More lawyers: Rob Goldstone hires Bob Gage of New York. The Agalarovs hires Scott Balber.
— Rosalind Helderman (@PostRoz) July 11, 2017
Open thread!
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.
“Alexa, change the president.”
My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.
Second rate reporter says what?
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.
President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
One way or another, he’s a liar.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
the 10% who apparently lack object permanence
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
White supremacy is terrorism.
If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.
These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.
eric
Every white guy gets a lawyer….same thing
WereBear
Let the deals begin!
Because this bunch can’t wait to start informing on each other if it will give them an edge. Remember, fellas and gals, first one gets the best shot at it.
trollhattan
@eric:
Then where the hell is mine? I wanna sue somebody, stat!
Miss Bianca
oh, boy! same level of corruptionl different day!
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: OK, what have you done? Or should we just presume guilt?
Ian G.
I’m curious to see just how many Republicans will stick with Trump through this, because former Soviet intelligence officers who murder political opponents and shake down individuals and businesses are the lesser evil vs. people like us who, you know, think Mexicans are human or doubt the literal truth of the Bible.
eric
crim lawyer folks, can you answer the following: Trump grants a pardon, thus all federal charges vanish, except for subsequent perjury. But, am i correct that any person granted a pardon, may still assert the 5th to a federal prosecutor or Congress to protect from self incrimination in a potential state court action? (assuming the required predicates for asserting the 5th exist) gracias.
TenguPhule
Even the lawyers have lawyers at this point.
jl
I’ll look for news reports on how all the office pools on who goes down how and when are hurting productivity. Maybe Brooks will write a passive aggressive hectoring column about it, insinuating blame on liberals.
TenguPhule
@eric:
Does Trump even have Pardon power if the election results were tampered with? Inquiring minds would like to know.
ArchTeryx
@Ian G.: All of them, Katie.
A Ghost To Most
Next Rethug meme: Those evil Demoncrats made us commit treason!
ruemara
@Ian G.: Toss Orrin Hatch into that group.
TenguPhule
@Ian G.:
Lesser evil in this case means the party more likely to kill you if you betray them.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: Depends, is he in any way involved with Trump?
James Powell
Are these lawyers good enough to keep things under control until the public gets tired of hearing about Russia?
I’m pretty sure that no matter what the facts are, one good terrorist attack in the US and the story will disappear from the news forever.
different-church-lady
@TenguPhule: It’s probably a lot like land boundaries: once the marker is set in place and agreed to, that’s the legal line, even if it was surveyed incorrectly.
Mike in DC
I support the new administration’s full employment plan for lawyers.
TenguPhule
@James Powell:
Depends on the color of their skin and religious denomination.
Another Scott
Meanwhile… TheHill:
More at the link.
They’re seemingly still going to try to force something through. I don’t believe that McConnell is going through this exercise just to destroy Cruz (though I’m sure he’d like to get that as a side benefit). He’s going to do everything he can to pass something that destroys Obamacare – it’s who he is.
Grr.
Keep fighting!
Cheers,
Scott.
TenguPhule
@Mike in DC:
You say that as if you expect the lawyers to actually be paid on time and in full.
scav
Is there a way to muddle the distinction between coal miners and lawyers? it’s looking be child’s play to employ at least the state of West Virginia’s worth fairly soon. Not too far of a drive and it would provide a campaign-promise success! to crow about.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wonder if anyone in the office has pointed this tweet out to Bob Mueller?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@A Ghost To Most: That’s literally the reasoning of any revanchist movement that accepts foreign aide, like the Nationalists in Spain accepting aide from Hitler and Mussolini.
They’re the true patriots and did what they had to do to win
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
I’ve learned from the Donny in Chief that the #1 reason to have a lawyer is suing people. Another quarter are busy drawing up NDAs and the rest are the defense/countersuit team.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
One wonders if Donnie Junior’s retainer check has cleared yet.
I have doubts.
TenguPhule
@Another Scott: So all of this shit is going to flow together and come to a head by the end of the month.
1. Trump Treason.
2. Republican Deathcare.
3. Federal Debt Meltdown
What could possibly go wrong?
efgoldman
@Ian G.:
The most significant people they’re afraid of are their primary base voters (the 27%) and their big donors.
In no particular order.
TenguPhule
@scav:
I respect lawyers. Coal Miners, not so much these days.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
No dream is too big to fulfill, what can Oprah do for you?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XVTbO8Ea054
jl
When will there be a video mash-up of all the lies these GOP and Trumpster goons have told about collaboration and contacts with Russia? With commentary to explain the degree of bald faced-ness and outrageousness of each one.
I guess there will have to be a brief version, a full length feature, and an special uncut edition with editor’s commentary.
Anyway, I want all three. I want to send the links to some Trumpster friends and family.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
We gotta keep on fighting.
Miss Bianca
You know, you step away from the Intertubes for *one moment* and when you come back the scene is unrecognizable. Again. Or would that be “still *more* unrecognizable”?
Van Buren
If only there was a blue dress involved somehow, so that people would start to focus on the transgressions…
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: It feels like Mitch is flailing, which is very out of character.
oatler.
WORKS ON CONTINGENCY NO MONEY DOWN
WORKS ON CONTINGENCY? NO, MONEY DOWN!
jl
Lying liar who always lies.
Franken may have coined a term that describes our political age.
TenguPhule
@Van Buren:
Blue is so not Donnie’s color of choice.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
To be fair, even he didn’t see this coming.
liberal
Adam (OT):
Do you have a link for the stuff you cited about (Theda Skocpol’s?) research on the Tea Party being wrong (based on a faulty dataset from (Putnam?))? I think you said John Sides had a better analysis, but I can’t remember the details and I couldn’t find you comment in a search I did a few days ago.
Best,
L
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Don’t forget Vichy, where “accepting help from foreign governments” became “become the butt monkey of the foreign government that just invaded and defeated you in war,” which was still held up as The Patriotic Thing To Do.
Because Judeo-Masonic Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, argle bargle.
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
It’s a day ending in Y.
randy khan
@Another Scott:
So, uh, what are they doing with that money? I have a hard time imagining the bill getting more than 25 votes if it combines the Medicaid cuts with no tax cuts. It seems like a combination designed to make everyone mad. (Maybe that’s it – they want to see if they can get support down to single digits!)
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: All of them, Katie
TenguPhule
The Actual Emails. FSM, Trump Jr is the second dumbest asshole on Earth.
Really, the summaries don’t do the actual shit justice.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Chris: Can’t forget the French right, weirdos they were. They absolutely hated the Third Republic and wanted it destroyed. TBF, assuming the Nazis “won” WW2, they would’ve likely pulled out of France and allowed the Vichy regime to take over total control of the country as a puppet. I believe that was Germany’s plan.
Was Petain a true fascist or was he just a patsy? Or maybe an authoritarian in the vein of Franco or Salazar
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
Yes.
Trump is president of the US, not “the provisional president pending evaluation of the validity of the election.”
Mike in NC
Trump won’t be bringing back coal mine or factory jobs, but there are lots of under-employed law school graduates and aspiring standup comedians in the country.
jl
@randy khan: I’d guess they are shoring up individual market and employer markets at the expense of Medicaid. Probably trying their old wedge tactic, fooling people into believing that only ‘those people; and white trash will suffer. I think that too many people now understand how important Medicaid is for elder care for people far into middle class ranks for that to work anymore, though.
CZanne
@scav: well… doc review is endless, back-breaking toil in a windowless, dark room full of carbon for no reward, with little chance of advancement. There are similarities.
@TenguPhule: DPRK lighting a candle. Russia’s eyes are myopic and astigmatic in that direction (or they’re lying). Missile defense interceptors fire off, they get Lil Kim’s birthday candle, but the other three dozen of them continue on trajectory and take out a few square miles of Primorsky. Moscow thinks it was an unprovoked attack (or say they do) and fire off their first battery. Goodbye, North Dakota, Colorado Springs and Seattle. ICBMs are not a binary system.
TenguPhule
@jl:
Sadly cites facts clearly not in evidence.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
The shouted protests that have made GOP congressmen abandon town halls and hide, and overloaded the Capitol Hill switchboards for weeks at a time.
Quinerly
Rep Marsha Blackburn thinks we really should be asking questions about the Clinton Foundation’s relationship with Russia and what Pres Obama said to the “country.” http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/marsha-blackburn-maybe-trump-jr-got-duped
Mary
I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a young law firm associate assigned to the Trump representation team.
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I often thought of the Third Republic during the Obama years; the backstory is that there was a fairly large chunk of the public that never really accepted republicanism/democracy as a political system, and spent the entire time in a state of culture war against the new system (the Dreyfuss Affair being one of the best known public battles in that war). By the late 1930s, when the secular/liberal republic gave them a Jewish prime minister, you had legislators literally screaming “better Hitler than Blum!” which… analogize with Obama Derangement Syndrome as you will. A few years later, 1940 finally gave them a chance to destroy the monster they’d spent the last seventy years fighting, and they hated it so much that working with the Nazis was no more difficult for them than working with Trump/Putin has been for 95% of Republicans.
I don’t know exactly what the plan was for after the war, but that sounds plausible. The French, like most of the people to Germany’s West, weren’t considered equal to Germans (who was?) but they also weren’t considered exterminable subhumans like the Slavs and I don’t think there were any big plans for Lebensraum in that direction (not counting Alsace-Lorraine), so client states is a likely outcome. They might have tried to do some redrawing of borders – there were some weird ideas along those lines, like the creation of an “SS State of Burdundy” that would’ve merged parts of France and Belgium under a local fascist movement.
I honestly don’t know a whole lot about the state of mind of Petain – I’ve read about the regime but not much about him personally. From what little I know, he was a good guy (relatively) in World War One who was horrified by the “just keep sending them over the edge, we have reserves” mentality of so many other generals and actually gave a shit about the welfare of his men. I think conventional wisdom is that that experience, the “holy shit, this war was a massacre, we cannot have one like it again” mentality that came out of it, plus all the generically conservative/authoritarian ideas that a career French officer would’ve picked up by osmosis if nothing else, made him the ideal leader for a project like Vichy.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
Compared to the number who will still faithfully vote R, come what may. Not enough.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
A 15 point shift in elections, forcing Republicans to scramble to barely keep seats they thought utterly impossible to lose, suggests it is, indeed, enough. People are pissed, and most Republicans are not as well protected.
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
FYWP ated my response.
For Petain, I don’t actually know for sure – I’ve read about Vichy but not much about him personally. He was a good guy, more or less, in World War One, where he was one of the generals who actually cared about the men and was horrified by the “just keep sending them over the edge, we have reserves” mentality of so many of his peers. Conventional wisdom is that this, and the “holy shit, we cannot afford another war like this one” mentality that came out of it, combined with basic conservative/authoritarian values that he would’ve picked up in the military by osmosis if nothing else, combined to make him the perfect man to lead the creation of something like Vichy.
Seth Owen
I’ve said for quite some time that Republicans have made a huge gamble that may end up actually sending the GOP into the dustbin of history, to be replaced by another party on the right distinct enough to plausibly deny being just a rebranded Republican Party. Maybe the Libertarians, more likely something new. The Republicans can survive a lot, but the one thing they can’t survive is a reputation of disloyalty. It killed the Federalists after the War of 1812. If the popular, general perception becomes that the GOP is the party of Putin then they are dead.
It’s likely to trigger a period of chaos and factionalism. Several parties may arise to claim the mantle of the right. The Democratic coalition may shatter as well. There may even be a wholesale re-alignment that re-arranges the deck shares so thoroughly that today’s divisions will become muddled. The election of 1860 had four major party candidates. Nothing says there can only be two.
efgoldman
@Quinerly:
False on its face. Bales of hay are smarter.
Boatboy_srq
@James Powell: This DOES have a certain “Summer of 2001” feel to it, doesn’t it?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Seth Owen: How might the Dems, shatter?
James Powell
@Mary:
Well, for starters, there will be no problem hitting the billable hours target.
Matt McIrvin
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’m seeing a developing split between the economic/foreign-policy left and the racial/cultural justice wing. If the Republicans come out of all this still in total control it’ll probably be because of that.
Adam L Silverman
@liberal: I know that Skocpol used Putnam’s data set from Bowling Alone because she references it in her work. I’ve never seen anything published, but it wasn’t much of a secret within political science circles that his data was cooked. When called on it he blamed his grad assistants. It wasn’t Sides stuff that I indicated was a better explanation, it was that political science professor from U Washington who actually has valid data and legit empirical results. One other Putnam issue: his theory for Bowling Alone is plagiarized from the Chicago School of Criminology’s neighborhood studies. I actually asked Putnam about this, without calling it plagiarism, when he was brought into UF while I was a postdoc there to give a series of talks. He claims to have never read Merton in grad school. Given when he went to grad school, and the dearth of political science literature at the time and the fact that Merton is Merton, I find that hard to believe.
Vhh
@TenguPhule: The Predident’s pardon power is essentially unlimited. You will recall that Ford pardoned Nixon for offences for whivh charges had not yet even bern laid, mch less litigated.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve seen that as well. They’re being played for dupes by Putin and various other factions on the right
liberal
@Adam L Silverman: very interesting. Thanks.
liberal
@Adam L Silverman: which Merton is this? (IANAPS)
liberal
@Seth Owen: there’s that theorem in political science that first past the post plus I think single member districts implies that usually if not always you’ll converge on two parties.
Adam L Silverman
@liberal: Robert K Merton. He was the premier Durkheimian scholar in the US prior to WW II. He, himself, was not part of the Chicago School, but a portion of their work was rooted in his translation of Durkheim into American social science. Specifically his take on Durkheimian anomie known as strain theory.
liberal
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.