adam L Silverman:
He did get Claus von Bülow’s conviction overturned on appeal. But he has become a real PITA of late.
Schlemazel
@MomSense:
I’m surprised he hadn’t already died of embarrassment given his dumbass kid.
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: I was not impressed when I met him.
debbie
The local Fox/Sinclair affiliate just ran an editorial on their newscast, whining about the press’s treatment of Trump. The press needs to give the American people a chance to accept their new president. I don’t think so.
Ladyraxterinok
@Steve in the ATL: Just think of all of us who didn’t get – or want – a law degree!@efgoldman: Onew of the W administration inistration”s biggest crimes was giving a facade of legitimacy to torture.
debbie
@Shalimar:
Fame made him a putz.
lollipopguild
@efgoldman: So what was Wilt really like?
Anne Laurie
@Jeffro:
But how much of that is actual money — funds he can put his hands on — versus oil options, bank deposits that might get seized by other governments, real estate in countries he won’t be allowed to visit?
Interestingly theatrical twist if it turns out Putin was/is frantically throwing government money at Trump to preserve Putin’s personal fortune, while Trump’s people are stealing government money with both hands before the authorities catch up with them…
Shalimar
@rikyrah: I continue to believe the only reason Tillerson is SoS is to make sure that pipeline deal goes through. He certainly shows no interest in any of the rest of the job.
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
Other way around — they’ve had corrupt connections to multiple foreign governments for years, and saw no reason to cut those connections off just because Trump had been elected president.
Marcopolo
@efgoldman: You too? But then I guess there are a lot of us out here, yes?
Chyron HR
I’ve got it all worked out. As long as Air Force 1 never lands and keeps getting refueled in mid-air indefinitely, Trump can’t be removed from office!
P.S. I am not a kook.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: The Sinclair stuff is being written by their new director of political analysis: Boris Epshteyn. And it is pushed from Sinclair central to the affiliates and they have to run it.
patroclus
@hovercraft: I watched the Three Amigos today too on cable.
Ladyraxterinok
: One of the W administration’s biggest crimes was giving a facade of legitimacy to torture.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
CM
@rikyrah:
That Exxon deal is the only qualification Tillerson has to be Secretary Of State. Let that sink in, in terms of Trump’s plans for his presidency.
Ladyraxterinok
Many appologies. Tablet is a real pain!
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
So who’s stuck babysitting the Manbaby if Priebus, Bannon, and Javanka have all bailed on the trip?
Drunkenhausfrau
Damn, Brzezinski is dead. Kissinger still alive.
Jeffro
@Anne Laurie:
I haven’t got the faintest idea how liquid Putin keeps his assets or manages his dough, but Kasparov seems to think that quite a bit of the (already sanctioned, already somewhat restrained) Russian oil $$$ goes through Putin and he – like any good capo di tutti capo – gets his cut. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had the proceeds invested in everything from vanilla mutual funds to US treasuries to strategic investments in other countries and industries.
I don’t get the sense that he’s worried about preserving his personal fortune – it’s more like he needs to keep pumping an ever-increasing amount of dough into his regime and its repressive functionaries (all the way down to ‘police’) so that he can keep a lid on discontent and head off any uprisings like they had about 6-7 years ago.
So, no wonder he wants that $500B in oil exploration & drilling with ExxonTillerson…no wonder he wants those sanctions off, like, yesterday.
I say we electronically “disappear” some of his Russian oil oligarch buddies’ overseas accounts and leave ’em a note about how that’s just the price they pay for dealing with Putin…
Jeffro
@CM: you’re absolutely right…there was no other reason…
Mike in NC
@MomSense: Sorry he didn’t live to see Trump’s impeachment.
Jacel
@Steeplejack: Lawrence wasn’t doing his show Thursday night in order to be at a family event. He might have arranged a tradeoff to do tonight’s show instead.
Cheryl Rofer
Shalimar
@Mnemosyne: The one who never says anything anymore or gets mentioned as being an important part of any discussions but always seems to be in the room when things happen is Hope Hicks. My guess would be babysitting Trump is basically her job now.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: And don’t forget when he brought Carter the news about the Desert 1 failure he offered to go out, do the press conference himself, and shield the President from the fallout. President Carter overruled him and did it himself as the final deciding authority on that operation.
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Melania, McMaster, Powell, the economics guy who was trying to clean up the sanctions spill in aisle 5 today. Basically he’s actually with the type of people he should have been with the entire time, but given the fact that he was at his worst after the idiots all left tells you that having competent people around him makes him look as dumb as he is so he lashes out.
efgoldman
@Shalimar:
That rep based on the von Bulow case.
Mostly he was only a teacher.
He’s in the same situation vis a vis Harvard that Yoo the Butcher is in at Berkeley: He’s tenured, and he hasn’t actually murdered anyone yet (that we know about) so he stays on the letterhead.
I have no idea if he’s still teaching any classes, but anyone who signs up for them ought to be immediately disqualified from ever joining the bar.
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Hey, take your peruke-measuring contest somewhere else!
Shalimar
@Steeplejack: I’m not really that reliable regarding O’Donnell since my info is 2nd hand from the internet. The rare times I have watched personally on Friday nights, it has been a guest host.
I swear I remember a year or more ago when he didn’t even have a Friday night show. MSNBC went straight from Maddow to prison shows.
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
Tall. Very, very tall.
trollhattan
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Yup, unforgivable sin. Russ Meyer came to campus when I was in school and brought one of his stars of the va-va-voom type. We were thrilled, I tells ya. Quite the interview.
Sayne
@Adam L Silverman: Nothing specifically to add other than just to tear my hear out in despair over what I’m reading about Kushner.
You obviously have more experience than me, but to my understanding, shit like the latest Kushner allegations is precisely why people need to declare all their foreign contacts on their SF-86 and explain them in their interview. Jesus H Christ.
I have family in the UK and have several classmates from my grad school who are foreigners. I listed all of them. Because I’m not a traitor.
*pulls hair out in disgust*
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I sat in on a class at Harvard Law School.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: After Trump’s done with them, it’ll be G-6 Summit after they throw the US out.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
In other words, it’s working as it was designed to work.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Whatever else he is or isn’t, James Earl Carter was and is a real mensch.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
” I sat in on a class at Harvard Law School. ”
I ate an overpriced turkey and veggie sammich in some dumpy student cafe near Harvard Yard.
Adam L Silverman
@Sayne: I notify my company’s Facility Security Officer every time I have a routine contact with the allied and/or partner military officers I’ve supervised. This includes birthday and holiday well wishes, checking on them if there is a natural disaster where they reside, getting updates from them about promotions and/or awards or getting a professional question based on something we did in the classroom at USAWC. Just to be on the safe side. When I was assigned at USAWC I went on a date with a woman who was Israeli and was working for AIPAC. I did a disclosure memo for my front line supervisor at USAWC and the folks at my higher headquarters at TRADOC.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chyron HR: If he removed from office, it ceases to be Air Force One. Air Force One had to change it’s call sign midway over Missouri at noon on August 9, 1974 to SAM27000.
efgoldman
@jl:
Had Elsie’s on Mt Auburn St, across from the Lampoon building, already gone out of business? They made the biggest, cheapest sammiches.
jl
@efgoldman: So, we win the Ivy League prestige contest, right?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Drunkenhausfrau: The prospect of have Joe Scar as a son-in-law would kill anyone.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Yep from the Kremlin to Boris to the heartland of America!
Tehanu
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I’m still scared, plus all those other things. Thank God for Anthony Atamanuik; at least I can laugh while being disgusted, which helps me feel a bit less scared.
jl
@efgoldman: Oh, sorry, that was a question, like I’d know something? I was only there once when I was visiting a friend and I went to public talk on campus. I have no idea what the place was. The service was extremely rude.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman:
Dear Facility Security Officer, I never thought this would happen to me….
Marcopolo
@Drunkenhausfrau: We could have an interesting thread on ZBig’s responsibility for the legacy of Afghanistan, the Taliban, and “the development of radical Islamic terrorism” but it might be a long one. ZBig was a (the) main proponent of arming Islamic fighters in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets (w/ the idea of getting them bogged down in an expensive quagmire that would destabilize them). He may have been right about the disruption of the Soviet Union part but the other part of his legacy has outlived him.
InternetDragons
Ugh. The more I learn about these creeps…Kushner’s just another sociopath:
“He also tacitly endorsed what his father did to get revenge on a family member who had turned into a witness against him: paid a prostitute to seduce his brother in law, made a tape of it, and shared that tape with the brother in law’s wife (Kushner’s own sister).
When asked about his dad’s actions, Jared said, “Siblings that he literally made wealthy for doing nothing. He gave them interests in the business for nothing. All he did was put the tape together and send it. Was it the right thing to do? At the end of the day, it was a function of saying ‘You’re trying to make my life miserable? Well, I’m doing the same.'”
amk
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ouch.
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: and he’s all of 34 years old. I get the feeling that like Stephen Miller, if we don’t stop them now, they will be with us forever.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
The place was probably crawling with Massholes.
efgoldman
@jl:
[oldster]Once upon a time, Harvard Square wasn’t an outdoor preppie shopping mall. There were several cheap places for stoonts to eat great quantities. Now, I guess, Bartley’s is the only one left.[/oldster]
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Very intelligent and attractive woman. Not a lot of chemistry from my perspective. Of course my schedule didn’t help. I was on temporary duty (TDY) about one week a month and had to go TDY two days after we went out. This made a second date problematic.
amk
Adam L Silverman
@Marcopolo: Every strategic success creates new threats, challenges, and opportunities. It changes the operating environment and leads to new problems. The strategy of arming the mujahadeen in order to weaken the Soviets is a great example of this.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Only place I ate around there was a diner just off campus by the Law School, pretty blue collar type of place. Then again, this was over 30 years ago.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman:
Translation: she was a Mossad agent and detremined very quickly that I didn’t have any useful intel she could steal
Sayne
@Adam L Silverman: Yep! That’s how it’s supposed to work and there’s a damn good reason for it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Ah yes. That was when presidents and their aides felt they had some responsibility for how they handled their jobs.
Origuy
Obama was in Scotland today. He played a round of golf at the Old Course at St Andrews. While he was there, he tried Scotland’s other national drink. No, not whisky, Irn-Bru.
Steeplejack
@InternetDragons:
Link or source?
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: He’s Bratva. He’s a target of the investigation, which is why he’s no longer at the White House. He’s in for a world of trouble.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I don’t get all the hype for the Emory of the North. Either commit to going to the original in Atlanta or recognize you’re just at a cheap imitation.
Kay
Adam L Silverman
@Sayne: When I gave the letter to my boss at USAWC he shook his head, laughed, and said: “this could’ve waited till you found out if you were getting a second date”.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yep.
Full disclosure: I interned at the Carter Presidential Center between my junior and senior years at Emory.
Adam L Silverman
@Origuy: That stuff is vile – not whisky, Iron-Bru. I never understood how anyone could drink that stuff when I lived there.
mai naem mobile
I think Putin is involved through Wendy Deng and Kushner and Dolt 45. Or it was all coincidence. I can’t decide if Kushner was stupid and got sucked in and didn’t realize he got sucked into illegal stuff until it was too late, or, he knew he was working in murky waters, thought he was smarter than he was and the money was the irresistible honeypot and he was trying to cover up.
efgoldman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s the other side of the river, in Boston (Brighton). It’s still there.
Lyrebird
@PST: And here I had hoped maybe he’d just had some frontal-lobe degeneration or something, since that condoning of torture @efgoldman mentioned directly contradicted some views he presented in some of his earlier books.
FWIW some of the coolest and most dedicated legislative assistants I met in my brief stint on the Hill went to that same law school too.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: How could a “cheap imitation” have been founded 200 years before Emory?
ETA: You’re bright guy Adam, but you might want to work at those math skills.
amk
@mai naem mobile: If people show who they are, believe them. The corrupt coward knew what he was getting into. Voluntarily.
Sayne
@Adam L Silverman: HAH! Funny. Well for me, my last investigator actually chastised me for listing my British cousins who I’m in contact with. My grandmother is a war bride from WWII, so I have great aunts and uncles and 2nd cousins who I’m in rather infrequent contact with. The investigator was annoyed because it would make her life harder to have to look them all up.
I just sort of cocked my head to one side quizzically and said “sorry?”
amk
have the msm monkeys started saying how the twitler became a president during his fucked up foreign policy chops tour?
InternetDragons
@Steeplejack:
Here’s the link to the whole article about Kushner. Apologies for not including it from the start!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-the-sordid-case-behind-jared-kushners-grudge-against-chris-christie/article/2620427
efgoldman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
200 years before Atlanta was even a gleam in someone’s eye.
Somebody obviously got the keys to Obama’s time machine.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: A pale, pale shadow…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: HLS is in Cambridge, the B-school is across the river.
Adam L Silverman
@Sayne: The investigator for my PR was a hoot. I’ve dealt with others that are just tedious.
dww44
@Steeplejack: He was not very well prepared for tonight’s show;he floundered a lot and didn’t make the most effective use of his guests. David Frum was really running rings around him. So perhaps he was originally not going to be on, given that he missed the last 2 nights. Since both Mathews and Rachel (she’s sick) were absent, I posit that he was asked to come in.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Don’t make me sic Swoop the Chicken and Dooley on ya’ll!
dww44
@jl: Loved your whole comment, but especially this:
Steeplejack
@InternetDragons:
Thanks.
Raoul
Maybe this is too flippant, but I assume Obama must have known some degree of this dirt. It might be why he has seemed pretty relaxed (and for g-d’s sake, he deserved/deserves plenty of vacation time after that 8 years) since leaving office. He’s had at least a pretty solid inkling that majorly bad things would leak out and make Trump’s presidency anywhere from a trainwreck to just plain over.
I don’t think Obama has had to lift a finger to make it so, either. Yes, he’s given a few speeches, the most recent in Germany being some prime grade trolling (and also a good speech, but I mean drawing that crowd while the meandering, mouldering Trump has made an ass of himself in Belgium – excellent). But Trump’s sieve-like den of backstabbers, plus the IC that Trump tried to dominate early in those foolish, Bannon-orchestrated cringe fests. All Trumps doing, and guaranteed to start the drip drip drip that is now a series of buckets.
Wow, interesting times indeed. (Still a bit scary, frankly, too. New thread above this is the sort of violence I think we’re in danger of slipping too quickly towards).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: (Steps back slowly, without making any sudden moves.)
glory b
@Steve in the ATL: Dear Facility Security Officer, I never thought this would happen to me….
Okay, that was hilarious.
Shantanu Saha
@Steve in the ATL: That’s a remarkable achievement, considering that Princeton doesn’t have a law school.
Suzanne
Good Lord. I was at Comicon with the family all day, and we came home and I saw all this about Kushner. How much longer do I have to wait until all of these clowns are rotting in prison?
Joyce H
@Felonius Monk:
Oh, man, was that a weird case, or WHAT? I was stationed in Newport at the time, so it was local news and got massive coverage. The local folk were very pro-von Bulow and convinced he was being railroaded. One day I was running errands on my lunch hour and was in some big box store – K-Mart or Walmart. Saw a crowd around the electronics section and wandered over to see what was going on. The verdict of the first trial was coming out. We all watched and learned that von Bulow had been convicted – and some of the women employees just BURST into tears! Seriously, loud sobbing. It kind of astonished me, because he seemed like such a remote, chilly, aristocratic snob, but these working class women were his devoted partisans.
Bobby Thomson
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, he should have just called it a safety school and left it at that.
The Lodger
@Joyce H: …and somewhere, a young real-estate developer was noticing the working -class adulation and taking notes. ..
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
Good friend of mine was an ER doc in CO, saw many patients from Florence super-max. In chains, with guards wearing armor and carrying machine guns. Interesting stories. Bad guys. Regular prisoners don’t go to super-max.
Barry
@Shantanu Saha: “That’s a remarkable achievement, considering that Princeton doesn’t have a law school.”
Independent study.
BTW, it still ranks in the top 10 in law school surveys, sent to law professors and deans.
HinTN
@Shalimar:
Dershowitz’ book was even worse writing than Meacham’s Jackson tome, and that’s an incredibly low bar.
Uncle Cosmo
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Speaking of eating places near Hahvahd ~30 yrs ago provides a cheap excuse to reproduce for no constructive purpose one of my many pomes of the period:
True story.